Lovina Streight: Portrait Conserved, Story Preserved

 by Meredith McGovern, Arts and Culture Collection Manager

It took a village — or so it seemed — to conserve and display Lovina Streight, an 1880 painting of an Indianapolis woman who fearlessly marched with her husband, Colonel Abel Streight, and his troops during the Civil War, nursed wounded soldiers on battlefields, and whipped a pistol from beneath her skirt to escape the Confederate enemy. After 130 years and multiple transfers from Mrs. Streight’s parlor to the Statehouse to the Indiana State Museum, the brittle canvas had torn in six places. Patches applied to hold the torn edges together bulged and puckered from misalignment; previous efforts to replace flaked paint resulted in pools on the surface. The portrait was not suitable for display.

Thanks to a grant through the Lockerbie Square Chapter of The Questers, an organization dedicated to heritage preservation, the painting was conserved in the fall of 2012 by Michael Ruzga. The patches were replaced, the pools of paint reduced, and layers of dirt removed from the canvas surface. Details that were previously undetectable now popped: the delicate diamonds glittering in Mrs. Streight’s earrings; her cameo ring; the swirling scrollwork in the rug; and the artist’s signature. The portrait was again ready to tell the story of the bold and spirited Lovina Streight.

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In a stroke of serendipity, just a couple weeks after I picked up Lovina Streight from the conservator, the tour coordinator at the Indiana Statehouse asked to borrow the portrait for programming. It took a lot of synchronization, but we were able to display it on the fourth floor of the Capitol with the help of staff from the museum’s exhibition, collections, conservation and new media departments; a driver from the Indiana Commission on Public Records who transported the painting; and a crew from the Indiana Department of Administration Facilities Management who helped hoist the 8-foot, 80-pound portrait high into the air and secure it to the wall. Many thanks to all involved, particularly The Questers for helping make this project possible! Watch this video to learn more about Lovina Streight and the conservation project.

Visit the Indiana Statehouse to see the newly-conserved portrait on display until August 2013.

Green is more than just a color

by Katelyn Coyne, Gallery Facilitation Specialist

Emerald is the Pantone 2013 Color of the Year, but Going Green has been a fashion must at the Indiana State Museum for five years now! On March 15 and 16, the Indiana State Museum hosts its fifth annual Going Green Festival and we are keeping ourselves ahead of the curve on the latest in green technology and environmental sustainability.

It’s impossible to deny that green has become a way of life in the 21^st century. Consider a trip to the grocery store and you’ll see what I mean. From chemical free cleaning products to biodegradable packaging to organic food sections, going green has invaded every aspect of our lives. Even the bag-boy leers at you from the end of the check-out line if he has to ask, “Paper or plastic?” because you forgot your reusable canvas bags.

Though I forget my grocery bags as often as the next gal, I try my best to turn off lights when I leave a room. I ride my bike to work instead of driving, and I’m conscious of my water consumption when washing pots and pans Yet, I’m always looking for more ways to make my daily life even greener.

That’s why I got involved with the Going Green Festival when I started working at the Indiana State Museum. I can’t wait to meet exhibitors from local, environmentally focused organizations, play green games and learn how to make green more than just a color that brings out my eyes.

So far, I’ve armed myself with a few fun factoids about how to go green. For instance, did you know that recycling a single aluminum can would run a TV for three hours? That the amount of sunlight that falls on the Earth’s surface in one minute is sufficient to meet the world energy demand for an entire year? That we could save $3 billion dollars in energy costs annually if the entire population of the United States washed their clothes with cold water instead of hot?

Helpful tidbits like this will expand your mind as you learn the best practices for living an environmentally sustainable lifestyle at Going Green Festival. You can chat with urban farmers, meet artisanal food makers, learn about watershed and the White River, discover alternative transportation options and more. Presenting sponsor Indianapolis Power and Light will be on hand to help consumers learn how to save money and energy with simple tips about energy efficiency.

On Saturday, March 16, Jim Poyser, managing editor of Indiana Living Green and NUVO, will enlighten visitors with his very special Climate Reality Project presentation. Also on Saturday, visitors can take advantage of discounted admission ($2 for up to four people) by bringing electronic recyclables including cell phones, TVs, computer monitors and more. Our partners at RecycleForce will be on hand to haul away your junk.

I’m hoping that by attending the Going Green Festival, I’ll be able to prepare myself to live a more sustainable lifestyle — that I’ll have a chance to hook into a community of people ready and willing to support my green efforts with information, resources and encouragement. Because it’s true: green is more than just a color, it’s a way of life!

Wherein the author explains why he begins with wherein

by Curt Burnette, Naturalist/Program Developer at the Limberlost State Historic Site

When I read Freckles and A Girl of the Limberlost for the first time, I was particularly intrigued by the way each chapter was introduced. For instance, Chapter 1 of Freckles begins, “Wherein Great Risks Are Taken And The Limberlost Guard Is Hired.” Chapter 1 of A Girl of the Limberlost begins, “Wherein Elnora Goes To High School And Learns Many Lessons Not Found In Her Books.” I thought these chapter descriptions were quaint and fun and whetted the readers appetite for what they were about to read.

Freckles and A Girl of the Limberlost were the only two novels in which Gene Stratton-Porter used this style of chapter heading, but she was not the only author to do so. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame) used a similar technique in 1926 when he published The Land of Mist. In this book, Doyle’s chapter headings all begin with “In Which” or “Which” or “Where,” such as Chapter 13 — “In Which Professor Challenger Goes Forth To Battle.” This technique goes back even further in time. In Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote, published in 1605, chapter headings are often even more lengthy and descriptive. Chapter XX — “Of the adventure, never before seen or heard of, achieved by the valorous Don Quixote of La Mancha, with less peril than any ever achieved by any famous knight in all the world.” Or Chapter XXIX — “Which deals with the pleasant device that was adopted to rescue our love-sick knight from the severe penance he had imposed upon himself.”

It is probably a good thing all books don’t have chapter headings which are this wordy. Nevertheless, I did enjoy reading the chapter teases of Gene’s two most famous books. “Wherein” helped me get into the proper frame of mind to spend some time in the Limberlost at the beginning of the last century.

My use of “wherein” is a nod to Gene and an older style of writing. Books written long ago will, of course, have differences in style, word use and grammar. Gene calls a bicycle a “wheel,” and a car a “motor” and uses words such as “especial” or “espied” that we no longer use today. These differences contribute to the pleasure of reading older books and being transported back to bygone eras. Although it is hard sometimes (or most of the time) to understand what Shakespeare is saying in his works, there is never any doubt you are reading literature from a different time and place. So until next month — fare thee well in your travels and may by fate we will meet again! Forsooth!

Meteorite strikes northwest Indiana! Devastation complete!

by Peggy Fisherkeller, Curator of Geology

The author conducting geological arm waving at the impact site, now the Rogers Group Kentland Quarry. Photograph courtesy Nelson Shaffer.

Okay, this is a fictional headline, because there wasn’t anyone around to write it when the impact happened, sometime between 17,000 and 300 million years ago. But with spectacular recent events in Russia, a reminder of Indiana’s very own brush with obliteration is justified.

Kentland, Indiana, is home to one of the larger meteorite craters in the United States, with the area of ground disturbance coming in at more than 7 miles in diameter. You wouldn’t know it though, without the quarry that’s there now. Like most of northern Indiana, the ground surface is covered with glacial till.

The Kentland meteorite crater is part of a great mystery story, because geologists were only convinced that it was a meteorite impact within the past 40 years. Everyone knew that something was up, though, because the rocks there just weren’t right, with layers making a huge irregular bull’s eye pattern where only flat-lying rocks were supposed to be.

A shattercone from Kentland Quarry.

What really happened has been roughly sketched out, based on evidence at the site and comparison to more obvious crater sites from around the world. A (big!) meteorite struck with such great force that the ground beneath was compressed, bouncing back hundreds of feet higher than before (though the part that was above the ground has since eroded away). Preserved in these vertical, contorted rock layers were shattercones, pointing toward the direction of impact, micro-sized shocked quartz and brecciated rock (containing angular fragments).

Some mysteries remain. How big was the meteorite? Well, big. When did it strike? We know it hit after the Pennsylvanian Period (~300 million years ago), because the crater crosses through rocks of that age. We know that it happened before the end of the last glaciation, because glacial till is deposited on top. With chemical and physical techniques, researchers have done a little better, putting the impact maybe between 97 million and 300 million years.