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Sonoma County. The chosen spot of all the earth as far as nature is concerned, According to the famed plant wizard Luther Burbank Diverse County, with 1,010,000 acres of land on 1574 miles of scenic roadways, the county is rightfully famed for its agriculture did a culture, industry

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and recreation as well as for the amazingly successful ethnic and economic mixture of its more than 340,000 residents on for the forward looking philosophy of its local governing bodies. Now we invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in the eighties with your host,

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Rich McGlinchy. Welcome to this edition of Sonoma County 80. We're gonna be talking about an institution that is very important in all of our lives. It isn't very important in your life. It certainly ought to be. We're gonna be talking about a fairly new phenomena. It's

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our Sonoma County Museum and many of you who have been around for a while remember the the need for museum for a long time and the problems we had and getting the old post office building, saving it first of all and then getting it moved excruciatingly

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slowly from where it was over on Fifth Street, down to its present location on 73 on a marvelous job that they did and refurbishing the structure so that it is a fantastic site. It is our cinema kind of museum, and we're gonna be talking to the

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person who is now the curator there. And it's Virginia hopes Dean Hovan. And she has been the curator for how well we're doing. Four months. I started January 4th for about four months. Now it's a real pleasure to have you here. Thank you very much. Really

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great, because, um, the museum has been Roz look forward to for a long time. I think it's fairly open about 1985. Yes, it did in 1985 to a great deal of public interest. Yeah, and let me read what uh, work said here, and you'll see what

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our program is all about. Virginia Beach Holstein Open was selected to fill a created position of curator of the museum in downtown Santa Rosa in just a couple of months ago. The the Burling, as I said a moment ago, was the old post office building and

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Of course, it's devoted to the historical and cultural heritage heritage of Sonoma County and other local regions. So that kind of gives you a background, what we're gonna be talking about and Virginia before we actually go into the questions and answers about the museum, what it

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has to offer, what's going on there now and in the future. How about a little background about Virginia hosting Hovan? Where'd you come from? Where you go to school? How did you become a curator? Um, I'm a native Californian and educated in the San Francisco Bay

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Area. I attended San Francisco State College in Marion and University of California, Berkeley started out as a music major, but because of my interest, long term interests in anthropology and history and the natural sciences, I ended up when I went back to school in 19. I

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guess it was 1970 changing my major and, uh, did a great deal of field research in archaeology and publishing a papers and ended up working for the Marine Museum of the American Indian, the old Me Walk Museum in Nevada. When I was director and curator there

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for seven years and I teach part time at the California Academy of Sciences in adult education in San Francisco, and I worked as a freelance lecture and evaluator, and then a friend told me about this job and I looking into it. The potential up here was

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so good, and the staff sounded excellent. Our executive director, John Lofgren, has been on board a year and share your Keith. The administrative assistant, I guess, has been here since the inception of the museum. I was impressed with the quality of the volunteers and the public

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effort to get the thing off the ground, applied for the job and very luckily, got it. I'm delighted to be here, so it's great to have you here. I don't ask you a little bit of a for a little information or a question or two about

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training for a curator. You said that you change your major in college, went back, and what did you change it to? And then what kind of instruction you get to do what your duty depends on the kinds of programs that you get involved in? I attended

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a program affiliated with University of California Extension and what was then the Western Association of art museums and both with my practical background in museum work and then thats museum management program. It gave me a great deal of more developmental aspects of museum work. I've had

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training and fundraising in curatorial techniques, um, research techniques, collections, management, that kind of thing. There are programs through John F. Kennedy University in San Francisco in museum studies. Um, some of the universities have them on a smaller scale. The Museum Management Institute, through UC Extension, is

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an intensive learning program that really deals more with administrative ends. Um, a great deal of training can be gotten is a volunteer initially working in a museum setting, and you'll find people who say they're doing textile volunteer work and textile conservation at the de young Museum,

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who developed the kinds of skills that will sometimes ultimately allow them to be hired by other institutions. A lot of the extension courses through again UC extension. There have been several programs through Lower Museum of Anthropology, Kale and you see extension that offer skills and conservation

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in curatorial work and registration. That kind of thing. You said something about when this opened up its most of the audience, probably remembers Dayton Lummis, I think, was our curator here for our manager museum. Whatever. One calls that for a year or two and then left

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and we were lucky enough to get Virginia. You said at the time that it looked like a great deal of potential a little bit on that. How did how did you view that in talking with the new executive director, John Lofgren, and talking to people here

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in town when I was researching the job? That the museum is far enough away from the set immediate San Francisco Bay Region? That we're not competing in the same way with the major institutions down there? You have a growing population base here on a real change,

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I noticed in talking with with So the Economic Development Board people that your economic base has changed a great deal and your median income level in your median age. So you've got you know, you've got people who, a lot of old timers who know the back

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of the background in the history of this county, were wonderful. Resource is old time families who've been here for generations and generations, and then you have new people coming in who who are from other parts of the country and who need that sense of community that's

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so important when one settles in an area. So you've got this wonderful combination of kinds of people and the potential to drive those new young people going to the museum and incorporate them as members, as volunteers has board members, you know, I think, has a great

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deal of potential weeks. People need to be able to relate to the community they live in the region they live in. And in California, history is fascinating, and it gives you a way to to sort of identify the center of your world, whether it's on a

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very local basis, a regional basis, and then apply that on a on a larger, almost worldwide basis. California's history is also centered in Sonoma County. Certain potions evidence Certainly One of the things I think we wanted to ask you here is is the role of the

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curator in the museum in general. But but let's say this a normal county museum specifically well, I work very closely, of course, with our executive director in planning exhibits and programs. Of course, with the whole staff there three of us that are on the paid staff

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for the rest of volunteers. We have a consultant working with us right now on exhibit design. Um, I was hired primarily, of course, for that rule with Mr Lofgren, but also to develop a collections management system for the existing museum collections, which have been coming in

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before the museum was even open. In fact, um, a large amount of material came from Sonoma County Historical Society. Private individuals. The what has to happen is that you have a meth, a systematic method of categorizing here, materials That's basically what they call on a pay

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in accounting, a paper trail. And ultimately you want to have the kinds of information on each piece in your collection that will allow you to do the kinds of research that will generate exhibits that will be of interest to people that will provide information for researchers

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coming from the outside, students, individuals that call up and say G, I've got thus and such, I don't know anything about it. Can you help us or that will allow us to say no. We don't have that data, but we can send you to somebody who

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can in terms of physical storage process, We've been very lucky. Before I was hired, the museum had received an initial grant. I gather from the Landmarks Commission to improve certain aspects of the physical storage area downstairs. And then the Finley Family Foundation ever. Pearson, um, donated

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funds to help this along. And now we're looking at developing a fragile material storage area for pictorial collections, photographs, paintings, documents, things like very early examples of wills, ledgers from the 18 seventies, things that reflect human history through time. And we're also looking at collecting for

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the future. Not just things that air 50 60 100 years old, but the sort of philosophy that history is, what you had for breakfast back. I mean, it's an ongoing process. The kinds of storage that we're looking at involved air filtering, climate control, metal storage units

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for paper materials. We've just purchased again through these funds our first set of large metal storage cabinets that will allow us to get things up off the floor. Rhonda metal storage units. It helps control dust problems, that kind of thing. And as time goes along, ultimately

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we will have the kind of museum storage that we can take any visitor into and say, You know, this is this is what it is. This is how your things will be stored. You know the importance of correction management of a collection management system. By that

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time, the category, the cataloguing, the research, a zit relates to the exhibition that's got to be very, very importantly, important in. And not only do I work on that supervising and organizing it, running my ideas through John Law, then we're setting up a system of volunteers

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who we will train to work with us in that process. The first thing that happens with a piece that comes into the museum either a donation or something that we have solicited is it's exciting. Well, a frame is filled out, a gift form or alone for

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him. Then a number is assigned to it. That's the accession number, and the simplest numbering system that most museums use involves using the date. If it came in in 1988 gets the first number in the SAT is 90 is 88. Then, if it's the first collection

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that came in that year, you get 88-1 then the next set of numbers depends on how many pieces in that collection. If there was just one piece, it would read 88 Dash 1-1 If there were Ah, 100 pieces, it would be numb. Each piece would get

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a number 88 Dash 1-1 88-1 dash to Somebody has to write all that information down. There's an accession form. It's filled out from just one line for each item. Then someone has to either fix a tag with that number, or a number is painted on very

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carefully, with special nail polish like material than the numbers written in white or black with ink. Then that's covered over. You do it in a very unobtrusive spot, so if the pieces on exhibit they don't see this glaring number. But that's labor intensive kinds of work.

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The next step. Then that's just your first paper trail. Get you from the ledger that says accession numbers to that object in the system. Then a catalogue card comes next, and on that goes all your detailed documentation. What classifications it fits into. There's a whole classification

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system. Um, Norman Clay chur for museum cataloguing that sort of the last word, and it really gives you a systematic way to organize your material so that other museum people know what you're talking about speaking a common language just like any field geology or or chemistry.

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It gives you also the kinds of data you need for exhibition purposes. It gives you information on when you exhibited that item you have. Ideally, a photograph of the item on on the back has an identification method where it is in storage so you can go

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to that card and you can say, OK, it's on shelf 10 I'll five, and it's usually done by groups of objects. If you go into a place like Oakland Museum, you know there are shelves and cabinets in this very logical organized fashion. Warehouses were having to

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look now at possibly warehousing, ultimately down the line, setting up warehouse space for larger objects because it can, collections are growing, and we're looking at where do we need to collect? Where are weak areas? What should we be concentrating on? What reflects the history of human

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beings? Loren Eiseley and the late Loren Eiseley, who was an anthropologist, paleontologist, science specialist, in the history of science called artifact mind Prince, um, things that reflect human thinking and museums air after all about people. It's not just those things, but it's the people. What made

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them do that? How did they think? How do they think? Who is just back? But take a polish it for a moment. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll pause here for a moment. Then we'll be back. We'll talk more of a museum, cataloging and management of of all

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these marvellous artifacts to take in. And there will be talking to Virginia hosting open. But first, this message What is this place anyway? I don't let me do it. Wait! Hold, please. Truths! Truths! Teoh! What is it? I don't want to. Stupid. If we don't end

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illiteracy in America, it may end us. Ah, Thought from the American Association of University Women. I'm Pat Benatar. I'm a singer. I'm not an expert on AIDS. But you don't have to be to know the facts about aids. All this fear that surrounds AIDS is really

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not gonna help. What will make a difference is research and understanding. The bottom line is that AIDS is preventable. So please get hold of the fax because if you don't know what's going on, it's time to get an education. Welcome back second half of our program

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on a Sonoma County museum. We're talking to Virginia hosting Hovan. She is the new curator at this, not McAdam Museum, and we're talking about how you get all these marvellous artifacts or exhibits into their how they catalogue. Um, and it's extensive process that we're going to

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go into something a little bit different than at Virginia and want to talk to you about the well, a project of mounting a major exhibit. There's one opening I know in May, where the land meets to see the Chronicles of the seacoast. How get into that

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step by step process. Yes, it's complicated. Generally, um, planning goes on, ideally several years before, certainly several months before this particular exhibit. In fact, which this photograph behind me is a keynote photo. It was done by Ernest Braun, a photographer whose work for time life, a

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lot of different magazines. In fact, it really says what are exhibit is about where the land meets the sea Sonoma coast without rugged. It's an incredibly rugged area. It's one of the most isolated and least populated coasts in California. In terms of counties and the kinds

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of people that live out there, the physical form of the land reflect that that enormous interesting ruggedness. This exhibit was initially planned several years ago. Uh, Mercedes Pierce Stafford, one of the call family of the call ranch of Ross and her husband, who's still alive. John

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Stafford generously made a grand to initiate this exhibit, and when I came in in January, um, some initial concepts have been put together. We haven't Exhibits Committee that John Lofgren and I worked closely with, and there had been basic discussion about the idea behind the exhibit

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Where the Land Meets the Sea. The Chronicles of the Sonoma Coast is essentially hit basic history of the human use of that region, from the earliest times with Native Americans through contemporary use. So they're going to be interesting. Historic materials, photographs, ledgers from the dog hole

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schooners of the 18 seventies, where on one side of the ledger it says up freight, which is material that went up the wire in these wonderful boxes and down freight, which is stuff they slid down. These big cables onto the ships. Um, I'm learning so much

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about this will be having some fun things that will be talking about in the exhibit that I leave it as a surprise ship. Models will talk about Drake. Um, remain. You know, some of the earliest people that were possibly passers by along the coast early settlers,

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land grants, tree felling the red logging of redwoods was an important economic process along the coast, Agriculture and Neary. It's a different kind of exhibit for us in terms of how it's being set up. Um, we're organizing and designing a syriza mazes that will be entities

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under themselves. It will be a flow pattern through that main exhibit gallery that will take you from one part of history toe another. The process of putting an exhibit like this together is a intensive one. It's a very labor intensive process. Keep in mind we have

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three paid staff, a consultant working with us and the rest of it or volunteers. And so it's right now we're right up to our eyeballs in alligators. As they weigh, you put together a concept proposal to begin with, essentially, what is the concept of this exhibit.

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Then begin looking at resource people. Who has What? What do we have within the museum that will reflect these concepts that we want to touch on? Then what? Who do we go to in the community? And this is where our exhibits committee has been so helpful

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because they have contacts that I didn't have necessarily. And we're talking to people as diverse as, uh, real estate developers, dairymen, old time loggers like Ralph Sturgeon Web Sturgeon's mill Sherman Boivin, who was a long time you see a member, Harry lap from people on the

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coast who I've met who've said yes, I have a tan bark grinders you can borrow or yes, we have a cream separator. I don't know what a tam var grinder looked like and we went out all this thing back on track, but built physically building the

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exhibit is again a labor intensive process. Modules that are being constructed are being dowel together of hollow core doors. Um, a gentleman business here in town. Cal Door made a very generous donation of these, which saved us considerable money. Our exhibits people are cut these things

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apart, their dowling them together on that will be glued cell attacks that has to be painted. These things will be suspended from aircraft cable in this two story ceiling and all the materials mounted on that. But meanwhile, not only is that being constructed before we have

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to document each of these pieces have to write text paragraph for each item that has to be researched, illustrations have to be put together. Photographs are being chosen and they have to go out for blowups. Where we can, um, you have to count how many letters

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in all the titles on all the panels and then figure out what you need there. What are some of the I know you have a list there of some of the things that coming up at the museum in the next few months all kinds of exciting

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activities. Just last year, I gather the staff. Sherry O Keefe are very competent and organized administrative assistant, and John Lofgren put together a travel club program called Club The Law and the Law is a cash I a poem, a word that has to do with a

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group of people going somewhere traveling just very a proposed. They have a wonderful tour coming up that has to do with our current exhibit. Miller The works of Miller cheats Painter and it'll be a tour of the North Coast by bus with a visit to his

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studio Barking Rocks. I think that is already full. It filled up very quickly. There'll be a springtime tour to Southern California, again dealing with Swedish kinds of influences, that there's a spinoff of the Swedish Christmas exhibit that was put together That's coming up in May. We

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also have a second exhibit opening the same time as our Where The Land Meets the Sea, which, incidentally, runs from May 4th through September 4th. And it's a caricature exhibit cartoon caricature exhibit called The Laugh Behind the Face Behind the Laugh. And It's Self Portrait, Cher's

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in caricature of a number of major cartoonists that's hooked into the Cartoonists conference in San Francisco. A great big convention. We'll have it really having Siris of speakers that are the cartoonist, so we'll have two very different exhibits going on at the same time, which hopefully

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will attract very different kinds of people. The cartoon exhibit will be in the mezzanine of the museum exhibit area and then the Big One downstairs. We will also have programs throughout the summer tied into the coast. Exhibit Autobahn Lectures A poem Win in Basketry Demonstration. Ralph

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Sturgeon will be talking about old time logging techniques. Then an exhibit coming up in August is a preview of our A program called Artistry. And would that has to do with expert woodcarvers and artists and would here in the county, Um, our next opening is September

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11th and it'll be called The Collector's Choice, which is a preview of materials that will be in an art auction hunts in September and then September 24 through November 20th will have an interesting exhibit that's in the planning process called games. People play, and it'll be

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about sports in the North Bay and some very interesting aspect of that. And I think one of the major focuses of that will be how each individual community here in the county developed sports activities in their own area, Occidental and baseball teams, and it's still an

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ongoing process. This is why I said it to start a program. This is a should be a very important part of all of our lives, and it's certainly a living part of your past. It brings your past alive or the past of the community. And what

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is it said that you know the past is prologue. For one thing, you might be able to understand what's gonna happen, and here's exactly looking at what's happened in the past, but you certainly understand a lot more about the community live in. If you look at

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Sonoma County in the past couple 100 years, Oh, there's and it is you say it gives you a perspective about people's about dynamics and about maybe things that we can learn from in terms of the future. There were weight, of course, would like to involve as

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many people as possible not only through membership, but, um, in terms of volunteers. There's a wonderful group of 100 or so volunteers that help with office things. Curatorial volunteers. We've got students. We just started working with high school students yesterday, groups that we were able to

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pull in through one of our board members. There was a teacher at Pine ER, and we'd like to see a broad spectrum of volunteers. You know, we've only got about a moment and 1/2 left and I think one of the things you ought to do is

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is, uh, tell people how they can get in touch with you, especially how they could become volunteers. And I'd be delighted because we use people right now. If you'd like to come paint and nail and hammer and do sort of just busy work, we can use

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it certainly for preparing this exhibit. But their curatorial volunteers office volunteers were starting a docent training program September 20th 8th that will train people to do outreach and in house stuff. Call the museum at 5791500 Theme museum office is open Monday through Friday 9 to 5

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and the museum gallery hours. The public gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 to 4. Leave a message. Ask for myself for one of the staff, and we'll be happy to call you back. Get you involved. They can ask for Virginia, the curator or John Lofgren,

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our director, or Sherry O Keefe, or whoever needs to take the message. We're just about out of time, and I wish that we had more time, and I certainly would like to have you on John or some of your people come back again sometime in the

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future, talks about some of these other exhibits that you mentioned and how they go about what's coming up in the year ahead. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Pleasure with you. I was looking forward to having Virginia here. Um, our guest has been Virginia

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hosting Homan, and she is a curator for the Sonoma County Museum. The program, he said, overcount in the eighties. I'll be with you next week with another member of the county government, family or a magnificent related agencies such as Arsenal McConnell Museum. Until then tonight, for

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luck and good health to each and everyone okay, yeah.