A little over two years ago, my colleague Katherine Sorresso and I began processing the institutional records of the Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS), now the Center for Brooklyn History at the Brooklyn Public Library. These records document the Society's activities from its founding as the Long Island Historical Society in 1863 until its merger with the Brooklyn Collection in 2020. The collection includes materials produced by various departments and records from individuals in leadership roles within BHS. The earlier materials consist of analog formats – ledgers, scrapbooks, correspondence, posters, postcards, brochures, and other paper-based items. As time progressed, we observed the introduction of digital formats, highlighting the changing landscape of documentation and how history is recorded.
During the surveying phase of this project, I began documenting the various types of audiovisual media we encountered. I did this partly because the preservation needs for these formats differ from those of paper-based materials, but I was also on the lookout for items to potentially digitize. Among these, I found floppy disks, audiocassettes, VHS tapes, Betamax tapes, CDs, DVDs, and more. Unfortunately, many of these were not helpfully labeled, if they were labeled at all, making the decision about what to digitize initially seem daunting. However, we quickly decided to focus on digitizing only the VHS and audiocassette tapes, as they were the most challenging to access. We have floppy disks and CD drives, so that information can be retrieved if necessary. Concentrating on VHS and audiocassettes was also important because they are forms of magnetic media, which are subject to degradation as the magnetic particles and physical material of the tape deteriorate over time. Additionally, there is a risk of obsolescence, meaning it is becoming increasingly rare to find the proper equipment to access content stored on these older formats.
To digitize this material, we contracted George Blood, a leading provider of archival audio and moving image preservation. They provided us with documentation to complete, and my supervisor and I began labeling and packing everything for shipment. Within a few weeks, we received a hard drive containing all the digitized files, along with detailed reports for each one. Naturally, I immediately plugged it in and started reviewing the files.
Much of the digitized content relates to the exhibitions and community documentation projects conducted by the Brooklyn Historical Society in the mid to late 1990s and early 2000s. The audio recordings include recordings of exhibition meetings, programs, and audio produced for exhibitions. The video mainly features curator-led exhibition tours, segments on local news stations, footage of BHS’s landmark building before its major renovation from 1999 to 2002, and promotional videos created for exhibitions. The rest of this post highlights some of the materials I was most excited to discover while reviewing the digitized content.
AIDS/Brooklyn Tour and Audio Recordings
AIDS/Brooklyn (1993) was an exhibition curated by the Brooklyn Historical Society that explored the impact of the epidemic on Brooklyn residents, including people with AIDS, their family members, activists, health care providers, volunteers, and community group workers. It highlighted how AIDS affected daily life in Brooklyn neighborhoods and the challenges people faced in dealing with the medical system. The exhibition also provided information on AIDS-related organizations working in Brooklyn and how visitors could support their efforts.
In this video, Robert Rosenberg, the guest curator of AIDS/Brooklyn, gives a tour of the exhibit and explains how each section was produced. The tape was created for BHS staff to help them understand the exhibit and prepare for issues that might arise during its run, such as patrons reacting to discussions of sexuality and drug use, or those who may find the exhibit upsetting due to personal connections to AIDS, whether they have the disease themselves or lost a loved one to it.
AIDS/Brooklyn was one of five community documentation projects undertaken by the Brooklyn Historical Society. For these projects, BHS staff, in consultation with community members and scholarly advisors, collected objects, oral histories, photographs, ephemera, and other materials, which were later featured in exhibitions at the Society. Along with Robert Rosenberg’s discussion of the exhibition’s development, the digitization project also provided access to advisory committee meeting recordings, allowing us to hear the discussions and decisions made during the planning process.
Brooklyn’s History Museum Tour
Brooklyn’s History Museum (1989-1998) was the first long-term exhibition dedicated to the borough’s history. The exhibition was organized around five iconic symbols of Brooklyn: the Brooklyn Bridge, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklynites, Coney Island, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. In this video, Chief Curator Ellen Snyder-Grenier provides a guided tour of each of the five sections while sharing the origins of the exhibition and the history of the space. She also discusses the design process, explores the themes, and highlights some of the notable items on display.
Bonus: One of my favorite finds of this project is a commercial titled “Fun House of Memories,” which is a 30-second-long advertisement for Brooklyn’s History Museum. Though short, it fills me with a sense of nostalgia for a time that I did not experience.
Building Footage
The tapes I was most excited to see upon receiving the digitized files were the unlabeled ones. Some of these tapes contained footage of various areas of BHS's landmark building before major renovations took place from 1999 to 2002. Not only did they show rooms that look completely different now, but they also include footage of old collections storage areas, recordings of education programs, tours of exhibits on display at the time (circa 1996), and interviews with staff explaining their roles at BHS. One of these interviews is with archivist Holly MacCammon, who is pictured in the screenshot above.
Joan Maynard
Several of the digitized tapes contain recordings of public programs held at the Brooklyn Historical Society, including a 1991 video titled “Vaudeville and Ventriloquism.” In this video, Joan Maynard, a founding member of the Society for the Preservation of Weeksville and Bedford-Stuyvesant History (now the Weeksville Heritage Center), discusses her family history, focusing on her father, John W. Cooper, and his career as an entertainer and ventriloquist. She details his early life, his introduction to ventriloquism, his experiences with racism and discrimination while performing on the road, and her relationship with him as she grew up. At the time of this recording, Cooper's puppet, Sam Jackson – which he had used for more than 50 years – was on loan to the Brooklyn Historical Society for display in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn’s History Museum.
Joan Maynard also appears in another video titled “Crown Heights Forum.” In this video, Maynard, together with cultural anthropologist Jill Vexler and historian Craig Wilde, discusses the Crown Heights History Project – a collaborative community history study developed by the Society for the Preservation of Weeksville and Bedford-Stuyvesant History, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and the Brooklyn Historical Society.
Stonewall History Project Audio
One of the record groups I processed during this project was “Exhibitions and Special Projects,” which gave me insight into many projects completed by the Brooklyn Historical Society throughout its history. While this was undoubtedly one of my favorite aspects of the job, I was equally, if not more, interested in the projects that began development but never came to fruition, such as the Stonewall History Project.
Initiated by David Kahn, Executive Director of the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Stonewall History Project aimed to create a series of five interrelated exhibitions and programs focused on lesbian and gay history in New York to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. Participating institutions included the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Museum of the City of New York, the National Museum and Archive of Lesbian and Gay History (Center Archives), the New-York Historical Society, and the New York Public Library. The exhibitions were designed to explore New York’s lesbian and gay history from the seventeenth century to the present, with a particular emphasis on the twentieth century, especially the period from World War II onward. If executed, this would have represented the first time that mainstream American cultural organizations undertook the creation of major exhibitions on lesbian and gay history (according to the September-December 1992 issue of the Brooklyn Historical Society’s newsletter).
Beginning in the spring of 1992, a steering committee of institutional personnel held several planning meetings. In addition to this committee, a group of six lesbian and gay scholars was to be brought on as consultants, along with a Community Advisory Committee consisting of 15 to 20 members who would help shape the exhibition content, review plans, and assist with community outreach. Although the project was ultimately not realized, the digitization of several unlabeled tapes provided access to hours of recordings from these meetings. In these recordings, individuals from cultural heritage institutions, grassroots organizations, academia, and New York City’s queer community discuss various aspects of the project, including potential focus areas for the exhibitions and challenges that could arise during development.
While I was unable to listen to all of the tapes before writing this post, one moment particularly struck me. Speaking as an individual historian rather than a representative of the Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA), Joan Nestle stated her feelings about the project:
“It’s very hard for me to say that I’m here as an individual and not as the archives because I gave a good part of my life [tape cuts out] When no one thought they were cultural, when you never wanted us in your museums…We got together and we said we’re going to do an impossible thing. We’re going to be a people with a history. Not a dirty joke. Not freaks. And I knew this time would come. I knew there’d be a time…when the mainstream would all of a sudden realize that you could have a very popular exhibit…the archives collective now and the Latina history collective and other grassroots collectives really have to see what is our relationship [to mainstream institutions]...All I can say is, it’s a little bit like David and Goliath. I knew this time would come. I know that we will go on with our vision. But what will probably happen is we will have our own exhibits. But I just want to say it’s not – for me it isn’t – a revolutionary time. In some ways, it’s an opportunistic time. But I know what it will mean when gay and lesbian people walk into your museums and see their faces there. And what hurts me is how grateful we will be.” [Quote edited for length and clarity]
I stumbled across this clip while haphazardly clicking through the audio files, so I can’t even begin to imagine what else there is to learn from the recordings of these meetings.
Conclusion
In total, over 200 pieces of audiovisual material were digitized as part of the Brooklyn Historical Society institutional archives project. I've highlighted just a few examples, but there is much more to explore within this collection. Although the full digitized content is not yet publicly accessible, several exhibition videos are available on the Internet Archive if you're craving some retro Brooklyn Historical Society content. Happy watching!
The Brooklyn Historical Society Institutional Archive Project is generously funded by the Leon Levy Foundation.
Interested in seeing more photos from CBH’s collections? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal of Brooklyn Public Library. We welcome appointments to research our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. Our reference staff is available to help with your research! You can reach us at cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.
This blog post reflects the opinions of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of Brooklyn Public Library.
1. This is so cool and…
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