MUSEUM PREPARING FOR NEW EXHIBIT
Local photographer’s life, work on display
When the Mendocino County Museum opens its doors after the COVID-19 shutdown, it will have fresh, new exhibits to tempt visitors inside. Since preserving history is an essential activity, museum curator Karen Mattson and librarian/researcher/archivists Benjamin MacBean have continued their valiant efforts to organize and archive the museum’s vast collection.
Thanks to the interest and devotion of University of California Santa Barbara graduate student Anne Cuyler Salsich, who wrote her 1991 thesis paper about “The Commercial Photography of H. H. Wonacott in Mendocino County, California,” the museum has a plethora of information and artifacts attributed to the photographer.
Harold Howard Wonacott, otherwise known as Henry Wonacott, lived from 1888 to 1960. He lived out his adult life in Mendocino County working as a commercial photographer, and for a short time, was the owner of “U Catch
Em’ Trout Farm” business.
“It’s a really exciting exhibit in a couple ways because a lot of people who have worked at the museum before have worked on this project,” said Mattson. “It’s been a labor of love preserving this collection. It’s given us an opportunity to understand this collection. But, this exhibit is specifically about the life of H. H. Wonacott, the photographer. So, what it is is a sample of some of the photographs that are lesser known… they’re a little bit more broadly appreciated, maybe more iconic, combined with some everyday scenes that people might relate to here in Mendocino County.
“And, that allowed us to pair things from our collection with his photographs because he was really documenting every day life in Mendocino County in that time.”
Along with story boards detailing highlights from Wonacott’s life, large black and white photographs grace the walls in the Long Gallery and are paired with artifacts that tie into the photo subjects and invite the viewer to
look more closely at the photographs. Mattson said the recently donated collection from local historian Dusty Whitney provided a large sampling of objects and artifacts that correspond with Wonacott’s subject matter. For example, Whitney donated a vintage camera that would have been similar to one that Wonacott may have used and later sold as a Kodak camera salesman.
The museum has cataloged approximately 1,800 negatives attributed to Wonacott, who first set up shop on the corner of Valley and Main streets in Willits in about 1908 after moving up from San Francisco where he photographed the great
earthquake of 1906. In 1917 his Willits business was doing well so that he decided to opened another studio in Fort Bragg in 1917.
The new museum exhibit, which Mattson said will be up for the next year, outlines his life and success in Mendocino County, including his great love of automobiles.
“We knew we had multiple donations of photographs from different donors, but we never knew that we had this siding,” said Mattson of the wood planks hanging on one wall of the Long Gallery.
“We just thought these were random blue boards that we were carefully putting away… And they weren’t number but later I was able to connect some information in our database with these boards and so this is the siding from his studio in Fort
Bragg. That’s kind of a big wow factor in the exhibit.”
Mattson said she sees a correlation between Wonacott’s life, the people of Mendocino County and current events. “He never gave up, he was always looking for the next project, the next opportunity, and he was always adapting himself, which I feel like is very Mendocino County way of thinking. It’s very inspiring right now… He is a story of someone who loved Mendocino County, who loved nature… which we can all relate to right now because we all want to be out there… and he went everywhere in the County. He had a really interesting, ever- evolving career.”
To get a glimpse of what the museum is up to, follow Mendocino County Museum on Facebook.