Montana Historical Society Press Release— Lee Metcalf Photograph and Film Collections CLIR Grant Project
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Montana Historical Society Press Release— Lee Metcalf Photograph and Film Collections CLIR Grant Project Montana Historical Society announces the “Lee Metcalf Photograph and Film Collections Project” The Montana Historical Society Research Center is excited to announce the receipt of a two-year private grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) for a project to arrange, preserve, and describe the photographs and films of the former U.S. Senator from Montana, Lee Metcalf. The grant’s funding has provided for the hiring of a full-time project archivist, Matthew M. Peek, who will work for the duration of the project in the MHS Research Center’s Photograph Archives under the direction of its manager, Lory Morrow. The project began in April 2013, and will run through the end of March 2015. Although the MHS Research Center has processed and made available the Lee Metcalf Papers (MC 172), the senator’s photographs and films came to MHS in several deposits over the past thirty years, largely without description or organization. Most of the photographs and films were housed in and used by Metcalf’s office staff during his time in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. A substantial number of individuals and congressmen seen in Metcalf’s photographs are unidentified, inhibiting the collection’s usefulness to the public at present. The objectives of this project will be to unite all of Metcalf’s photographs from the various donations in one photograph collection to allow for better access, as well as to re-house all the photographs in appropriate archival enclosures. The films will be researched, preserved, and re- housed as well. The CLIR grant provides the resources necessary to spend time researching, identifying, and preserving all of the materials individually in these two collections. The work completed in the arrangement and description of these collections will help to inform future projects related to Lee Metcalf, such as the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act of 1964, for whose passage Senator Metcalf was largely responsible. The first year of the project will be spent working on the photograph collection, and the second year will focus on processing the film collection. The collection will be accessible in the spring of 2014, when the photographs should be fully described and preserved. Once completed, the finding aids for the Metcalf Photograph and Film Collections will be available through the Montana Historical Society Research Center, the Northwest Digital Archives, and the Montana Shared Catalog. This project will allow for greater access to a vital visual resource documenting the history of Senator Metcalf and other Montana congressmen in relation to Montana politics; environmentalism and conservationism; education advocacy; civil and equal rights; Native American relations and the return of rights to Native Americans; and other major issues and events of the mid twentieth century. Updates on the project, including short historical pieces on Metcalf using interesting photographs from his collection, will be made periodically on the MHS blog Montana History Revealed and in various MHS newsletters and publications. It is the hope of MHS that teachers, students, universities, scholars, and the general public will benefit greatly from the increased access to Metcalf’s photographs and films at the completion of this project. Volume 39 Issue 2, June 2013 Views from the joint conference “Turning Points & Connecting Archival Spaces” in May of the Northwest Archivists and Archives Association of British Columbia See more on Facebook! NEWS FROM MONTANA MONTANA REP CAITLIN PATTERSON Donna McCrea shared sad news from Montana. Teresa Hamann, Archivist at the University of Montana’s Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, passed away on April 15, 2013, following a 14 month battle with cancer. Teresa had worked for the Library’s Archives and Special Collections unit since August 2000. In addition to creating exhibitions, processing collections and providing excellent research and reference services, she was the unit’s lead worker and student supervisor. She received her BA from the University of Montana and her MA in History from the University of Oregon. Image of Lee Metcalf from Wikipedia. The Montana Historical Society Research Center’s Pho-tograph Archives has received a two-year private grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) for a project to ar-range, preserve, and de-scribe the photographs and films of the former U.S. Senator from Montana, Lee Metcalf. The grant’s fund-ing has provided for the hiring of a full-time project archivist, Matthew M. Peek. Formerly the corpo-rate archivist for Airstream, Inc., in Ohio, Peek has a B.A. History from Kentucky Christian University, a M.A. Public History (archival studies emphasis) from Wright State University (Dayton, OH), and is finishing his MLIS Digital Archival Preservation from Kent State University. The project be-gan in April 2013, and will run through the end of March 2015. The first year of the pro- ject will be spent working on the photo-graph collec-tion, which con-tains over 4,000 photographs. The second year will focus on processing the film collection, containing over 300 film reels. Once completed, the Metcalf Photograph and Film Collections will be available for research at MHS Research Center, and the finding aids will be accessible through the Northwest Digital Archives and the Montana Shared Cata- log. Mike Mansfield, James Murray, Lee Metcalf, and an unidentified belle over-see the "cowboy caravan" through Washington, D.C. [PAc 2008-27] Image from Montana History Revealed. This project will allow for greater access to a vital visual resource documenting the history of Senator Metcalf and other Montana congressmen in relation to Montana poli-tics; environmentalism and conservationism; education advocacy; civil and equal rights; Native American rela-tions and the return of rights to Native Americans; and other major issues and events of the mid twentieth cen-tury. Updates on the project will be made periodically on the MHS blog Montana History Revealed and in various MHS newsletters and publications. This past winter, the MHS Photograph Archives received a photograph album containing 128 black and white photo-graphs of Fred Knobel; his friends and family; and his homestead in West Butte, Montana. This album includes a great photograph of men and some children collecting snow on Mount Jean to be used for making ice cream for the Fourth of July. Kermit Karns donated 40 black and white film negatives he took of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Company 956 at Camp Taft F9 in Haugan, Montana. Views include the medical staff and corpsmen. One interesting photo-graph is of Nurse Betty Johnson working with Camp Sur-geon Albert Shershow in saving a life of a pneumonia vic-tim; unfortunately, the patient would later die. [Pg. 18] History of the U.S. Senate Democrat Photographic Studio, 1961-1972 and Its Correlation with the Lee Metcalf Photograph Collection at the Montana Historical Society By Matthew M. Peek (May 2013) Lee Metcalf CLIR Project Photograph Archivist Montana Historical Society Introduction With the advent of the modern news photographer in the later years of the 1930s, initiated by numerous New Deal programs and projects, the outbreak of World War II, and more high- quality portable cameras, official photographers for U.S. Presidents and congressmen became the norm in mid twentieth-century politics. Thomas McAvoy, working for Time magazine, began taking action photographs of the re-elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Washington, D.C., in 1933 with his Leica camera, while the other photographers waited for a professional, posed photo op with FDR.1 This moment marked one of the greatest departures in the way photographers covered politicians and the U.S. Congress up to that time. By the late 1940s, when President Harry S. Truman’s famous photograph of him holding the newspaper headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” was photographed by three news bureau photographers assigned specifically to Truman, the idea of the “modern news photographer” came to fruition. Many of these early pioneering photographers got their careers launched through working for Kodak testing early color photography, while a number of these photographers got their experience during World War II military campaigns and the photographic coverage of the liberation of Nazis concentration camps. The development of specialized press and marketing photographers, such as Ardean Miller III, who created the famous public image of Pan-AM and Airstream, Inc., with his 1 Raising press photography to visual communication in American schools of journalism, with attention to the universities of Missouri and Texas, 1880's-1990's, by Sherre Lynne Paris, thesis (The University of Texas at Austin: Austin, 2007): 125-126. 1 gorgeous color Kodachrome photographs, sparked the imagination of politicians.2 They began believing that having the photographs deliver their message and image to the American people and their constituents would be the next best step in public relations. By the early 1950s, members of the U.S. Congress’ two main political parties—Republicans and Democrats—had begun hiring or requesting their own press photographers to cover events, hearings, and meetings amongst congressmen. By the mid 1950s, this practice was becoming commonplace: “In 1955, Arizona Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, himself an amateur photographer, hired Arthur Scott to work for the Republican Senatorial Committee.”3 Later in 1975, Scott would become the first U.S. Senate Photo Historian. The Republican Party would be the first political party to formalize this practice of Congressional photography by the late 1950s. Now, the Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate realized they must play catch up. From 1956 to 1958, several U.S. House of Representative members, tired of not getting their agendas passed through Congress or approved by the Republican President Dwight D.