"Collections Rock Star" Wrapping Up Term Position
Collections Assistant Jane Edmundson with an engraved brass and steel Battlefield Souvenir, or Trench Art, from 1918, one of the artifacts she conducted research on. She determined that George Watson Sr., the father of artifact donor George Watson Jr., served in WWI and was possibly the original owner. It is representative of trench art that came out of the months and years soldiers spent in the trenches during WWI. The engraving, “Verdun 1918”, is hand worked. See artifact P19683502000 in the Collections Online
Lethbridge - The diverse collection at the Galt Museum & Archives became available to the world in December 2013 with the launch of an online database. This year, as the Galt celebrates fifty years of artifact collecting, the database was improved and expanded with the benefit of an Alberta Museums Association (AMA) grant which enabled the Collections’ Department to bring in Jane Edmundson as term Collections Assistant.
“We were pleased to employ ‘collections rock star’ Jane Edmundson, who came to us via the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, primarily to help us analyze our collection,” says Kevin MacLean, the Galt’s Collections Technician.
“An object’s ability to inform us as to who we are and where we live varies on how much contextual information was collected by museum staff of the day. Recognizing that there is ‘no time like the present’, our small team conducted audits into targeted collection segments to evaluate the relevancy of artifacts to our communities and region,” explains Maclean.
“Much of this work required new research into objects that have been in our stewardship for over forty years. Among her many achievements Jane has, through audits and research, added details to more than 1000 of the online catalogue records, and added nearly 300 images to the online database.”
In addition, Edmundson completed the final half of a relevancy audit of our 800+ military artifacts started in 2012 by then collections assistant David Smith. In recent months, she also initiated an audit into the Museum’s fine art collection.
“Having the opportunity to delve into focused and thorough research of specific objects in the Galt Museum’s collection has been fantastic,” says an enthusiastic Edmundson. “Finding new contextual information about the artifacts here and the people who cherished them in their previous ‘lives’ outside the museum is endlessly interesting, and knowing that my efforts may assist the work of future researchers is really rewarding.”
Edmundson will wrap up her work in December at the conclusion of the AMA grant.