‘Hats of yesteryear’ Museum and Arts Center board member Linda Stadtmiller rearranges the display. She is wearing gloves to protect the hats’ fiber from oils from her hand. Photo by Avani Nadkarni MAC has new displays with all-natural materials by Avani Nadkarni Staff writer There was a time in America and the world, said Museum and Arts Center board member Linda Stadtmiller, that hats were a part of everyday wear. “Starting in the Victorian era, hats were a part of (people’s) ensembles,” Stadtmiller said. “They wore hats for dress, they wore hats to keep the sun off their faces, they even wore hats for mourning.” This changed in the 1960s, said Stadtmiller, but even now, certain hats immediately show what people do: a baseball cap, a camouflage Army hat, a chef’s hat. Knowing that MAC recently received a $10,000 federal government grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services and used it to organize its textiles collection, Stadtmiller decided to create a display of hats that have been donated to the center over the past 30 years. “This summer, our interns (SHS graduates Kira Hendricksen and Mickey Yeager) worked on organizing and putting together textiles and storing them properly,” Stadtmiller said. “I thought it would be great to display some of them.” The way the displays are organized can transport the viewer back to World War II-era America or even further to the flapper-filled 1920s. Stadtmiller said she and fellow display organizer Helen Witschger did transport themselves back in time as they spent hours online researching the different hats, which are numbered and put into a system so they can give details about each. “We spent a lot of time finding out what different hats were worn in which era,” Stadtmiller said. “It’s a fun thing to do to work on displays.” Stadtmiller and Witschger carefully handle the hats, wearing special gloves so the oils from their hands do not damage or destroy the natural materials. The hats will stay on display through mid-December, when the center will close for about a month for renovations. According to Stadtmiller, the hats are part of a new concept for the museum — rotating the items more often and trying to relate all their side displays to their main display. For example, the main display is fiber arts from Pacific Northwest artists who use all-natural materials, so Stadtmiller and other MAC board members and administrators decided to use hats made out of natural materials, such as beaver, feathers and wool. Following the theme, other adjacent exhibits on display until December include a basket display, consisting mainly of Native American woven baskets. “We’re trying to have more displays that are different and we want to rotate them more frequently,” Stadtmiller said. “That way, people can actually see more of the huge collection we have stored in our warehouse.”
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