In this episode of Curious Objects, host Benjamin Miller continues his odyssey through the PEM’s James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes Collection Center, which embraces a sizeable portion of the museum’s nearly 1 million objects sourced from around the globe. Christian Louboutins and a $2.1 million copy of the Declaration of Independence are on the menu, as Ben speaks again with Angela Segalla, director of the Collection Center, curators Karina Corrigan and Paula Richter, and Dan Lipcan, director of PEM’s Phillips Library.
Left to Right: Shoes made by Christian Louboutin, early 2000s. Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, gift of Joanna Prager Johnsen, Marcy Prager, and Daniel Prager, in memory of Marilyn Riseman. Shoe possibly made by Coleman Platts, American, c. 1830–1850. Peabody Essex Museum, gift of the Emhart Corporation. Images from the Chase (Brig) logbook kept by George Bliss, 1839–1840. Peabody Essex Museum, Phillips Library, Rowley, Massachusetts. Declaration of Independence broadside, printed Salem, Massachusetts, by Ezekiel Russell, 1776. Peabody Essex Museum, Phillips Library.
To flip through the pages of the Chase logbook, click here.