Update: The building that housed this collection was sold without the University disclosing the contents. The fate of these historic stage artifacts remain unknown at this time.
Examples of historic scenic art from the Scenery Collection stored in the Arts Annex of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Northern Illinois University. The Scenic Collection includes elements from the settings of 90 operas, with approximately 900 backdrops and borders and more than 2200 framed scenic units. The stage settings illustrate an exceptional range of production styles between 1889 and 1932. In addition to the scenery there are 3 dimensional units including furniture and properties. Furthermore, the collection is supported by an extraordinary archive of production notebooks, property lists, inventories, expense records, performance time sheets, correspondence, original photographs of the sets, selected costumes, and opera stars of the period, ground plans and blueprints, painters elevations and renderings, original costume and set design drawings, and 120 exquisitely painted and detailed ¼” scale maquettes of the settings.
Unfortunately, some of the scenery has been damaged since initial documentation. The roof leaks and flooding is a problem due to non-working sump pumps.
NIU has a slide collection, housed in numerous three ringed binders, of The Scenic Art Collection, compiled by a professor who since retired. I had known about the collection while attending NIU (BA 1974,MSEd 1977), and in recent years tracked the slide collection, which had moved from Special Collections to the Music Library. The librarian in the Music Library said,”I have been here 20 years and you are the first person to ask about this collection.”
Thank you for commenting, Gene! The University of Minnesota also purchased a set of the slides.