A look back at Pasadena history through mystery and trivia
The Pasadena Museum of History is currently hosting two companion exhibits–Pasadena Pursuit and Mystery History–that focus on engaging the community in Pasadena’s storied past by posing questions and revealing answers to attendees in an interactive trivia game format.
“We ask fascinating questions or at least intriguing questions,” said Pasadena Pursuit curator Dan McLaughlin. “You sort of see how history is sort of made and interpreted by looking at the original source material.”
For over 25 years, McLaughlin has worked as the history librarian at the Pasadena Public Library. His exhibit titled Pasadena Pursuit features trivia questions based off of old newspaper articles pulled from the Pasadena Public Library archives and showcases related museum artifacts. There are multiple-choice answers just like the popular board game. If the question intrigues an attendee, they can find the answer in a folder containing copies of the original newspaper articles.
For those who prefer to interact with a screen rather than flipping through pages, each trivia question displays a QR code that sends your smartphone to a digital copy of the original newspaper article on the Pasadena Digital History Collaboration website. A station in the exhibit allows people to search McLaughlin’s Pasadena News Index database by their birth month and day to view news articles published on their birthday — in some cases before they were even born.
“If you’re interested in the question you can explore further and if you don’t care, you move on,” said McLaughlin. “This is an exhibit where you sort of bring whatever you’re interested in and get back information that is tailored specifically to you.”
It all began when McLaughlin created a series of 30 trivia questions to train new librarians how to use his newspaper archive database, the Pasadena News Index, at the Pasadena Public Library.
“If you are engaged with the question, then you learn a lot better,” said McLaughlin.
Pasadena Museum of History Director of Collections Laura Verlaque approached McLaughlin about curating an exhibit after reading his 2014 book titled “Pasadena History Headline Quiz” composed of the trivia he had been collecting over the years.
“We were all passing it around at a committee meeting, and either marveling or chuckling at some of the odd facts,” said Verlaque. “It struck me that it would be wonderful to figure out a way to turn these questions into an exhibit.”
Soon after, the museum contacted Ann Erdman about curating a companion exhibition based off of her historical photo blog titled Mystery History to accompany McLaughlin’s exhibit.
“Where are we? What’s happening?” These are the two questions Erdman posts on her blog along with an uncaptioned historic photo related to Pasadena every other week.
Her readers submit their guesses and she reveals the caption and backstory two days later. Erdman began sharing historical photos of Pasadena on her blog back in 2009 when she was still serving as Pasadena’s public information officer.
Erdman said adapting her blog to an exhibit featuring related museum artifacts was a long process.
“It was time consuming and yet fun,” said Erdman. ”Each of the photos had to be either from the Pasadena Museum of History archives or from the Pasadena Public Library. The trick was: is there a related artifact to that photo?”
Verlaque worked closely with Erdman and McLaughlin in searching the museum collections for related artifacts–such as the champagne bottle remnants and decorative ribbon used to christen the USS Pasadena that accompanies the photo of Mrs. C.G. Wopschall, the mayor’s wife, breaking the bottle over the hull during a launching ceremony in 1943.
“The challenge was taking two ideas that appeared in book and blog form, and translating them to an exhibit, which needs visual stimulation,” said Verlaque.
Both Erdman and McLaughlin enjoyed hearing the conversations sparked from their exhibits at the member-only opening in February.
“I’d hear people saying ‘Oh yeah, I remember that restaurant’ and ‘I had my first date there!’” said Erdman. “We’re building community here at the Pasadena Museum of History.”
McLaughlin says they were looking for things that would spark people’s memories. As a librarian, he has witnessed first-hand how historically preserved artifacts spark community interaction and discovery. After a photo of Hopi Indians performing a snake dance on a reservation in 1905 was donated to the public library from a private collection, a woman mailed a letter to McLaughlin saying she was certain her grandmother was in the photo because she found an old diary that placed her there.
“It’s moments like that you’re happy to be a librarian,” said McLaughlin. “You’ve preserved it — you’ve cataloged it so people have it accessible. They can sort of incorporate it back into their lives.”
The exhibitions are on view at the Pasadena Museum of History from noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Friday through the end of March.
Originally published at www.pcccourier.com on March 4, 2015.
