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New Exhibit Space

By John Marks, Curator of Collections

We have a new front entrance to our museum. If you’re a frequent visitor, it might be tempting to ignore the “old front hall,” but you shouldn’t. It’s now an exhibit space that changes several times a year.

We installed a hanging system for showing art without damaging the walls. We have a large and growing local art collection. Most of it is in storage, but now we’re bringing it out three or four paintings at a time.

There’s a built-in china closet that has served a few purposes. A few decades ago, it was a long-term display of ceramics. More recently we used it to feature “community curators” who shared their personal collections. Like the art, most of our objects are in storage and are brought out for specific themed exhibits. The closet is now for pulling things out of storage to show.

The current closet display is Buttons Galore! This arose from a misunderstanding between me and archivist Becky Chapin. We both wanted to show buttons from our collection. She was thinking of buttons, or pins, from campaigns, reunions, promotions, etc. I was thinking of the boxes of decorative buttons I recently saw in our clothing collection. While each kind could have filled up the closet on its own, we compromised.

I chose to display some of the fanciest buttons in the clothing collection. Donated by Mr. and Mrs. Cecil McKay, they’re arranged in frames by subject. One frame is castles and buildings. The button shown here is possibly silver inlay of the Centennial Exposition building in Philadelphia. Other subjects are music, animals, and birds.

The buttons are a variety of sizes, from being used on shirts or blouses to fastening coats or capes.

Geneva History Museum strives to not be static – drop by a few times a year and see what’s new!

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