Friends of Raynham Hall board member Lillian Soricillo, chairman of their education committee wants to create more educational events for adults to complement their great outreach to school children. This year, on Nov. 7, she led a visit to the Henry Luce III center at the New York Historical Society. It was a great experience to see how the society has improved its research facilities.

"Our purpose in going to the Luce Center was to glimpse the future of museum preservation that we one day hope to implement here at Raynham Hall," said Lisa Cuomo, Raynham Hall Museum education coordinator.

Launched in November 2000 by a grant from The Henry Luce Foundation, the Henry Luce III Center brings the New York Historical Society material culture collections out of storage and into an accessible study facility. The center occupies the entire fourth floor of the society displaying such treasures as: the collection of Louis Comfort Tiffany lamps; American sculpture and paintings including Hudson River School landscapes by Asher Durand and Thomas Cole; the complete original watercolors by John James Audubon for The Birds of America; furniture from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries including George Washington's inaugural chair; antique toys; tools, ceramics; textiles and more.

Computer terminals allow visitors to find specific items in the collection and then pinpoint their locations in the center. Audio tours are available in both English and Spanish.

For the two and a half to three years, the NYHS has been electronically cataloguing and digitizing their collection of 46,000 objects. Their conservators say the collection is in the best shape it has been in for 200 years. Visitors to the Luce Center walk through corridors created by glass enclosed objects, in full view. "You are the collection under glass," said Jan Ramirez, director of the museum who introduced the group to the center. Curators are able to walk inside those glass boxes to get at the objects (chairs, tables, paintings) that they wish to study. (Please see photo.)

Instead of the traditional method of labeling objects, they are using bar codes. Visitors can use computer terminals to identify and explain the collection. They now have a palm pilot version of the computer terminal that can be used by researchers to scan the bar codes from outside the cases. There are four or five sentences of information about each piece in the collection that is easily accessible.

Seventy percent of the NYHS collection is on display at the Henry Luce Center. They have another 10,000 sq. ft. of space in a New Jersey warehouse. A dining room set of 10 chairs would have nine in the warehouse and one in the Luce Center. Many other items are on loan: at present 75 international institutions have items from the collection on loan. "Our goose would be cooked if it all came back at one time," said Director Ramirez.

Ms. Soricillo heard of the Luce Center at a lecture presented by the Society of the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities where Mr. Luce, a local resident, spoke. When he heard she was leading a tour to the Luce Center he said, "I'm happy that with all the museums to choose from that they choose the Luce Center."

After viewing the Luce Center, the group went to Ocean Grill for a gourmet lunch before boarding the bus back to Oyster Bay. Everyone agreed it was a great educational event.