Author: Nicole Carpenter

In 1992, the Museum (then Westport Historical Society) received the gift of an invitation date December 13th 1798 from President George Washington to a Mr. Sprague. Precious as it was, this gift was carefully locked away in the Museum vault and only its facsimile made public appearances. It was, arguably, the most important holding in the Museum’s collection. And it was also a fake. The original intake paperwork for the gift clearly indicated that the invitation was authentic but that the signature was most likely not Washington’s. Still, lore among volunteers, staff and visitors nonetheless quickly spread that the Museum owned an authentic Washington autograph. The truth wasn’t discovered until almost 30 years later when a Museum staff member with an expertise in Washingtonia quickly recognized that the signature did not belong to the first president. After being taken out of its frame, the deception would prove to go even further. The signature was on the back of an invitation to a presidential dinner dated December 13th, 1798—almost two years after Washington left office. Even though the fake was obvious, we nonetheless sent it to our colleagues at Mount Vernon for authentication. In the museum world–as in other fields such as journalism and the law–multiple sources to prove or disprove the appearance of fact are considered best practice. However, as expected, Mount Vernon quickly confirmed what we already knew (that the signature was a fraud) and what we suspected (that the invite itself wasn’t even real.) Ultimately, it turned out that the printed invitation was one often used by the Adams administration—as confirmed by the John Adams Papers Project experts at the Massachusetts Historical Society. So, who was the invited guest—this Mr. Sprague? There was a Representative called Peleg Sprague serving his last year in Congress at the time of …

In the evening hours of January 24th, one day before the Lunar (Chinese) New Year,a five-alarm fire ripped through the building housing the archives of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA NYC) on Mulberry Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown. It took eleven hours for firefighters to control the flames. Thankfully, no lives were lost. While the fire did not reach the precious artifacts housed at the site, the water from the fire hoses did. The damage to the collection which features items from Chinese-American history not found elsewhere is catastrophic. Estimates put the number of lost artifacts, spanning 160 years of history, at 85,000. As the flames consumed the building and the water came pouring down our hearts were flooded with sorrow for our colleagues at MOCA NYC. After all, a museum’s collection is the museum. Archives such as the ones housed at MOCA—and to a large extent at Westport Museum (WM)—are remarkable for the glimpse they offer into overlooked people whose everyday lives are the real foundation of our collective national story. When terrible disasters like these strike it’s human nature to take stock of our own affairs. That is true for individuals and for organizations: You ask yourself whether you are doing all you can to prevent the unthinkable. MOCA NYC thought it had done just that. Following best practices, the museum’s archives and collections were housed on secured, upper floors. On the contrary, Westport Museums’s own archival vault was placed below grade when it was installed decades ago. This has caused persistent concerns about temperature and humidity control. While 70 Mulberry is a 120 year old building, renovation presumably made it stable enough to withstand the weight of such a large trove of objects and papers. Conversely, WM’s costumes collection weighing many tons was housed in a …