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NEW CURATORIAL CENTER PLANNED FOR LITCHFIELD HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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LITCHFIELD, CONN. — The Litchfield Historical Society has broken ground for its new curatorial center at the Tapping Reeve House and Law School on South Street.

The new curatorial center will replace the barn at the Tapping Reeve House & Law School with a climate-controlled facility, which replicates the architectural design of the existing structure. The exterior of the new curatorial center will blend seamlessly into the landscape at the Reeve site; the interior, however, will house state-of-the-art, climate-controlled museum storage and workspaces.

The curatorial center was funded through a bequest from Pamela Cunningham Copeland, grants from the Seherr-Thoss Foundation and gifts and pledges from more than 90 individual donors. The campaign is ongoing.

The new facility will double the society’s available storage and work area, provide safe and secure storage for museum collections, and alleviate the overcrowded conditions in existing storage areas at the Noyes Memorial Building and Tapping Reeve House. The new storage facility will also provide adequate workspace for the curator of collections and curator of library and archives to document and process collections, as well as prepare items for storage and exhibition.

The Litchfield Historical Society collections include collections of locally made furniture, papier mache objects and clocks, costumes, silver, household goods and decorative arts. The society’s  textile collection includes 1,500 costume items, 100 quilts and coverlets, 30 samplers and 12 needlework pictures. Many of the samplers and all of the needlework pictures were produced by students at the Litchfield Female Academy (1792–1822).

The society also owns a collection of American paintings by Ralph Earl, Gilbert Stuart, Ammi Phillips, Ezra Ames, Eastman Johnson, Richard Jennys and George Catlin.

The Helga J. Ingraham Memorial Library contains local and regional reference books, a local genealogical collection and a manuscript collection that includes letters, business records, personal papers, journals, diaries, account books, deeds and other legal and personal documents dating from the early Eighteenth Century to the present.

The construction on the curatorial center should be complete in the late fall and the staff will spend winter and spring moving collections into the new building.

For information, 860-567-4501.