Through the Lens: Sharing the Formative Years of The Cincinnati Ballet with Photographs from Sandy Underwood By: Meghan Shimala, Volunteer with Cincinnati Museum Center’s Department of Photographs, Prints and Media By happenstance, I reached out to Sandy Underwood through Facebook Messenger in December 2002, hoping to see photographs that she took for The Cincinnati Ballet. I recalled that Sandy was often present, from capturing everyday moments in the studio to the live performances. Sandy was the official photographer from 1971 to 1985 and I performed in The Nutcracker from 1979 to 1983. I ..read more

The Washington March Special: Cincinnati Marches on Washington By: Christine Schmid Engels, Manager, Archives and Manuscripts On the evening of Tuesday, August 27, 1963, a train pulled out of Cincinnati’s Union Terminal with 497 of the region’s leaders and supporters on their way to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Organized on a national level by Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) and A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979), the demands included, “meaningful civil rights laws, massive federal works program, full and fair employment, decent housing, the right to vote, and adequate integrated ..read more

Cincinnati Museum Center and the Cincinnati Zoo Team Up to Evaluate Population Recovery of Cumberland Sandwort By: Rachel Bridgens, Manager, Zoology DNA Lab and Collections A test tube individual of M. cumberlandensis from the ex situ collection at CREW. Photo credit: Cincinnati Zoo An outplanting is a commonly used conservation technique used by land managers and conservation biologists to supplement natural populations of threatened or endangered plant species with new populations. These new populations often come from ex situ collections which are plant individuals stored outside of the n ..read more

Voices of Cincinnati’s Past – Digitizing Cincinnati Museum Center’s Rare Radio Show Collection By: Arabeth Balasko, Curator of Photographs, Prints and Media Cincinnati Museum Center is fortunate enough to care for and permanently house a rare collection of original Cincinnati radio transcription discs from local radio stations, including the well-known WLW-WSAI Broadcasting Corporation. Over the years as access to media formats have changed, these transcription discs have been saved and preserved on reel-to-reel tapes and audio-cassette tapes. This transfer process was done for accessibility ..read more

Super-Volunteer: Minnie “Dolly” Varley By: Sarah Staples, Helen Steiner Rice Archivist While processing the American Red Cross, Cincinnati Chapter collection, I stumbled upon a significant amount of material detailing a woman named, Dolly Varley. I found an Australian Junior Red Cross membership card from 1919, then letters from World War II written by soldiers thanking Dolly for her hospitality while they were in New York, and then service awards in the 1970s and 1980s from a hospital in Pennsylvania. The material I found led me to search for more material and everything I found ultimately i ..read more

The Forgotten Voice of Kay Irion – A Pioneer for Disability Awareness and Inclusion in 1940s Cincinnati By: Arabeth Balasko, Curator of Photographs, Prints & Media, Cincinnati Museum Center Kay Irion is a name that many today are not aware of; however, in the early 1940s, she was the talk of Cincinnati. Kay, who became a paraplegic after being injured in a car accident in the late 1930s, was the first stay-at-home radio host to go live over the airwaves on Cincinnati’s popular radio station, WSAI-WLW.1 Being a former Music Department Secretary prior to her accident, Kay went to visit her ..read more

The Cincinnati Arch By: Cameron Schwalbach Cincinnati and the surrounding region are known around the world for their abundant and well-preserved Ordovician-age fossils. The rocks beneath the city and its surrounding area preserve evidence of an ancient marine ecosystem that once inhabited this region nearly 450 million years ago. For nearly 200 years, paleontologists have used these fossils and the rocks in which they are preserved as a unique natural laboratory to examine important aspects of Earth’s history such as evolution, biotic invasion, climate change, sea level fluctuations, and pla ..read more

What’s in a Pot? Lessons from Native American Pottery By: Bob Genheimer, George Rieveschl Curator of Archaeology Because most Native American pottery we discover through excavations or surface collections is broken into small pieces called sherds, people often ask us “what can those pieces tell us?” As it turns out quite a lot! By focusing on clues such as what’s on the surface, what part of the entire pot it is, how it is tempered and even how it broke, archaeologists can learn quite a bit. The first thing that a ceramic analyst looks at is the temper material. Most fired clay pottery requir ..read more

Cicadas and Locusts in the Manuscript Collection By: Mickey deVise’, Reference Librarian Cicada pen and ink sketch, Edward Henry Knight ca 1846; Campbell-Knight Family Papers Mss 895, box 15, vol. 5, pg. 4.3; CMC Manuscripts Collection The impending Brood X cicada invasion prompted a search of the Cincinnati History Library and Archives for cicada related items. Two images labeled as cicadas were discovered in manuscripts. The lovely pen and ink sketch above was drawn around 1846 by Edward Henry Knight (1824-1883). His materials form the bulk of seventeen boxes in the Campbell-Knight Family ..read more

Cicadas and Locusts in the Cornelius J. Hauck Botanical Collection By: Mickey deVise’, Reference Librarian Locusta maxima copper plate engraving: Figure 5; Hans Sloane, 1707 Voyage to the Islands of Madera; CMC Printed works collection As the eastern portion of the United States deals with the emergence of billions of Brood X cicadasi with dread and loathing, other populations around the world welcome and celebrate their existence. A search of the printed works collection of the Cincinnati History Library and Archives revealed illustrations and texts related to cicadas and locusts in the Cor ..read more