Multi-purposing Museum Media: Quilt Treasures Oral History and Documentary Web Portraits

Marsha MacDowell and Justine Richardson, Michigan State University, USA

http://www.centerforthequilt.org/treasures/

Abstract

This paper will present the development of Quilt Treasures videotaped oral histories and curated Web portraits as a model for multiplying the uses of a museum's media materials on-line. Quilt Treasures is a multi-institutional, collaborative project of The Alliance for American Quilts, Michigan State University Museum, and MATRIX, focused on documenting the revival of interest in quilts and quilt making in the late twentieth-century through oral histories and Web portraits of individuals who moved the revival forward in a significant way. The primary components of the project have been 1) recording and preserving the videotaped oral history and 2) developing and curating on-line Web portraits using the recorded interviews and a variety of other museum resources. Currently nine Quilt Treasures portraits have been completed, and another five are under production. The planning and implementation of these first Quilt Treasures have resulted in an innovative template that provides flexibility for adaptation in each individual portrait, as well as a model for repurposing a variety of museum materials for projects addressing any subject matter. This paper will demonstrate how the manifestation of a Web portrait influenced the traditional process of oral history documentation and preservation at the MSU Museum. It will explore how the Web design accommodated various media and maximized the use of the interviews through excerpts, edited segments, and textual narrative gleaned from the interview content. Finally, the paper will examine how the curatorial collaboration developed across institutions and media.

Keywords: quilts, cultural heritage, oral histories, on-line multimedia presentations, on-line documentaries, cross-institutional collaboration

Introduction

This paper further explores the development of Quilt Treasures, a multi-institutional, collaborative project of The Alliance for American Quilts, Michigan State University Museum, and MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online at Michigan State University. Quilt Treasures is focused on documenting the revival of interest in quilts and quilt making in the late twentieth-century through oral histories and Web portraits of individuals who moved the revival forward in a significant way. The development process and Web site prototype provide a model for developing and multi-purposing museum resources.

Quilt Treasures was conceived by The Alliance for American Quilts, which solicited significant start-up funding from several sources to initiate the project. The Alliance contracted with Michigan State University to conduct nine initial interviews and to develop a Web prototype for the project. MATRIX and Michigan State University Museum have partnered fully on the project, contributing significant guidance, expertise, collections resources, and in-kind support to the project's design and implementation. Additional assistance was provided by the Web portrait subjects, their families and colleagues, and a network of consultants. The project's Web portraits are presented on The Center for the Quilt Online, America's Quilt Home.

Project Significance and Background

Quilting today is one of the most widely engaged in visual expressive activities in the United States. In fact, quilting is a multi-billion dollar industry occupying more than 21 million people (Primedia 2003). Scholars increasingly focus on quilts to gain evidence and information that can increase understanding of many historical and contemporary aspects of American life; and the tremendous public draw of quilt exhibits has boosted museum attendance across the country. (NYT, 2002; Richardson and MacDowell, et. al., 2004).

Although the history of American quilting dates back to early European settlement on the continent and has, over that span of time, experienced periods of popularity, it has been in the last quarter of the 20th century that interest in quilt making has seen its greatest surge. A variety of economic, cultural, and social conditions, coupled with sweeping changes in technology and communications, laid the groundwork for this surge. But within this context, there were individuals who have been acknowledged as key to the revival of interest and who are still living. The Alliance for American Quilts noted the roles these individuals played and the need to embark on a project that would document these 'quilt treasures.' As Alliance president Shelly Zegart stated:

Quilt Treasures are the special women and men who were key to the American quilt revival of the 1960s and 1970s, reawakening interest nationwide in the history, craft, and social and aesthetic value of quilts. They ensured the preservation and documentation of quilts through the state and regional quilt projects and they took quilting as a cultural expression to new heights. As creators, teachers, communicators, and links in a growing network, these "quilt treasures" built an art form and an industry that today involves and touches millions of Americans. As these individuals began to retire from active involvement in the quilt world, an important piece of American social and cultural history was at risk of being lost. (Zegart, 2003)

In the late 1990s, The Alliance began to develop a strategy that would identify and document key figures in the quilt revival movement, preserve the documentation for future generations, and make at least part of collected documentation accessible to the widest public possible. It is out of these needs and goals that the Quilt Treasures project has emerged.

The Quilt Treasures is now a national oral history project focused on the individuals key to the quilt revival. The project involves in-depth, multimedia documentation of these important individuals' lives, their work, and their influence on the quilt world. The Web portraits contain biographies and videotaped interviews, mini-documentaries, photos, a timeline of activities, bibliographies and other resources. Additional interviews have been completed and additional Web portraits are under construction.

Partners in the Project

The Alliance for American Quilts is a national non-profit organization, headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky and founded in 1993, that supports and develops projects to document, preserve, and share the history and stories of quilts and quilt makers. The Alliance brings together institutions and individuals from the creative, scholarly and business worlds of quilt making to advance the recognition of quilts in American culture. Its board of directors is comprised of individuals who represent the diversity of stakeholders in the quilt world, and include industry leaders, scholars, and quilt makers.

After the Alliance conceived of the Quilt Treasures project and received start-up funding, it partnered with MATRIX and the MSU Museum to deploy the project. Each of these agencies brought complementary and specialized experience critical to the formation of the project.

MATRIX is devoted to the application of new technologies in humanities and social science teaching and research. MATRIX creates and maintains on-line resources and leads collaborative endeavors to digitize and provide on-line access to archival materials, journals, artwork, artifacts, oral histories, and music for use by scholars as well as the general public. These projects include the National Gallery of the Spoken Word (NGSW), and the African Online Digital Library (AODL), funded under the National Science Foundation's Digital Libraries Initiative Phase II; The Spoken Word Project, a joint NSF-JISC funded project to assess teaching and learning with on-line audio resources; and The Quilt Index. MATRIX digital laboratory includes a complete audio and video production and preservation suite, where the Quilt Treasures video interviews are processed.

Michigan State University Museum, the state's natural and cultural history museum, is home of the Great Lakes Quilt Center. The museum has a long history of engagement in research, education, exhibitions and service projects related to quilts and holds a collection of more than 500 quilts, quilt-related ephemera and documentation. The MSU Museum is also home to the Michigan Traditional Arts Program, has provided leadership for numerous oral history research and education activities, and maintains the Michigan Traditional Arts Research Collection of objects, taped interviews, field notes, and photographs relating to folklife, providing the only major state resource on this subject. Designated with MATRIX as one of the Alliance's Regional Centers for the Quilt, the MSU Museum also serves as an archival repository for materials associated with Alliance-related projects.

Significantly, these three organizations had already partnered successfully in the creation of The Quilt Index, an innovative national model for distributed on-line management and presentation of thematic collections. Funded in its initial phases by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Quilt Index is now entering its third phase with the support of an IMLS National Leadership Grant for Library-Museum Collaboration, during which it will grow to include more than 15,000 quilts and the associated documentation, available for searches across the collections for patterns, individual quilt makers, themes, techniques, and many other characteristics.

Project Management and Methodology

Management and funding

 At the outset, The Alliance board established a Quilt Treasures Task Force with initially two Alliance board members: Dr. Mark Kornbluh, Director of MATRIX, and Dr. Marsha MacDowell, Curator, MSU Museum - as Task Force Project Directors and liaison to the Alliance Board. Initial Task Force Project members included Alliance board members Shelly Zegart (quilt scholar, collector, and board chair), Dr. David Taylor (American Folklife Center/Library of Congress), Merikay Waldvogel (independent quilt scholar), Dr. Marcie Ferris (independent scholar), and Jinny Beyer (quilt artist and teacher). When Justine Richardson of MATRIX joined the board, she took over as liaison to The Alliance board, and the task force subsequently was comprised of MacDowell, Waldvogel, Taylor, Beyer, and new member Robert Shaw, with Alliance executive board members Ferris, Dr. Alan Jabbour (retired director, American Folklife Center/Library of Congress), and Zegart as ex-officio members. The Task Force has provided ongoing consultation on all phases of the project. Richardson has served as Phase 1 & 2 Project Director in close collaboration with MacDowell and Zegart. MATRIX project managers, designers, and digital video experts and MSUM staff Mary Worrall, Pearl Yee Wong, and Francie Freese, and Alliance staff and board members all have contributed substantially to the development of project components.

Agreements between The Alliance and MSU have to date formalized phases of work plans and have delineated the financial contributions of each partner, the number of activities and products to be completed within a phase, and the timeline within which those activities would be completed. Cash gifts to The Alliance from board members and external supporters in addition to significant cost sharing contributions from MATRIX, MSU Museum and Alliance board members have underwritten completion of the first outlined phases of the project.

Fig. 1: The basic front page for a Quilt Treasures Web Portrait.  This portrait of Bonnie Leman was the prototype developed for the project. http://www.centerforthequilt.org/treasures/bl/

Identification of Treasures

One of the first tasks of this project was to develop a list that would accurately reflect the scope of the quilt 'universe' during the revival period and those individuals who were key to the various 'sub-worlds' within that universe. Alliance president Shelly Zegart led the development of the list by polling Alliance board members, Quilt Treasures task force members, and selected individuals knowledgeable about either quilt history in general or specific areas of quilt activity. Almost immediately, a list emerged of nearly 60 individuals who were targeted for documentation. Additionally, the Alliance board indicated a core group of individuals who were deemed essential to interview first because of either the exceptional significance of the individual's contribution or the age or health of the individual. With the exception of a few additions and a few deletions (due to deaths), and although the list remains open to further additions, this initial list and prioritization has remained relatively unchanged and serves as the master for project activities. Among those identified were editors of 'shelter' magazines which regularly and strategically featured quilts, publishers of seminal journal or magazine series devoted to quilts, inventors of tools and technology that transformed how quilts were made, activists who started national and even world-wide projects using quilts to raise attention about social issues such as AIDS, pioneering scholars who assembled massive archives or who integrated quilts into related areas of study such as women's history, collectors who built holdings of artistic, historic, and cultural significance, curators of ground-breaking exhibitions, and artists whose work was pathbreaking and/or who had been honored by the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship Awards - our nation's highest award in recognition of artists' contributions to our artistic legacy.

Interview Protocol

An interview protocol was developed that would not only yield substantial documentation of the contributions of the individual treasure but also would yield material that could relatively easily be excerpted for use in an on-line presentation. Task force members, especially those with extensive experience and expertise in oral history interviewing, contributed a core set of questions for all and suggested subsets of questions for treasures where there existed similarities in experiences or contributions. A two-member documentary team consisting of an experienced documentary videographer and interviewer was then formed for each interview. This team researched each interviewee using published sources and, in some cases, existing archival materials in personal collections or collections of Michigan State University Museum. They also engaged several resource people who knew the interviewee well to contribute questions and suggestions for this person. Prior to the interview, the project director and/or the interviewer would add their own questions to the original list of questions. Additional questions were solicited in some cases from scholars acquainted with the treasure's contributions, in other cases from close friends and relatives of the treasure. In each instance then, the questions asked of the treasure reflected the original core set of questions and those developed specifically for the individual. Prior to the interview, the treasure was also asked to have on hand items that were personally important or would help tell the story. At the interview these items generated spontaneous questions that also contributed to the uniqueness of each recorded session. Each treasure was also asked to sign a consent form approved by the MSU Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects.

Interviews were then done on site with each treasure in a home and/or work environment. While the impact of each person's work has had national and even international impact, much of the production happened in private home or home-office workspaces. Thus videotaping in the treasure’s personal space is essential to contextualizing each person and conveying her contribution to quilt art and history.

Each interview was recorded on broadcast quality DVCam video. They were filmed with a Sony VX2000 set to 48 mhz sound quality and DVCam video capture. A Chimera lightbox provided soft full face key lighting. It was supplemented by fill light with a small focus lamp or using natural or ambient light, depending on the room set up. Because the primary planned manifestation was for Web portraits, the frame was kept in close-up, with occasional medium shots for contextualization. On location, an extended interview was recorded first with the treasure seated in one location; these interviews lasted anywhere from two to four hours, depending on the subject's availability, health, etc. Then the treasures were filmed in a walk and talk during which they were demonstrating an activity, touring their place, or showing their work. Additional video footage and still photographs of the setting of the interview and/or individual objects were also obtained.

Processing Collected Materials For Archiving And Use

Each documentation visit yielded a collection of materials that included the videotaped interviews, still photographs (both film and digital), a signed release form, and, occasionally, donated and loaned books, photos, and ephemera. A system was set up between MATRIX and the MSU Museum to process these items for both archival storage and use in creating the on-line presentation. MATRIX staff transferred the original videotapes, creating duplicate digital DVCam tapes, VHS reference copies, and audio cassettes of the soundtrack for transcription. The original videotapes, consent forms, and related materials, along with the VHS reference copies and audio cassettes, were then sent to the MSU Museum. At MSU Museum a transcription was made of each audio cassette and all of the materials were catalogued and placed into archival storage. Items that were on loan from the treasure were photocopied, scanned or digitally photographed and returned.

Designing A Web-Based Interface For Presentation Of Documentation

From the outset of the project, Task Force members sought to create an engaging on-line presentation on each treasure. The goal was to find a way to portray each person uniquely within a common Web-based format. Working from the interview tapes as the core medium, the project aimed to present excerpted and edited segments of the interviews, along with other digital materials related to each individual, in a format that would allow interactivity for viewers as well as flexibility in the presentation options to accommodate the variety of individuals interviewed. We sought to create a presentation model that could be adapted easily by other producers.

The Web portrait model that evolved includes several core components and unlimited possibilities for individual variation. The core components include Interview, Photo Gallery, Minidocumentary, Timeline, Biography, and Bibliography. Additional featured components can be developed as needed for each interviewee. These components have included testimonies from friends and/or colleagues, exhibit histories, teaching portfolios, even poetry. Together the core components and the additional features utilize a variety of archived media materials from the project as well as other museum collections; thus the project expands the reach, accessibility, and audience specifically for these oral history interviews and for museum collections in general.

For each Web portrait, an outline of potential components with a list of questions and supplementary items, such as photographs or magazines referenced during the interview, was drafted from the video and its transcript. This outline was shared with the curators and with the interviewee for comments, contributions and approval. The resource people, as well as other colleagues, were contacted for general feedback as well as specific items, such as photographs from a particular period of the interviewee's work.

Fig. 2:  Long form oral history interviews were edited into minidocumentaries as well as broken into excerpts and presented by topic in multiple streaming formats.  This page from Cuesta Benberry's web portrait shows the grouping as well as the formatting and streaming options available for her interview excerpts. http://www.centerforthequilt.org/treasures/cb/video.php

The video media of the interviews are streamed into minidocumentaries and in excerpted segments. The minidocumentary was originally conceived as the central output from each interview. However, the linear nature of an edited video greatly constrains the possibilities for the materials. Many significant stories and images cannot be included in minidocs, because of both the length limitations and the necessity of developing a clear narrative thread. Plus, the narrative mode of a single minidocumentary does not utilize the nonlinear advantages of the Web. Rather than presenting only an edited minidocumentary video, large portions of the original interviews were segmented and compressed to be presented in the Interview section as excerpts from the raw interview. The segments were edited with fade-ins and fade-outs. They often included the interviewer's questions. However, many excerpts were not directly related to questions. They could stand on their own as concepts separate from other parts of a particular response. In these cases, the text captions linking to the streaming video serve as an additional layer of contextualization or curation. Segmented clips were arranged and captioned variously as topics, questions, or issues so that viewers can decide what interests them. While these selections were obviously chosen through the curatorial process of portrait development, the video experience became much more interactive and user-driven when presented in raw segments for people browsing the portraits. For viewers seeking a more curated video narrative, the minidocumentaries still serve as short, more traditional documentary portraits – brief edited videos of the interviewees in their own words, including still photographs and in some cases music.

Fig. 3: The RealVideo excerpts stream in a custom pop-up player window. Historian Cuesta Benberry shows her quilt, "Afro-American Women and Quilts" which includes Cuesta's pieced blocks based on designs by AfricanAmerican women whom she studied.  The RealVideo excerpts stream in a custom pop-up player window. (Via: http://www.centerforthequilt.org/treasures/cb/video.php "AfroAmerican Women and Quilts" RealPlayer:  "Fast" option )

Upon this core of video media, other materials for the Web site were developed utilizing additional images, text and information from other sources, including the MSU Museum's collections. For each portrait, a written narrative biography and a timeline were developed from the information in the transcript and the other gathered materials, such as curriculum vitae and published written sources. The photo galleries were developed to present the range of activities the particular interviewee contributed. The modular galleries are greatly expandable and can be created to present quilt images or various phases or eras of the interviewee's quilt work, as well as images from books, articles, or photographs. Depending on the area of the person's contribution as well as the subject's need for privacy, the photo galleries may contain recent and/or historical personal family photographs, or simply stills excerpted from the videotaped interview. The bibliography was similarly compiled from these additional sources.

Fig. 4: The photo galleries proved one of the best ways to incorporate a wide range of museum archival materials, from documentation images of gallery exhibitions to scans from ephemeral materials, these mini- galleries offer a standard viewing format that can be varied, adapted, and grouped for various narrative and curatorial ends. http://www.centerforthequilt.org/treasures/jl/photogallery.php

The Web pages were constructed using open source programming, specifically PHP. The graphical components of the pages (banners, navigation buttons, inserted images) are constructed using PHP includes. The photo gallery section is built from a freely available open source PHP module. This open source and modular design permits flexibility and efficiency in Web editing. All video is presented in streaming RealVideo and QuickTime at two compression rates each so that the media will be accessible to a wide range of viewers and access speeds. The streaming video is embedded in a unique html player.

Fig. 5: Detail images of quilts in one of Jean Ray Laury's photogalleries. http://www.centerforthequilt.org/treasures/jl/photogallery3.php?directory=photos&currentPic=1

Fig. 6: Personal photographs in Yvonne Porcella's photogallery. http://www.centerforthequilt.org/treasures/yp/photogallery1.php

Fig. 7: Museum gallery photographs from exhibitions for Merry Silber web portrait photo gallery. http://www.centerforthequilt.org/treasures/ms/photogallery2.php

Lessons Learned to Date

The first Quilt Treasures Web portrait featuring Bonnie Leman was unveiled in prototype to The Alliance for American Quilts board in August 2002 and fully launched on-line in October 2002. Additional portraits have been produced and launched as funding has permitted. In addition to its public existence on the Web, the project has been presented to a variety of conferences and events, including the Michigan Museums Association (October 2003), Oral History Association (November 2003), National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (December 2003), Mississippi Cultural Crossroads (September 2004), and Michigan Quilt Network board meeting (January 2004).

Through the production experience, responses from peer-professionals at presentations, and feedback from Web visitors, the process and content have been reviewed, revised and modified.

Collaboration

Every phase of this project to date has reflected collaborations that brought together a mixture of complementary expertise and resources essential to this project, as well as the generous contributions of the interviewees and their families, and the time, ideas, suggestions and materials of many other interested colleagues and friends. In short, this project could not have been done without this collaboration.

Project Management

A project management model was developed to ensure quality of finished product and completion of work within the limitations of available funding. Because the project was based at Michigan State University, it was able to draw upon a cadre of individuals who could meet those general requirements, but more importantly, had the experience, skills, and organizational flexibility required to address the unique challenges and project design considerations posed by this particular endeavour.

For instance, originally the intention was to develop a roster of potential interviewers and curators from which individuals would be chosen for conducting each treasure interview and curating each Web portrait. For the initial project, we felt that consistency of interviewer, videographer, and curator was critical to build an efficient and effective model. Thus either one or both of us were involved in each of the initial set of interviews and in Web portrait development. Furthermore, close consultation between the interviewer, project director, curators, and resource people was essential. Ultimately, a working model of shared curation evolved.

By December 2003, interviews with all living people from the original priority list were completed. Given limited resources and so many significant individuals, determining the sequence of interviews became an interesting challenge for the project, even with the first set completed. A two-tier system has now been suggested for next phases of the project. The list is first prioritized, based on a combination of