On paper, Linda Lee (she/her) is a museum professional with a Museum Studies MA and Zoology BS, with a growing career in exhibit design and production. Behind the curtain, Linda is a dog mom, a lover of the outdoors, and a dedicated advocate to social justice reform and DEAI practices.

An active member of the museum field, Linda is continuously driven to find opportunities to provide for and connect with the community, with this Fellowship as a perfect opportunity to shed light on the untold stories of immigrant communities.

Her project “Transformation Through Immigration” was inspired by the stories and contributions of the often-uncredited immigrants and community members of this diverse city. She focused on artifacts donated by two remarkable women: Lillian Goon Dip and Ann Dulien. Though this study only sheds light on a tiny sliver of the community, the overarching goal is to recognize past wrongs and to contribute to social justice reform by revealing hidden history and inspiring others to do the same.

Brittney Frantece is a writer, artist, educator, curator, and PhD candidate in the English Department at the University of Washington. She curated Queer Imaginations (2021) at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery in Seattle and Juneteenth: Blackness and Freedom (2018) at The Beans Gallery in Chicago.

In 2022, she researched and analyzed photographs in MOHAI’s Al Smith Collection for how they demonstrate Black world building during the mid-20th century in the Pacific Northwest.

Learn more about how she uses Black ecstatic reading practices in relation to the Al Smith Collection in her 2022 Curators Fellowship Workshop.

Further Reading

Read her analysis of five photographs in our online collection.

Primary Collection (3-D)

The primary three-dimensional collection consists of artifacts significant to the history of Seattle and the Puget Sound region starting at the time of settlement in this area and continuing to the present. There are an estimated 100,000 objects in the 3-D Primary Collection that range in physical size from tiny lapel pins to Boeing’s first airplane, the B-1. Below is an overview of our Collections. For more details, visit the MOHAI Online Collections portal.

Local industry and businesses are heavily represented in the collection covering everything from logging, mining, farming, fishing, shipbuilding, aerospace, urban development, textile working, woodworking, blacksmithing, masonry, milling, biotechnology, software and internet technology, restaurant and hotel service, retail merchandising, photography, printing, banking, tailoring, barbering, butchery, cobblery, millinery, mortuary, smoking and recreational drug use, and other businesses.

Some of the local companies represented in the collection include Boeing, Microsoft, Nordstrom, Bartell Drugs, Frederick & Nelson, Lake Union Dry Dock, Moran Bros., Rainier Brewing Company, Starbucks, Amazon, Eddie Bauer, Filson, ZymoGenetics, Schwabacher, Crescent Foods, Fisher Flour, PACCAR, Wizards of the Coast, REI, Amgen (Immunex), Intellectual Ventures, Seafirst Bank, Washington Mutual, Almond Roca, and Oberto Sausage Company. There is also equipment, tools, and office furniture associated with local services such as medical care, dentistry, public works and transportation, police, fire, and other government services.

Potentially a third of the collection consists of home furnishings and everything associated with family and homelife. This includes furniture, lighting, building and plumbing elements, decorative objects, toiletry items, storage containers, food-service items, toys, games, clocks, and musical instruments.

Another third of the collection consists of clothing, textiles, and fashion accessories that were either handmade or designer-made or purchased from local retailers. This includes dresses, shirts and tops, pants, skirts, shorts, suits, uniforms, ensembles, undergarments, bathing suits, baby clothes, nightwear, coats, sweaters, outdoor wear and gear, hats, shoes, socks, ties, belts, gloves, handkerchiefs and scarves, aprons, canes, fans, parasols, purses, jewelry, watches, eyeglasses, hatpins, hair adornment, linens, quilts, samplers, flags, and other items.

Competitive local sports and recreational activities, represented by equipment and accessories, include baseball, softball, football, basketball, volleyball, soccer, golf, hockey, tennis, roller derby, bowling, frisbees, bike polo, ping pong, archery, hiking, camping, swimming, skiing, sledding, water skiing, mountain climbing, ice skating, roller skating, biking, scuba diving, horseback riding, skateboarding, and others. Some of the sports teams represented include the Rainiers, Pilots, Mariners, Seahawks, Sounders, Reign, Storm, Seattle Totems and Seattle Seahawks hockey teams, Rat City Rollergirls, the University of Washington, and local high school teams. The collection also includes items from the imploded Kingdome stadium and other arenas in the area.

MOHAI’s art collection consists of paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, etchings, carvings, hairwork, ropework, and other artwork by local artists, and feature people, places, and events of this region. Some of the artists include Kenneth Callahan, Mark Tobey, Fay Chong, Guy Anderson, Harriet Beecher, Emily Inez Denny, Jessie Elliott, Jacob Elshin, Fokko Tadama, Richard Bennett, Kathleen Houlahan, Eustace Zeigler, Doris Chase, John Grade, and glass pieces by Dale Chihuly and Preston Singletary. Works by Indigenous peoples, Native Americans and Alaskan peoples include baskets, totem poles, wooden and ivory carvings, bentwood boxes, rattles, ladles, model canoes, and more contemporary pieces by DeAnn Jacobson, Keith Stevenson, Ty Juvinel, Marvin Oliver, and others. There are also folk-art pieces made by the first European settlers in this area.

For recent MOHAI exhibits, the museum acquired several contemporary items related to Seattle Hip Hop culture, local food and agriculture, Seattle fashion, the South Asian community, and the social justice movement in Seattle.

Specific Seattle families and individuals that are more prominently represented include names such as: Denny, Boren, Terry, Low, Bell, Mercer, Foster, Maple, Chief Si’ahl (Chief Seattle), Kikisoblu (Princess Angeline), Frye, Collins, Bagley, “Doc” Maynard, Henry Yesler, Henry Van Asselt, Bill Boeing, John Nordstrom, Eddie Bauer, and others. More recently, materials have been collected from the families of Rev. Samuel B. McKinney, York and Arlene Luke, and Benjamin McAdoo.

Larger objects consist of vehicles, vessels, aircraft, bicycles, kayaks, canoes, neon signs, and industrial equipment associated with various businesses, restaurants, and local individuals.

Other collections not mentioned above include armament and weaponry, instructional models, and souvenirs.

Read more about accessing MOHAI collections.

Library

The Sophie Frye Bass Library Collections preserve and provide access to historic photographs, archival and book collections, and audio and visual materials. The collection totals over four million items focused on Seattle and King County, with some resources covering the local interest in other parts of Washington and Alaska. For more details, visit the MOHAI Online Collections Portal.

Major collections include:

• MOHAI Photography Collection contains approximately four million individual photographs spanning nearly the entire history of photography, from nineteenth-century daguerreotypes to contemporary digital images, including the Seattle Post-Intelligencernews photography collection; the King County News Corporation collection; the PEMCO Webster and Stevens Collection; the Al Smith Photograph Collection; the Anders Wilse Collection; the Edward Curtis Collection; and the Fred Milke Collection.
• MOHAI Oral History Collection, a growing collection of more than 600 oral histories in a variety of formats, including the Experienced Leaders Collection, which documents stories from regional leaders in business and politics such as William Gates, Sr., former Washington governor Daniel J. Evans, and TheSeattle Times publisher Frank Blethen; the Rosie the Riveter Collection, which features 21 women reflecting on their experience working at the Boeing Company factory during World War II; and most recently, oral histories collected to provide greater context for the Al Smith Photography Collection, which documents Seattle’s African American community. Finding aids for all 11 oral history collection are online, and a limited number of audio files and transcripts will be accessible in MOHAI’s Online Collections.
• MOHAI Archival Collection comprises records and papers, manuscripts, scrapbooks, ledgers, ephemera, maps, posters, newspapers, and sheet music.
• MOHAI Library Collection of books, pamphlets, reports, and serials on Seattle, Washington, and Pacific Northwest (including Alaska) history, from the early nineteenth century to the present.
• MOHAI Video Collection includes several hundred items covering film, magnetic media, and digital video files.

Read more about accessing MOHAI collections.

One of the primary goals of the Curator’s Fellowship is for research to bring new interpretations or insight to MOHAI’s collection. The museum’s holdings include photographs, archival material, oral histories, a wide range of objects, and more.

While you can view some of these materials online most of this collection is not online. Here are some options to help create a proposal:

See the list below of possible topics, generated by our Collections Resources team. These are starting points so don’t feel limited to propose a topic exactly as described.

Review the drop-down menu below this one for a summary of the MOHAI Artifact Collection and Library Collections to get a better sense of the types and categories of items we have. Contact curatorsfellowship@mohai.org to inquire if we have sufficient materials to support a topic you are interested in.

Possible Topics or Starting Points for the 2024 Curator’s Fellowship

Centering Native perspectives in artifacts that appropriate Native art, ideas, or people. Possible examples could be imagery and souvenirs from the Golden Potlatch, or the use of the image of Kikisoblu (Princess Angeline) on Seattle souvenirs.

Unearthing stories of local leaders from our oral history collections.

Learning more about Seattle labor, by selecting a type of “made in Seattle” product in the collection and do research about the people employed in that industry or particular factory. What can we know about the hands that made these items? Example: The people who work in the garment industry.

Diving deep into International District hotel history through MOHAI’s photos and recent scholarship about early Seattle itinerant labor.

Exploring an aspect of gay Seattle history through one of the following collections: Mark Dempsey (theater and music including western costumes), John Doyle Bishop (fashion), Ric Weiland (early Microsoft history and party costumes), Richard Bennett (20th century art), John Eaton (millinery).
Revealing the history of the development of Seattle neighborhoods, particularly those south of the ship canal.

Researching artifacts in the Sagamiya Bakery collection, which includes over 100 items.

Highlighting stories of Indigenous resilience and community through photographs in the J.W. Thompson Collection.

Researching the complicated history of the Japanese Boy’s Day and Girl’s Day sets that were given to Bailey Gatzert Elementary School at the time of Japanese incarceration in WWII. Research could cover the circumstances around the “donation” or details around the dolls themselves such as the figures they represent and their manufacture. A selection is viewable online but the full collection is about 100 items.