Progress on New Museum for Dressler House

Marie Dressler Foundation is planning an expansion of the museum at Dressler House to include sections for the other two Canadian female Oscar winners: Mary Pickford and Norma Shearer and at the Council Meeting on 13 January 2020, the team working on this gave a progress report.  Toronto University agreed to offer the project to students in their Master program for Museum Studies and 5 students accepted: Michelle Wright, Enya Barbeau, Karen Cheung, Natalie Heaton and Emma Myers.  They presented a brief overview of what the museum will look like and talked about the great access they had to experts who are knowledgeable about the two stars plus thousands of artifacts – mostly photographs and film clips.  It appears that this will be the first museum dedicated to these Oscar winners so the artifacts will have a home.

l-r: Enya Barbeau, Michelle Wright, Natalie Heaton,
Karen Cheung, Emma MyersLike the existing Dressler museum, the new museum(s) will make liberal use of iPads and TV screens and will feature interactive components.  The Themes will emphasize not just movies made but also their personal lives and what they worked for.

Major Themes

• Mary Pickford was instrumental in building early Hollywood.
• Norma Shearer’s film roles pushed social and gender boundaries.

Their work is expected to be completed by April 2020 with the next step implementation which will hopefully start this summer - although this depends on fundraising and awarding of grants.  The Town recently agreed to a grant of $4000 for this project. Total cost will not be known until the design is complete.

Downloads

Presentation by Design Team - includes planned layouts of rooms and names of sub-themes.