Legendary photographer Victor Skrebneski passed away on April 4, 2020. For this blog post, Nena Ivon, past president of the Costume Council of the Chicago History Museum, delved into her personal archive and reflects on her friend’s work with the Museum. Victor Skrebneski had a varied and exciting association with the Costume Council of the More
CHM technical services librarian Elizabeth McKinley and cataloging and metadata librarian Gretchen Neidhardt outline how Research Center staff have been updating the language describing its holdings to reflect a viewpoint that is ethical, modern, and ultimately more humanizing. For the past several months, Chicago History Museum librarians have been working behind the scenes to critically examine the More
As part of their public history class, DePaul University students Anne Crowe, Patrick Elliott, Joshua Khalilian, and Andrea Weiss-Tracy explore the life and work of Chicago artist Trinidad Castillo in this blog post. The Chicago History Museum commissioned Castillo to paint a mural for its exhibition American Medina: Stories of Muslim Chicago. The students’ course More
To mark what would have been the 108th birthday of Studs Terkel, Peter T. Alter, CHM chief historian and director of the Studs Terkel Center for Oral History, reflects on the memorable moments he shared with Studs at the Museum and Studs’s enduring cultural influence. When I started working at the Chicago History Museum in More
In this blog post, CHM curatorial intern Brigid Kennedy recounts the life of Irene McCoy Gaines as part of a series in which we share the stories of local women who made history in anticipation of an exhibition about Chicago women and the vote. Irene McCoy Gaines devoted her career in politics and advocacy to More