In early March, Dean Tim Pyatt and ZSR Development Officer Joel Rivera collaborated with Wake Washington Coordinator Jennifer Richwine to create a special event at the DC campus for Wake alums. As part of their Lunch & Learn Series for the DC area, we participated in Conversation & Collections: A Peek into ZSR’s Political Archives. The panel featured Kate as the Senator Richard Burr Project Archivist; Dina Manzina, Deputy Archivist for Archival and Records Management Training and Services at the Senate Historical Office; and Tanya, as Director of Special Collections & Archives, who oversees SCA’s collections and has also previously worked with Congressional collections at other institutions. (Tanya)

Thursday:

On Thursday, Dina arranged for us to present at a quarterly CHARM (Capitol Hill Archivists and Records Managers) meeting. CHARM is a social/professional development group consisting of anyone practicing archival or records management work in and around Congress, regardless of if they have formal training or not. This was a great opportunity for Tanya and I to share experiences about the transfer and processing of the Richard Burr papers and we were asked some phenomenal questions from the audience. Among the group was George Apodaca, the new Archivist of the Senate.

Also of note was a spontaneous visit to the Renwick Gallery, a Smithsonian museum dedicated to crafts and decorative arts. We saw a fantastic exhibit “We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts by Black Women Artists,” among other interesting things. (Kate)

Friday:

With no presentations on the schedule for Friday, we had the chance to do some touring around DC. Our first stop was the recently renovated and reopened Folger Shakespeare Library. One exhibit focused on the history of the Shakespeare folios more specifically, and included a display of all the Library’s folios in a climate controlled vault.

The other exhibit focused more broadly on Elizabethan England and the various ways that the collection is used by researchers. It included original artifacts and documents, including George Gower’s 1579 portrait of Elizabeth I, a letter to Queen Elizabeth, written by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and a lengthy gift roll listing all the gifts given out by the Queen for New Year’s. (Tanya)

After the Folger, Kate spent the afternoon in the Natural History Museum. I skipped the Hope Diamond in favor of the fossils and bones. (Kate)

Smithsonian American Art Museum (Tanya) I took this opportunity to visit this wide-ranging collection of American art and portraits. My favorites included folk art and art created by Japanese artists who had spent time in internment camps when they were young. I also enjoyed the National Portrait Gallery collection, which documents the American experience through individual portraits dating back to colonial times and a special exhibit on the U.S. Presidents, including the famous portrait of President Obama. Michelle’s portrait is traveling, alas. I also enjoyed seeing numerous portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The building was a work of art in and of itself.

I also had a brief meeting with Nancy Melley, friend and colleague, and Program Officer for the National Historical Publications and Records Administration. I am the chair of the Executive Committee for their Commission, which oversees dispersing granting funds to organizations throughout the U.S. from the National Archives. As you can imagine, things are rather stressful at the moment. They do hope to send out the grants approved at the last meeting in November.

Saturday:

Saturday morning was our presentation for Wake Washington. We had a great group of alumni come hear our panel (which included Dina Manzina). We talked about the various congressional collections that we have in SCA, along with other experiences that Tanya and Dina have had around congressional collections. We discussed how I processed the Richard Burr Collection, challenges found with government collections, Dina discussed her time working with congresspeople, how to approach them about preserving their records and how to pick a repository for them. An interesting perspective she brought to the conversation was the U.K. model of centralizing political papers from across the country in centers based on party, rather than each collection being separated by geographical location. (Kate)

We hope to record another version of our remarks as a Zoom and make it available on the SCA You Tube channel.

Best Thing I Ate:

Ethiopian dinner (vegetarian platter, awaze tibs beef, and injera) at Ethiopica (Tanya)

Fried rice with pork belly at China Chilcano (Kate)