Imagine entering an art museum or gallery and finding every work of art lying on the floor. Disturbed? What I’ve just described is a world without mounts or mount makers. Thankfully, this is not the world we live in, unless you count very cool art installations that are sometimes placed directly on the floor. Here at the Hood Museum, we are lucky to have a team of capable, expert exhibition preparators who have the skills to tackle basically any object mount imaginable (see examples below).
That said, some objects are trickier than others to fabricate mounts for. Our museum preparator team (nicknamed “ex-prep”) encountered this challenge in the fall of 2022, when they were tasked with creating mounts for Recording War. The exhibition, curated by Elizabeth Rice Mattison and on view from May 20 through December 9, 2023, focused on the effects of war on civilians as primarily depicted through prints and drawings made by European artists between 1500 and 1900. The works were organized thematically, with each section separated by a historical rifle, musket, or pistol on the gallery wall. These firearms were particularly challenging to mount because of their fragility, unevenly distributed weight, and many different parts. For this task, then, we called in an expert: regional museum mount-making legend Bill Mead.
A long-time collaborator of the Hood Museum, Bill was also the craftsperson responsible for fabricating the mounts attached to the 70+ indigenous Australian bark paintings that were on view during the Hood Museum’s exhibition Madayin in fall 2022. For Recording War, our exhibitions team asked Bill to facilitate an intensive weeklong mount-making workshop specifically focused on soldering brass mounts for firearms. As a Mutual Learning Fellow in the exhibitions and registration departments, I often work alongside our prep staff in planning for new exhibitions and occasionally assist with installations. I always enjoy the hands-on aspects of museum work, so I welcomed the opportunity to participate in the workshop with three of our preparators: Matt Oates, Sue Achenbach, and Lauri Kobar. While all three have had some mount-making experience, I was a blank slate, eager for the chance to wield a soldering torch and bend some brass.
Over the course of the week, Bill taught us the process of annealing, soldering, and shaping pieces of brass to fit around 400-year-old German guns. For me, this involved a bit of a refresher on some physics and chemistry properties that had laid dormant in my brain since high school (for example, the melting temperatures of different metals, or why dunking brass in an acid bath, aka “nickel pickle,” creates a chemical reaction that removes fire scale).
In case you are also new to mount-making, here are the basics. Annealing is a process of heat-treating brass at high temperatures (600–800 F), to the point that the internal structure of the metal changes and the brass becomes softer, making it easier to bend. This is done with a butane torch over a workstation made of heat-resistant bricks. The brass is then dunked into the nickel pickle and sanded down to remove any sharp burrs. Next comes the trickiest part: soldering! Using the butane torch, bits of nickel are melted into droplets and applied between two pieces of brass. The nickel solidifies almost instantly once the torch is removed, sealing the brass into one bigger piece.
Once the mounts were shaped and soldered together, they received another pass through the belt sander, which rendered them smooth and shiny. We then did a test staging in the woodshop to ensure proper fit and balance. In the week after the workshop, Matt and Lauri worked on painting the mounts, carefully replicating the floral detailing on the firearm handle to blend in seamlessly with the firearms.
I joined this workshop expecting that my biggest challenge would be the steep learning curve that comes with working with new tools and materials. As it turns out, like most art practices, mount-making takes an incredible amount of patience, focus, and determination (and yes, these were challenges too!). The soft skills of art preparation can’t really be taught in a weeklong workshop, but thankfully I had Sue, Matt, and Lauri to guide me along the way. I was grateful for their encouragement, especially when I was ready to break down after every failed soldering attempt. We laughed, did not cry, and together churned out six custom firearm mounts. As Recording War reached the end of its exhibition period in December, I circled back to the team members to get their thoughts on the workshop, and on mount-making as a practice.
Matt: My background is in realistic painting, so it was nice to be able to do that with mounts. Every work of art is different, so every mount is different. You have to bring your own take to it, which is what makes it fun . . . there’s a lot of stuff you can’t teach.
Sue: It’s the meeting of reality and imagination. Because I think a lot of people think of a mount in one way, but to get from that to reality can be problematic . . . There is no right answer—there’s only the one you land on that you like the best.
Lauri: It helps to fail. Personally, I might do a little rough drawing, but I like to start actually making something, and it kind of evolves from that . . . But it’s not about the mount, right? It’s about trying to make the objects accessible so people can appreciate them.
Nicki: What about our bonding experience as a team? Do you think we all became friends?
Sue: I think we all developed as a team.
Matt: I think that was a leading question.
This post was authored by: Nichelle Gaumont, Hood Museum Board of Advisors Mutual Learning Fellow
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nichelle Gaumont is the 2021–24 Mutual Learning Fellow in Registration and Collections. Prior to joining the Hood Museum, Nichelle served in an Americorps position with St. Paul Public Library in Minnesota, where she focused on increasing technology access and building digital literacy skills in local communities. She collaborated with non-profit Literacy Minnesota to research digital access in Minnesota’s counties and contribute to a needs assessment report for the MN Dept of Education. She also served in an Americorps position with the George W Carver Museum in Austin, Texas, where she facilitated virtual arts and science workshops for Austin youth. Nichelle graduated from the University of Portland with a BA in psychology and a minor in communications.
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