One of the things we often say about the archival materials we are digitizing and adding to ACDC is that we never know what researchers will do with our materials once we release them into the world wide web. The Papers of Edward and Orra White Hitchcock and Orra White Hitchcock’s Classroom Drawings were among the earliest collections we made available through ACDC in late 2012/early 2013. It is amazing to see just how far Orra White Hitchcock’s works have traveled since then, both digitally and physically.
The news of the moment is that the largest exhibition ever mounted of Orra White Hitchcock’s artwork (and manuscripts and fossil specimens) is now on display at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. The exhibition, titled “Charting the Divine Plan: The Art of Orra White Hitchcock (1796–1863)” opened on June 12 and runs through October 14, 2018. Nearly all the works on display are drawn from the collections in the Amherst College Archives & Special Collections. It was curated by Stacy C. Hollander, acting director and chief curator at the American Folk Art Museum. Unlike earlier scholars who had to visit Amherst to explore the world of the Hitchcocks, Stacy did most of her research from the comfort of her office in New York thanks to the materials available in ACDC. She paid a visit to the collections in 2017 to view some of the materials and discuss exhibition options, but the bulk of her research was conducted remotely.
Over the past five years we have seen Hitchcock’s artwork pop up in a variety of places, so I took a little time to pull together some links to other examples of the digital spread of her works.
The Paleontological Research Institution launched the “Daring to Dig: Women in American Paleontology” website that has been in the works since 2013. Naturally, Orra White Hitchcock features prominently in this story – her rendering of Cuvier’s Megatherium is at the top of the section on “A Brief History” and she received a page of her own. All the images on this site are drawn from the Hitchcock material available in ACDC.
In March 2017, Hitchcock was the “Scientist of the Day” at the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering, and Technology in Kansas City, Missouri. In their brief description of her work, they were kind enough to mention the exhibition mounted at Amherst College in 2011: “Orra White Hitchcock: An Amherst Woman of Science.” Former Head of the Archives & Special Collections, Daria D’Arrienzo, collaborated with Robert L. Herbert, professor emeritus of humanities at Mount Holyoke College, on an exhibition at Amherst’s Mead Art Museum and an accompanying book. Professor Herbert’s work on Hitchcock began years before that exhibition with his publication of A Woman of Amherst: The Travel Diaries of Orra White Hitchcock, 1847 and 1850 in 2008.
After the Amherst exhibition, we realized we needed to improve the physical storage of Hitchcock’s large classroom illustrations on linen, so we worked with the amazing team at Museum Textile Services in Andover, MA to do some light cleaning and build custom housings for them all. Their blog includes this post and this post from 2012 about how one goes about cleaning illustrations on textiles that are nearly 200 years old. When Stacy Hollander visited Amherst to examine the classroom charts, it was clear from the reports prepared by Museum Textile Services that many of them required additional conservation treatment before they could be publicly exhibited. Fortunately, we were able to put the funds together to send the most at-risk items back to Museum Textile Services for another round.
The latest blog posts about Orra White Hitchcock from Museum Textile Services highlight the exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum (“A Natural Legacy, Part 1”) and another deep dive into the details of their conservation treatments to prepare these materials for display (“A Natural Legacy, Part 2”).
Closer to home, Orra White Hitchcock, her husband Edward, and other local figures are the focus of the 2017 web project developed by the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, “Impressions from A Lost World” which explores the history of the many fossil footprints found throughout the Connecticut River Valley.
This page on Amherst Archives & Special Collections’ website includes more information about Edward & Orra White Hitchcock materials available at Amherst.
Mike Kelly is the Head of Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College.