Hamilton has embarked on an organizational project to catalog the museum’s collections. With support from the Windgate Foundation we are currently organizing and proofing the type and printing blocks in the Globe Collection. We started the process in 2015 working with Heather Buechler, Raychel Lauen and Vida Sacic and continued the work in the fall of 2016 by bringing in Scott Mann and Tom Walker. A group of 4 individuals came to Two Rivers this week to help with this monumental task. Gatis Cirulis, Katya Reka, Daniel Schneider, and Bonnie Loukus have been proofing blocks and helping to organize the collection.

Gatis and Katya make up the multidisciplinary art and design practice, Nomadic Circus. They have been working with the Globe Collection since its arrival at Hamilton and helped unpack the collection from pallets at the original museum location. During this trip they are both helping proof 'entertainment', 'grocery', and 'fair' blocks. This proofing process will eventually allow us to build a searchable database that consists of images of both the blocks and the proofs.

Daniel is a graduate of the Industrial Archaeology program at Michigan Technological University and has been working with the museum for the past couple of years to get our die stamping machine working. On this trip he has been helping immensely in organizing the collections at the museum. Bonnie Loukus, Assistant Director at the Copper Country Community Arts Center, came to help assist in the proofing of the blocks. Katya and Bonnie working together to print blocks has been a dynamic duo! Their hard work means that we are much closer to being done with the proofing of the Globe Collection.

The work that the Windgate Project Managers have done will eventually mean more access to these important collections by scholars and researchers. In the last two years we have sorted, organized, photographed, and started the proofing process of this massive collection and we hope to have the proofing done before the end of the summer.