New exhibit now open at Wallace photo museum
John and Sue Hansen examine some of the new photos during the Barnard-Stockbridge Museum's Spring Fling gala in May. The new photo exhibit examines panoramic photos of Wallace from the 1910s.
Kenzie Jensen
Wallace resident Charlie Roberts examines an aerial photo of the Hecla Mine in Burke, Idaho, during the Barnard-Stockbridge Museum's Spring Fling gala.
WALLACE –– “Details create the big picture.”
American bank magnate Sanford Weill probably wasn’t talking about literal pictures when he made this statement years ago, but it holds true with the new exhibit at the Barnard-Stockbridge Museum.
The Barnard-Stockbridge Museum is open for the summer season and they’ve added some pretty big pictures – the purpose of these big images is to allow visitors to explore the details and understand the little things that made Wallace what it was formerly and what it is today.
Through several restoration projects, nine large format, panoramic photos are now on display – these photos detail and showcase the evolution of downtown Wallace in the early 1910s as the city recovered and rebuilt from the Big Burn of 1910.
“These photos were taken between 1912-1913 in the winter and spring,” executive director Tammy Copelan said. “When you walk into the exhibit you are viewing panoramics down each side of you on display stands with over 30 feet of viewing area.”
Two of these photos, in particular, stand out to Copelan, but for very different reasons.
One of them was shot at the corner of Bank and King Streets, where the road turns to head up toward Moon Pass. Some of the homes in the photo still exist to this day.
The other photo that Copelan encourages people to examine is a panoramic shot of the Samuels Hotel as it heads down Cedar Street.
“For those of us who did not live here or were not alive at that time, this photo shows just how large and magnificent this building was,” she explained.
While these new photos are the newest addition to the museum, further work has been done to last year’s exhibit, the “Ladies Upstairs Downstairs.”
This exhibit takes a detailed look at the photographic history of the women who worked in Wallace’s thriving red-light district. Ironically housed on the museum’s lower floor, this display contains some nudity and may not be suitable for all ages.
During their recent Spring Fling Gala, over 100 visitors made their way through the museum and Copelan hopes that the event is the kick-off to another busy summer.
The Barnard–Stockbridge Museum displays images taken by Thomas Barnard and Nellie Stockbridge in their studio and in the surrounding community between 1893-1965.
The original collection numbered in the hundreds of thousands of total images, all of which were preserved in the University of Idaho Library Special Collections Unit.
The collection has been fully digitized, cataloged by subject, and is considered the best photographic collection in the northwest United States, and one of the seven best collections in the United States.
The Museum has a Memorandum of Understanding with the University which allows the Museum full access to all the digitized images.
The museum opened in 2019, inside the former Holy Trinity Episcopal Church – which had closed the year before due to a lack of congregants.
The building itself is a work of art and was designed by Kirtland Cutter, the same man who designed the Davenport Hotel in downtown Spokane.
The Barnard-Stockbridge Museum is open seven days a week, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. through the end of Wallace’s tourist season.
