Housing the Family: Re-Housing the Peterkin Family (Theresa Bywater Peterkin) Carte-De-Visite and Cabinet Portrait Album at the Art Gallery of Ontario

This thesis project explores a method of re-housing a carte-de-visite and cabinet card album, namely the Peterkin Family (Theresa Bywater Peterkin) album, with a focus on preserving the album structure, the photographs and the narrative as well as facilitating the accessibility of the historical album within the Art Gallery of Ontario’s photographic collection. The first part of the paper assesses the historical components and the physical condition of the album, and analyzes four case studies of restored or re-housed 19th century albums within three institutions and one private collection. The second part of the paper summarizes the decision making process of three options for preservation, and outlines the digital documentation, the cataloguing process and the steps for the re-housing of the Peterkin album.