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Guide to the Gold Fever! exhibition collection
MS0079
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Table of contents
Title:
Gold Fever! exhibition collection
Dates: 1998-2000
Bulk Dates: 1999
Collection number: MS0079
Collector:
City of Sacramento
Collection Size:
3 linear feet (4 boxes)
Repository:
Center for Sacramento History
Sacramento, California 95811-0229
Abstract: The collection documents the exhibition
Gold Fever! The Lure and Legacy of the California Gold Rush, which was held at Sacramento’s Memorial Auditorium from August 1 to October 31, 1999. Organized by the Oakland Museum of
California, the exhibit commemorated the sesquicentennial of the California gold discovery, documenting both Gold Rush history
and the history and growth of California. Material dates from 1998 to 2000 and includes correspondence, legal documents, financial
records, tour information, staffing information, security procedures, incident reports, facilities information, promotional
and educational materials, audio guide transcripts, exhibition photographs, and videos.
Languages:
Languages represented in the collection:
English
Collection is open for research use.
All requests to publish or quote from private manuscripts held by the Center for Sacramento History (CSH) must be submitted
in writing to csh@cityofsacramento.org. Permission for publication is given on behalf of CSH as the owner of the physical
items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the patron.
No permission is necessary to publish or quote from public records.
[Identification of item and/or item number], [box and folder number], Gold Fever! exhibition collection, MS0079, Center for
Sacramento History.
Acquired from Richard Feinburg, agent of the City of Sacramento, in 2000 (accession number 2000/128).
Processing and finding aid by Rachel Markgraf and Jennifer Peterson, 2006. Finding aid edited by Kim Hayden, 2020.
Biography / Administrative History
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, the Oakland Museum of California
organized the exhibition
Gold Rush! California’s Untold Stories.
Gold Rush! consisted of a historical exhibition called
Gold Fever! The Lure and Legacy of the California Gold Rush, and three art exhibitions:
Art of the Gold Rush: Painters and Prospectors;
Silver and Gold: Cased Images; and
The Discovery of Gold in California: Paintings by Harry Fonseca.
The exhibit was first displayed at the Oakland Museum of California from January 24 to July 26, 1998, before traveling to
the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles from September 19, 1998, to January 24, 1999, and finally to Memorial
Auditorium in Sacramento from August 1 to October 31, 1999. In Sacramento,
Gold Fever! ran simultaneously with
Silver and Gold: Cased Images at the Crocker Art Museum. Smaller versions of
Gold Fever! traveled throughout California from May 1998 until October 2000.
The $1.4 million exhibition in Sacramento was primarily funded by the City of Sacramento, Sacramento County, and Golden One
Credit Union, which each contributed at least $200,000.
Gold Fever! organizers, led by project manager Milita Rios-Samaniego and exhibit manager Dick Feinburg, raised the remainder of the required
funding from local sources.
Although
Gold Fever! was organized and curated under L. Thomas Frye of the Oakland Museum, only one-third of the 1,600 artifacts used in the Memorial
Auditorium exhibit were from the Oakland exhibition, requiring organizers to borrow artifacts from other institutions and
private donors. Several local curators and scholars were responsible for acquiring other artifacts, including Janice Driesbach
of the Crocker Art Museum, James Henley of the Center for Sacramento History (then known as the Sacramento Archives and Museum
Collections Center), Frank La Pena of Sacramento State University, and California State Librarian Kevin Starr.
The exhibition was designed to tell California’s history starting from the earliest fur trading settlements up to the year
of the exhibition. This was achieved by leading visitors through consecutive rooms and using audio guides with actors reading
from diaries or newspaper articles of the time. The exhibits and audio guides were supplemented with volunteers dressed in
Gold Rush-era attire and interactive components, like gold panning outside the auditorium. One of the highlights of the exhibit
was the “Wimmer Nugget,” believed to be one of the nuggets found by James Marshall on January 24, 1848.
The exhibit included sections on the negative impacts the Gold Rush had on Native Americans, women, and the environment, but
it was criticized by the Indigenous Community Outreach Network (ICON) for not fully presenting the Native voice and downplaying
what they referred to as the holocaust of California’s Native population during the Gold Rush. ICON staged protests outside
of the exhibit, and one of their representatives, Susan Reece (Mohawk and Ottawa) was accused by security of recording the
copyrighted audio guide during a visit to the exhibit. Ms. Reese said she was using her recorder for personal notes of the
exhibition content and claimed her treatment was racial discrimination. Several meetings were subsequently held with exhibition
organizers, city and county officials, the community, and staff of the Oakland Museum. In the end, the exhibition gift shop
agreed to sell copies of Pratap Chaterjee’s book
Gold, Greed and Genocide, which ICON provided.
Other publications created in conjunction with the exhibit included Art of the Gold Rush by H. Jones and J. Driesbach, Silver
and Gold by Drew Heath Johnson and Marcia Eymann, and Rush for Riches: Gold Fever and the Making of California by J. S. Holliday.
A statewide curriculum,
Myth & Reality: The California Gold Rush and Its Legacy, was also created for fourth, fifth, eighth, and eleventh grades.
Further information and an online exhibition of
Gold Fever! is available at http://explore.museumca.org/goldrush/fever.html (still an active URL as of Feb 2021).
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection documents the planning, execution, and promotion of
Gold Fever! The Lure and Legacy of the California Gold Rush held at Memorial Auditorium from August 1 to October 31, 1999. Material dates from 1998 to 2000, with the bulk dating from
August to October 1999. Material includes correspondence, legal documents, financial documents, tour information, staffing
information, security procedures, incident reports, facilities information, promotional and educational materials, audio guide
transcripts, exhibition photographs, and videos.
The collection is arranged into 7 series:
- Series 1. Administration, 1998-2000
- Series 2. Staffing and training, 1998-2000
- Series 3. Security, 1998-2000
- Series 4. Facilities, 1998-2000
- Series 5. Public relations, 1998-2000
- Series 6. Exhibition, 1998-2000
- Series 7. Audiovisual, 1998-2000
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in
the library's online public access catalog.
Museum exhibits
Museum exhibits--Planning
Exhibitions
California Gold Rush, 1848-1852
California--History