We will be opening a new temporary exhibit in the Governor’s Gallery of the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum on August 25, 2018. The exhibition, titled The Horse in North Dakota, includes about 200 artifacts and specimens from the Museum Division, Archaeology and Historic Preservation Division, the North Dakota State Fossil Collection, as well as a few items borrowed from the citizens of North Dakota.

The Museum Division staff is spending many hours of preparation on artifacts selected for the exhibit. Once artifacts are selected, the objects need to be cleaned, their conditions evaluated and reported, and object data sheets created. Each artifact that requires additional physical support must then be fitted on appropriate mannequins or mounts.

Many of the artifacts selected for The Horse in North Dakota include leather. Due to the organic nature of leather and its natural oils, a very common reaction between leather and metals occurs, especially between leather and copper. Copper in contact with leather develops a waxy, flakey, or hairy buildup that needs to be removed. Technically this accreted material is known as fatty acids stained with copper ions, but we affectionately call it “green gunk.” In order to remove the green gunk, it is gently rubbed off using thin wooden dowels, skewers, and cuticle pushers. Additionally, brushes, cotton muslin, and cotton swabs are used for cleaning. It is finished off with a swipe of ethanol.

Before and after photos of the green gunk removal from a metal ring on a saddle (14682.2).  It took Melissa Thompson, Assistant Registrar, nineteen hours of work to clean all of the green gunk off the McClellen saddle.

Spew, or bloom, is a white powdery substance that appears on the surface of leather. Spew is formed when the fatty acids and oils in the leather migrate to the surface and are exposed to air. The powdery substance is easy removed with either a soft bristle brush or a cotton cloth.

Spew being removed from the strap of a saddle bag (09186) using a soft bristle brush.

Many metal objects are polished with a cream or tarnish remover while they are in use. We do not polish any of the metals in our collection for various preservation reasons. Over time, residue from the polish that was once used on the artifact turns white and can hide many of the decorative details of an artifact. Such is the case with these medallions on the sides of a bridle. The green gunk was removed using the wooden tools. Then, using distilled water and small wooden skewers, as much of the white residue was removed as possible to unveil the medallion’s detail.

Before and after removing brass tarnish residue from bridle (2007.00053.00049)

A condition report, which is a written description and visual record of an artifact’s condition, is completed before the object goes on exhibit. All defects are described, measured, and photographed. We look for fading, cracks, tears, deterioration, missing parts, chips, and any other types of damage depending on the artifact’s material make-up. Once an artifact comes off exhibit, condition reports are completed again to determine whether any changes occurred while it was on exhibit.

A Word document produced directly from our museum software database program. Click image for larger view.

Some of the objects selected for The Horse in North Dakota will need to have custom mounts created. These mounts may be soft mounts, which is Coroplast (corrugated plastic) covered in cotton batting and cotton muslin. They could be made out of Plexiglas, or they may be mannequins. Sometimes we make our mannequins from scratch. We use metal rods for the stand, Ethafoam (a closed cell polyethylene material), and either cotton muslin or cotton stockinette.

Jenny Yearous, Curator of Collections Management) carving ethafoam into a neck and shoulders with an electric carving knife.  B.  The neck and shoulders covered in stockinette, and the ethafoam waist. C. Finished mannequin with children’s Cowgirl costume (2017.66.11-12).

Come see all of these artifacts and many more in The Horse in North Dakota starting August 25th!  Let us know how many hours you think the collections staff spent getting the artifacts ready for display.

I’ll start by wishing you a very happy 2015! I hope that you had a marvelous time at the November 2, 2014, grand opening. If you missed it, plan on stopping by the North Dakota Heritage Center very soon because the exhibits are choice, the food is excellent, it’s warm, and there is ample available parking.

The start of a new year means we can get into full mode making more short film episodes, some about paleontology in collaboration with the North Dakota Geologic Survey team. So far, we’ve made videos about a public dig where a crocodile skeleton was excavated, digs at Pembina and Medora, and the cannonball concretions and petrified tree which can be found on the plaza.

Videos have a lot of competition these days, often in the form of cats doing anything online. In the olden days, making an educational video was easy. You recorded a narrator, stuck in a few shots of old pictures, then edited and covered the gaps with a piano piece. The whole affair took about 20 minutes over a cup of coffee.

Not anymore.

So what, you may be wondering, do we all do to make it happen?

As one example, we filmed sixteen large boulders (called Cannonball concretions) being moved to specific areas on the Pembina River Plaza at the east entrance to the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum. Behind the scenes, someone had to coordinate with a construction company and find some large machinery to use for a couple of days. Then someone had to locate two moving crews from south of Fargo and get them out to Lake Hammond, near Mandan. Three paleontologists were involved in the move, and someone had to coordinate a video camera. While all this was going on, I was filming, tethered between being in the way and not falling over.

After the filming, I wrote the script. If that seems a bit backwards to write the script last instead of first, that’s because it is. But it sometimes works better to write after you’ve witnessed everything that happens to put an event in place.

A lot of people ask if these video episodes are set up. I promise you, here and now, they are not. We have stood in rainstorms, destroyed knees, driven into worlds far from any idea of roads, fallen off of large boulders with a camera in hand, and we don’t pull over for anything except fuel. We tend to take filming fairly seriously.

But not half as seriously as what it takes to edit all the clips, the audio, make the sound effects, create the arty segments, and find music for a show from start to finish. My goal is to show a high amount of science and “cool” within a relatively low budget. That’s the main reason why our channel’s videos don’t look like any other paleontological videos out there. Everybody works so amazingly hard to make something great.

Ultimately the fossil digging season is over, all production is completed, we read through the script to make sure it’s not all in Dutch, and Paleontologist Becky Barnes fixes any errors. In the normal world, the credits at the end of a program roll for about five seconds, whereas the ones we place at the end of our paleontology episodes make you feel as though you’ve been watching Ben-Hur (1959).  The lengthy list of people either involved behind the scenes or on camera is often on an epic level. We finish editing the last snippets of footage in the Heritage Center space that we’ve made into a studio. And that would be the part where every normal human being would go home and relax. So, of course, that is when we start planning for next season’s films.

I love the volume of caffeine we go through and the stamina out on the fossil digs. And I love the energy of people who ask what the next episode will be and the way people positively react when shown the films we worked so hard to make. Good luck getting that sort of creative buzz watching a cat play the piano!

Guest Blogger: Jessica Rockeman

Jessica Rockeman is a New Media Specialist for the State Historical Society of North Dakota. Her duties include web, graphics, print, ND Studies materials, film and photography. She can often be spotted at the museum with a camera.