That’s a lot of ‘stuff’…

January 20th, 2011 |

19 buildings.

40,000 objects.

270 years of history.

It’s a bit daunting when the figures are physically put down in writing.   When I joined the Historic Bethlehem Partnership team, hearing those statistics didn’t fully prepare me for the immense breadth of the HBP collections.  The HBP collections encompass five organization’s collecting that started as early as the 1930s.  The partnership was developed in 1993 and first included Historic Bethlehem, Inc., the Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts, and Burnside Plantation.  The Moravian Museum joined the group in 1999.

The organizations collected objects pertaining to the Lehigh Valley as separate entities, but amazingly enough, little overlap exists.  The Kemerer Museum collection started with the bequest of life-long Bethlehem resident and avid collector, Annie Kemerer and includes furniture, glass, ceramics and textiles.  Burnside Plantation focused on agricultural history, so you’ll find everything from sheep shears to a high powered horse wheel there.  Historic Bethlehem, Inc. includes early Moravian industrial and trades objects and several decades of archeological findings from the Colonial Industrial Quarter.  And the Moravian Museum collected day-to-day objects documenting  the lives and heritage of the Moravians in Bethlehem.  So what does exist is a comprehensive history of the Lehigh Valley, where objects from one collection can answer questions in another collection.

Now, almost six months into my tenure here, I’ve found that even with several rotating and permanent exhibit spaces many of the objects and stories held in HBP’s vast collections might never get their chance with the public.  I’m now inviting you to see behind closed doors, into our vast ‘attic’ as I rediscover objects, and attempt to put these historical puzzle pieces back together.

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