Friends of the Museum Raffle — Get Your Tickets Now!

The Friends of the City of Las Vegas Museum are pleased to announce our Second Annual Endowment Fund Raffle. As a result of past generosity, the current endowment fund balance is over $27,000. We need your help to reach our goal of $100,000 by 2012, New Mexico’s Centennial Year. Purchasing a raffle ticket is one way to support the Museum’s collections, exhibits, and educational programs. Recent projects at the Museum include the development of an interpretive plan and an interactive educational game, Las Vegas Alive!; redesign of the Website; Songs of the Cowboys program; and Scrapbooking Las Vegas and Git Fer Vegas, Cowboy! exhibits. Proposed projects include an exhibit about clothing and an interactive oral history program.

The drawing will be held February 3, 2010 at the Friends of the Museum Annual Meeting. You do not need to be present to win.

For more information about the Friends of the Museum, the endowment fund, and where to buy your tickets, go to our website.

Tools of the Trade

Finish carpenters are fine craftspeople. Not only are their products works of art, their tools are often beautiful, as well. Spokeshaves shape wheel spokes, of course, or any type of long, roundish piece, like a table leg. There are four in the collection: two are a combination of wood with metal blades, two are entirely metal. Draw knives are used to roughly shape a round section. In this area, draw knives are used to clean poles for vigas. The draw knife is also used to approximate a round section to be worked on a lathe. A plow plane has nothing to do with agriculture or flying. It’s used to cut grooves along the grain in a piece of wood. It could also cut a rabbet (an open-sided groove). Ours is made from rosewood with brass fittings. Planes have various shapes and functions. The collection includes moulding planes (to shape the edge of material, like a router bit would do today); a jack plane to make rough passes over surfaces; jointer planes to flatten a surface; and smooth planes for finishing. Chisels, squares, mallets, mortise marking gauges, augers and compasses round out the collection’s woodworking tools.

Linda Gegick
Museum Administrator

JUST A DRESS? Interpreting Historical Artifacts

When researching information to create a label for a new display—a two-piece dress and undergarment—I found myself in the role of detective—digging for clues, following leads, and getting lost in the details.

Digging for clues, I examined the “crime scene”—tailoring, fabric, size, and distinguishing marks. A Bellas Hess label gracing the slip led me to research the company. Then I tried to determine the purpose and historical context of the outfit. The provenance, that is, the source of the items, Miss Bertha Hanson (1882-1907), and their size—adult clothing—established a time frame—the late 1890s. But was it an evening gown, a uniform, a visiting costume?

Next I consulted the Museum collection, fashion books, the family records, and the Internet. I found similar dresses, their purposes, and descriptive language such as fitted bodice, tight sleeves, and flared skirt. I learned that Miss Hanson might have been a Harvey Girl, that the style and fabric indicate daytime use, and that the lace of the undergarment was derived from 18th century France.

Following a lead from a co-worker, I came across young Miss Hanson’s signature in the Harvey Ranch Hotel register. I researched the Hotel. This led me astray, so I returned to the crime scene. What was the dress used for? What kind of lace is that? Come by the Museum to find out.

Pat Romero
Museum Assistant - Research specialist

NMAM Conference: Las Vegas Alive!

Greetings all! Since my last blog, Nellie Price and I attended the NMAM Conference held in Santa Fe, NM. We hosted a round table discussion about Interactivity and Education, discussing the details of Las Vegas Alive!, and even played the game as a group! The overall experience was wonderful! We got to share what we’ve been doing at our museum with others in the field, and got invaluable feedback on Las Vegas Alive! from other educators, researchers, and museum professionals.

Outlined as part of our presentation were the rules of the game, the lesson plan and rubric, and how the game measures up to the state’s standards and benchmarks for education. We talked about the characteristics of the game, the testing experience, and the research experience. As part of a PowerPoint presentation we showed pictures of the various museum visits whereLas Vegas Alive! was played, the timeline that sets up the boundaries for the game, examples of the card deck, and a portion of one of the campaigns.

Every detail of the game was elaborated on. We discussed how we determined our timeline and boundaries according to major events that correlate with U.S. and world history, which events we chose for our campaigns, our goals in relaying the concept of community through the game, what historical information was most essential for our purposes, our efforts to make the characters and occupations accurate and specific to our location, and what artifacts and props best match the characters and occupations. We also brought up our future game plans which include a second time period, more characters and occupations, more campaigns, and the introduction of famous, real-life characters to the card deck, (i.e. Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, Kit Carson, Charles Ilfeld, Jesusita Aragon, and the Duncan family).

The conference was a success! Everyone included in our discussion enjoyed playing the game, and thought it was a great way to make museum visits interactive and educational. Adding to the excitement, next year’s conference will be held here in Las Vegas. And, we look forward to hosting it!

Laura M. Gonzales
Humanities Consultant

Thank you and more

What an exciting couple of weeks! First I want to say thank you to everyone who attended the reception for our new exhibit "Git Fer Vegas, Cowboy!" and the corresponding performance "Songs of the Cowboys" with Mark Gardner and Rex Rideout. Both events were well attended, and extremely successful. A special thank you to our Funders - Friends of the City Museum, New Mexico Humanitites Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of a We the People Project, Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation, Las Vegas/San Miguel Chamber of Commerce, City of Las Vegas Lodgers tax Advisory Board, and the Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with New Mexico Highlands University Media Arts Department. And thank you to the members of the NMHU Rodeo team who helped with the tickets and seating at the performance!

I encourage people to learn more about what Mark and Rex do by visiting here:http://songofthewest.com, and also at cowboypoetry. com. And please support them by buying their CD's and books!

Also, we launched our new website on November 1st. Please take a few minutes to check it out - http://www.lasvegasmuseum.org. The new design was created by Hired Gun Design. Funding for the website was provided in part by Friends of the City Museum, and the City of Las Vegas Lodgers tax fund.

Exhibit Design 101

We’re in the last days of installing our new exhibit, Git fer Vegas , Cowboy! Exhibit development includes ingredients of staging a play and of creating a book. The writer, or curator, establishes a storyline. Inspiration comes from any number of sources — a song, a person, a newspaper article. In this case, our curator found a compelling story in the programs and poetry of the Cowboys’ Reunions. The curator chooses pieces of the Museum’s collection as illustrations. Next, the story and the “illustrations” are turned over to the exhibit designers. This team decides how the objects, images and text will best demonstrate to the visitor the curator’s concepts and how these elements will be arranged in a gallery. Fabricators build casework, platforms and other apparatus to house objects or hang images. Many pieces in museum collections are fragile and require special handling. This is especially true when these artifacts are displayed. Preparators create special mounting devices that hold objects securely without harming the object’s material or form. All of these elements are choreographed in the gallery and come together in a flurry of activity, so I guess exhibits have a little bit of dance in them, too.

Linda Gegick

Museum Administrator

Western Women's Saddlery

In Europe, sidesaddles have been in use since the Middle Ages primarily to provide women the opportunity to ride with modesty. Over the centuries, women adapted sidesaddles to their personal preferences. In 1915, Mrs. Esther Stace, riding “aside,” cleared a 6’6” jump.

In the early days of Western American expansion, “no lady straddled a horse,” but many expert horsewomen rode the prairies, ranched, and performed trick riding in their sidesaddles. After witnessing a severe riding accident, Charles Goodnight (1836-1929), a well-known cattle rancher, approached his friend and expert saddle maker, S. C. Gallup (1834-1904), Pueblo, Colorado, to make a sidesaddle suitable for the Western rider’s needs. By 1870, the Goodnight-Gallup Sidesaddle was born and came into popular use in the American West.

Until this new version appeared, sidesaddles were dangerous, hard on the horses’ backs, and uncomfortable for the riders. The new Goodnight-Gallup sidesaddle was built on a standard man’s saddle tree—higher in front over the horse’s withers. It had double-layered, square skirts, a mohair double cinch, and a downward-facing, adjustable side horn--where the rider secured her left leg. These adaptations, along with the traditional adjustable stirrups, made for a better fit for the horse and a more solid seat for the rider. These saddles were also fancy, with floral tooling on the skirts, embroidered buckskin seats, and white angora side pockets.

The Museum’s new exhibit, Git Fer Vegas, Cowboy!, opening October 23, includes an S. C. Gallup #85 Western Sidesaddle, purported to have been purchased by Ludwig Ilfeld, Las Vegas businessman and supporter of the Cowboys’ Reunions, and offered to one of the Reunion Rodeo trick riders as a courting present. Alas, she spurned him.

Pat Romero
Guest Curator - Git Fer Vegas Cowboy! exhibit