Please remember to turn on your microphones when you're ready to speak.

Without further ado, I'll call a meeting to order since it's four o'clock.

Meeting of the commission.

Oh, good to know.

Um, Evans, I mean, Commissioner Evans.

Commissioner O'Neill.

Here.

Commissioner Thomas.

This house.

And thank you.

And Commissioner Warchkowski.

Thank you.

We do still have a forum a quorum of four.

With two commissioners opposite.

And I can take this time to remind the public about how they can participate in this public meeting.

You can permit to participate in person at City Hall or remotely by Zoom or telephone.

The information to join can be found on the meeting agenda at iSearch Monterey.org.

Remote commenters are muted until it is their turn to speak.

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And if you are connecting on Zoom, there is no time to let delay.

Excuse me.

I skipped present.

I'll introduce our Monterey Museums, Brianna Schwerling, and she'll be presenting our Monterey art collection.

So turn it over.

Good afternoon, Museum Commission.

My name is Brianna.

Um, the Artifact Specialist for City of Monterey Museums, and today I'm going to talk with you about the city's art collection.

Is your microphone on?

Can you hear me now?

No.

Little light.

Okay, is that better?

Try that.

Can you hear me now?

No.

That's better.

Yeah.

Thank you for trying.

Testing.

Testing?

Much better.

Okay.

I'll try this again.

So I'm Brianna.

I'm the artifact specialist for the City of Monterey Museums.

And today I'm going to talk with you about the city's art collection and the art inventory that I have been working on.

So the topics that I'll cover today in the presentation are a bit of background on the types of works that make up the larger art collection, projects that I've been working on around the art collection, and the needs of the collection.

So there are over 400 artworks in the collection.

149 of the artworks are on display.

And so that includes the museum sites as well as uh city offices and the artwork that you see here in council chambers.

307 artworks are in storage, and four artworks are currently on loan to other institutions.

One of the artworks that's on loan is the Casa Moonras mural endomosaic.

It is currently on display at the Stanton Center, and it will be on loan to the Monterey History and Art Association until 2034.

This artwork um the Casa Moonres commissioned Emile Norman to create this endomosaic for their dining room in 1956.

Or excuse me, in 1954.

And then the case that it is sits in, it was custom designed for this display, and it was inspired by Emile Norman's home in Bixer.

Another project that or a project I've been working on related to the art collection is making sure that we have updated loan agreements.

And so I've been communicating with collections managers at other sites that have the works on loan to make sure that we have updated records as well as the borrowing institutions have updated records on their end as well.

One of the collections in the larger art collection is the De Haven Collection.

The De Haven collection had a long way of making its way to the city of Monterey.

Um in 1941, in December of 1941, Augusta Louise de Haven passed away, and she bequeathed her collection to the city of Monterey.

But then her artwork was stuck in a legal battle for almost two decades.

Her children were living in Germany at the time, and that was the start of the US's involvement in World War One, or excuse me, World War II.

And so the US government froze her property and the artwork sat in storage for almost two decades.

And the trust went bankrupt, so her artwork went up for auction.

And an art dealer in Carmel by the name of Harold Smithson purchased the artworks.

And then Margaret Jax, the daughter of David Jacks, purchased the work from Smithson, and she gifted the works to the city.

And that was how they ultimately ended up as part of the collection.

Yes.

The chair is somewhat hard of hearing.

So that's okay.

And I forgot to mention at the start of the presentation.

Please feel free to ask questions at any point during the presentation.

A few of the artists that make up the collection are Armin Hansen, William Richel, Euphemia Charlton Fortune, and Paul Whitman.

We also have works by the Peters family.

And as I started working on the inventory, this was a collection, or these were artworks that I found interesting that there were several members that were all interested in art and inspired by the Monterey area and the landscapes.

And you can see that in the work that they created.

So the painting that is pictured on the left is by Constance Peters.

She was the second wife of Charles Rolo II.

And that painting is currently on display at the city attorney's office.

The painting pictured in the center is on display in the planning office, and that was created by Charles Rolo the Second.

And the painting on the right is a watercolor done by their son DeWitt Peters, and that painting is currently in storage.

Another feature of the art collection are the Monterey Angels.

In 1956, the city had a volunteer holiday decorating committee.

And the committee commissioned the artist Erica Frank, also known as Erica Barton Haba to create the angels.

And so with the picture on the left, the angel that's displayed on the left is from the series, the 1956 series.

The angel in the center is from 1973, and then the angel on the right is from 1999.

And so we have 100 Monterey Angels in the collection.

Another piece of the art collection is the public art that you see around the city.

There are statues and sculptures and paintings.

This also includes the art that's on display at the Monterey Conference Center in the Sports Center in Colton Hall, as well as the Monterey Public Library.

And this art, there is a walking tour app on the city museum's website, and it has all of this art on it.

And you can pinpoint on the map where these pieces are located and learn a little bit about each piece and the artists that created them.

As I mentioned, there's also art that is on display at the library.

The painting on the left that is in the community room, and the painting on the right is displayed over above the doorway of the entrance of the library.

There are 31 artworks on display at the library, and some of the pieces were gifted directly to the library, and then others were gifted to the city to then be put on display in the library.

Now I'm gonna go over some projects that I've been working on related to the art collection.

So the main project that I have been working on is an art inventory.

We want to make sure that we have records and are keeping track of all of the work that is in the art collection.

And so what is involved with this inventory is making sure our digital records have up to date information.

So this includes the catalog number, object ID number of the artwork, the title of the work, the artist's name, a description of the piece, dimensions, the location, and making sure there's an updated photograph.

And so with this inventory, um, I went to the different city offices and tracked down where the artwork was located because pieces had been moved over time, and then the up the location hadn't been updated in the record, and so that was an important piece for going through this process.

Part of the inventory, I also attached archival tags to the paintings.

A lot of the paintings didn't have information notating that they were part of the collection.

So I was able to track down the object IDs and then put these archival tags on there so people that come along in the future can see that they're part that these works are part of the collection.

Another component is a condition report.

So tracking the conditions of the works and if there's any damage, taking photographs and detailed notes to include in the record of what the condition is.

And your work so far, roughly um how what fraction of the 400 or something pieces uh actually have an archival tag and are in uh reasonably good condition.

I would say probably 95% of the collection has archival tags.

Um that isn't really a process that we can follow with the sculptures that are around town.

Um in another slide, I'm going to talk about interpretive signage, and so I'll get back to that.

Um that point with that.

Good.

And then another component is rehousing.

So when I started the inventory, Brian assisted me with it, and we went to a city office that was no longer in use, but there were over 20 works on display in that office that were part of the art collection.

And so we were able, we inventoried those, took them off display, and then put them back in our collections storage.

Thank you.

So this is the current state of our primary collections storage site.

Um, and so with the photo on the left, you can that is the side where all of the artwork is stored.

Um, and then the photos in the center and on the right are the rest of the collection.

So this includes the artifacts, the archival materials, as well as the photo collections.

And this is a concern because their overall collections, museum's collections have outgrown the storage space.

And so, in looking at this, um, in March of 2025, I met with a consultant from the Northeast Document Conservation Center.

They have a program that's funded through the California State Library, and it's called Ready or Not, and it's an emergency preparedness program related to collections, and it was a free consultation, and the consultant came out and toured our collection storage sites and gave recommendations on what can be done to help protect the collections and get them up off the floor because some of the concerns I have with the artwork is the shelving unit that's behind the cart sits on the floor.

There's no space above the floor.

So if there was a flood, um, there isn't that recommended space between the collections.

This is another one of our storage sites.

Um it's where the Monterey Angels are housed, as well as some other artworks and some artifacts.

It is a shared space with other city departments, and so it's a pretty small portion of the site where collections are stored.

The angels are need a better housing system because as you can see from the photograph, they're leaning up against one another, and they're already in a pretty fragile state, especially the series from 1956.

There's paint that's peeling and have just been weathered over time from being on display every every winter season.

Oh, and then the other component I forgot to mention as far as storage.

In June of this year, I applied for a groundwork grant, and that is tied to the protection of cultural heritage and preserving collections and artifacts.

For the city offices to request artwork from the collection, I created a Microsoft form that lives on the city staff web page so they can fill out this form requesting if they want to have artwork added to their office space or if they want artwork removed.

And this also helps with tracking the location of pieces.

And so the information that I've added to the form for them to fill out is their contact information, where their office is located, and for an estimate of the space of where they're considering having artwork displayed because there are paintings and photographs of so many different sizes in our collection, that just gives us a sense of what to recommend if they have a general idea of what they would like to have on display.

Now I'm going to go into future needs of the art collection.

Say that a little louder.

If anyone can tell me where these three pieces are on display in the city.

So part of the needs of the collection is making sure we have interpretive signage for all of our works.

All of the works that are public facing as well as the works in city offices.

Something we've experienced so far is as people come and go in their jobs in the city.

New employees don't always know that we have artwork that's part of the collection.

And so it's important to have that noted so they don't think that the person that was in the role before them left artwork behind.

Another need is to review artworks for deaccession.

The work on the left is a tapestry that is on display at the conference center, and that was one of the initial pieces purchased as the part of the larger group of works to be on display at the conference center.

A piece of that size, and because it's a tapestry piece, there's quite a bit of maintenance required to look after the piece.

And if we were to take that artwork down and display something else in its place, we don't have the storage space to store a tapestry of that size.

The path of history map in the next photo is made up of eight wooden panels.

Those are currently stored at the second facility that I showed you a photograph of.

Initially on display at the Portola Hotel, but they no longer wanted them on display, and they're not in good condition.

The paint is peeling and they're just sitting in storage.

And so that would be an example of another piece to consider for deaccession because it's not going to go on display again.

So recently we migrated to a collections management system called Catalog It.

One of the reasons we wanted to move to this program is because it has a public-facing website known as the Catalog It Hub, where the public we can list our collections on this site and the public can view them.

With our past program PastPerfect, there wasn't a way for the public to view collections.

The public could only see the collections that we had on display at our museum sites.

And so this would be a great addition to making collections more accessible to the public.

And I wanted to show you an example of another museum site that has that uses catalog it.

It's hard to read these.

Yeah.

This was just a screenshot that I took of other museum sites, but I'm going to open up a web page to show you what the catalog at Hub looks like for another museum site to use it.

So this is the Cameron Stanford House in Oakland.

And from here you can see they have 450 items in their collection on display, they have it organized by different categories.

So there's a section called Explore the Collection, which just shows the larger collection that they've included on the hub, and then they have it broken down by the different rooms in the house.

There's a variety of ways that this can be organized.

So I'll go here to the period room, the family parlor, and it shows everything that's in that room that they've decided to share.

And you can click on the individual items and it'll show information about that item.

So it's a compass, the object ID associated with the object, and then the interpretive label that they created for the piece.

Let's see one second.

In this way, as well as digital exhibits can be added to the hub, and that's if someone wants to create an exhibition around a certain theme.

Another future need for the collection is funding for conservation.

Um, this past winter, library museums director Brian Edwards um had a few replicas created of the Monterey Angels, as I mentioned previously, the condition of the angels, there's paint that's peeling and chipping.

There's cracks in parts of the wood.

And so the angels that Brian had created were to be displayed on the major roadways in Monterey where there's more exposure to the weather, and um would help keep the originals safe.

Another example for concert that would be needed for conservation.

This painting is on display at the Presidio Museum, and with the photo on the right, you can see that there's cracks in the paint, and that extends to the entirety of the painting.

So this is something where we would want to have a replica created and have that on display, and then put the original in storage.

This will look at the display of public art in city buildings in outdoor spaces, and this will give a process for residents and businesses to be able to apply if they want to have public art or murals added to certain sites.

Brian, I don't know if there's anything that you would like to share about that.

Yeah, just that I know this has come in from requests from council and the mayor regarding some discussions on um murals and art, and one of the important distinctions I'd like to make is that for the majority of commissions that I've looked into, museums commit museums and cultural arts commissions tend to work on projects that are either funded or owned by the city, and so the artwork would be reviewed on there, and there's sort of a project for a public art policy, would have to include a process for if you're in a private venue.

How do you apply for that?

Because currently, if you are looking to do a mural in Monterey, City of Monterey, you do a sign permit through the planning department.

So that's where they have a certain sign, and there have to be specific guidelines for how you do public art and what that includes.

Also, because with us being a historic city here in California, I find that we have to look along the lines of other historic cities and how they've done public art policies within historic neighborhoods because we have a National Historic Landmark District as well as different neighborhood districts throughout City of Monterey with different guidelines.

So any kind of art policy that incorporates private should incorporate that kind of level of planning.

So that's why I've just been doing kind of research on there, but it's not going to be as simple as in my mind is like apply for a mural and you're good to go because there's different levels of how we can get it approved.

And then the last need that I have listed is an art and art appraisal.

The last time that the city had the artwork appraised was in 2007, and we have acquired artworks since then that are not included in that.

So it would be important to have an updated appraisal in order to determine what the insurance coverage should be for all of the artworks in the collection.

And lastly, these are the links for the museums division.

We have the museum's website, the public art walking tour, which can be accessed through the city website, iOS, Android, and then the phone number is linked to the audio tour and the museum's Instagram.

Is that new?

The public walking tour?

Yes.

Um, it has been around for a couple of years now, I believe it's something that Brian has been working on.

Yeah, it's it's basically it's something with the expanded out from the Path of History tour and the app, and I just added content for public art and went through.

I took a intern, I think last summer or the summer before, and him and I worked on taking photos and getting descriptions of all the different public art around there and geotagging it, putting it on the site.

I haven't seen it myself.

Yeah.

Well, the app is there, but then the um signage, and I'll talk about that later.

The signs are reflecting on some of these things around town.

Does anyone have any questions?

Any questions?

No, very complete.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

I can take this time to remind the public that if they would like to provide a public comment, they can do so in person at City Hall or remotely by Zoom or by telephone with the information found on the meeting agenda at iSearchmontere.org.

I guess now I can call for the present the uh the consent agenda.

Sorry.

The um consent is fairly short.

It's just the question of accepting the minutes of the um April, I believe it was.

Yes, April meeting.

And there were some errors in that.

In that, and you probably noticed the chairman back and forth and back and forth.

So that needs to be correct.

I need to update the chair on that, the chair sovereign at the top because it goes into the general public comments and that it's the chair thomas, chair sovereign, whatever.

So that one is the old 2024 format.

That's why on that one.

Are there any changes?

No other changes.

Any other observation of errors or the need of changes of the uh minutes on the last meeting?

I'll move approval.

Second.

Call for.

Thank you.

And who was the second?

Was it okay?

Thank you.

Sorry, I'm not, I'm learning everyone's name.

Um, so we have Commissioner Evans.

I mean sorry, Chair Evans.

Wait, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, you can tell it.

You can tell I'm filling in, right?

Commissioner Evans.

Uh, was our first, and then Chris O'Neill was the second, and we have Chair Sovereign.

Yes, I have both, yes.

And Vice Chair Kimsey.

Yes.

Okay.

And then Commissioners Thomas and Wachkowski are absent.

This motion carries and the minutes are approved with corrections.

Thank you.

Calling now for uh public comments.

I guess you have there are no public members, but online.

Yeah, just a reminder viewers at home can join the meeting by Zoom or watch live on YouTube.

The meeting information to join and provide public comment, if you like, is found on iSearchmonterey.org.

And there are no public comments at the moment.

Okay.

Third item is to confirm annual appointments for chair and vice chair for the coming fiscal year.

And Brian's gonna do that.

Yeah, all right.

I'll jump in and I'll first off on note that I had um copied over the chart, so to make some errors on this chart.

First off, that um the chair, is chair sovereign, vice chair of of the uh current is uh chair, vice chair is Renee Kimsey.

Um, but then also the term date.

So just the update on the term date.

Tim Thomas uh term date showing at June 30th, 2025.

And um Commissioner Thomas could not make the meeting today, but he also um notified myself and the city clerk that he would be moving outside of the city and unable to um extend his appointment.

So he did not apply for reappointment, and so he um Commissioner Thomas is stepping down.

Um chair sovereign's term date is June 30th, 2025, and at the Tuesday night city council meeting.

There was a topic on governance, and that will go over how um they will that topic was discussed about how the mayor and vice mayor will go forward with doing interviews for people that are interested in commission role.

So at this time, um, Commissioner Sovereign is still serving on this commission, but will need to be reappointed for a future meeting.

Um, yes, to reapply, yeah.

And Commissioner Evans should say June 30th, 2028.

Um, and um Vice Chair uh Rini Kimsey, her term date is correct at June 30th, 2027, and Commissioner O'Neill did um was reappointed last year.

So that went to June 30th, 2028.

And um Commissioner Wokowski, he is not present tonight, but his term date does end as well as June 30th, 2025.

So he would need to reapply for the commission.

So that being said, there are three people currently on here for the future that are currently going to be commissioners as of uh the meeting going forward.

So that would be Commissioners Evans, Commissioners Kimsey, and Commissioner O'Neill.

Um, based on the guidelines, also the guidelines are attached about who served without being serving as the chair the longest.

Um the chair coming in would be Commissioner Kimsey because you've not served as chair and Commissioner Evans and Commissioner O'Neill have served as chair in the past.

So with that, you would be even as um one of the newest commissioners here, you would be the um chair if you accepted it.

And then the vice chair would be commissioner O'Neill because you were last served as chair in 2020 and 2021, while uh Commissioner Evans was 2022-2023.

So with that, the um recommendation is that the commission the chair would be Commissioner Kimsey and Vice Chair would be Commissioner O'Neill.

Um, but we would like to make sure that you're interested in taking those roles and would accept that.

We're ready, right?

Okay.

So I think, so I think uh does the commission uh confirm and approve?

We need a motion.

I think we need a yeah, we can do our roll call.

Um just a reminder, commissioners Thomas and Wikowski are out.

Um, and then we have Commissioner Evans your vote.

Affirmative Vice Chair Kimsey.

Affirmative.

Commissioner O'Neill.

Affirm.

Chair Zaubern.

Approved.

All right, thank you.

That was unanimous, and the chairs will be rotated beginning at the next meeting.

All right, thank you.

Michael, all right.

So, but I can dive into this next one, which is the um Colton Hall music series.

We've been working on a lot of projects.

So I haven't done a full um call on this, but the last meeting, as you may recall, the um we've recommended that we do a series of music concerts in this fall.

And with that, with kind of the limited number of commissioners that we have, limited number of staff we have.

My recommendation on the report was basically to work directly with the chair or directly with the chair and vice chair and select music for those four concerts.

Like confirm the dates, confirm the amount.

On this one, I put a not to exceed total of $3,000.

I'm not entirely sure how much each concert would cost, but based on last ones where we spent between 500 and a thousand per performer, I felt 750 would be sufficient around that.

And so with that with those budgets and with that budget and my request to work with uh future chair Kimsey or with chair and vice chair, depending on how the commission would like to see, we would book the concerts, go forward, host the first concert, and then work on the letter for the donation moving forward with that.

And um part of that is I've connected with a um a group that does that books different musicians and concerts around the area, and they work also with our recreation department and they work with different concerts like at Colton Hall Lawn and everything.

So I've worked with them to just connect on getting a cost.

I haven't gotten a cost estimate yet, but they have some folks that might be available on specific dates.

So that would be my request going for going for this year that we we work on that to get this going.

I think there are some options that could produce uh good music, but at a somewhat lower cost uh if we had some staff time uh or a group of commissioners uh to review the music submitted by uh those who answer a call to the public for uh submissions.

Uh we have done that in the past, and uh I think it's brought in good music for considerably less than 750.

Uh but it takes some staff time to back it up and uh a very active group of commissioners participating.

So the reminder we have three commissioners moving forward out of seven on the on the actual commission.

We have we do not have the position that used to do all of the work to actually call that to order and put together a call and do the packets and do the mailings and review all of that work.

That position is not in the city anymore, and I'm not doing that work.

I'm just flat out.

I'm not gonna do that work of doing a call on a website because how are we doing it out and mailing it out?

Are we doing a call?

Am I paying the the weekly for an ad?

Do you know there's a lot of work in terms of doing a call to art when there is a group of people that hire the different musicians throughout the peninsula that have a website that have all of that musician's content on a list?

They have their YouTube page or they have their Spotify page.

It has all of their content of all their music that they list.

So if you work directly with the commission, like one or two commissioners rather than having a subcommittee and us doing all of the work of putting together a packet to mail out receiving packets, bringing going through everybody's packet and everybody's CDs or that's how it used to be.

It used to be we would send it out, and people would send in a CD, and people are not producing CDs.

Laptops do not even have CDs anymore.

So you would have to either create a Google drive or something which I don't have access to, pay for that and say, hey, we need a drive for somebody to upload their documents, upload their link.

That'll takes staff time, money, all of these things.

We paid, I'm using the 750 based on the contracts that we were signed in 2020.

That was what the museums department was signing in 2020 for concerts.

So it was between 500 and a thousand dollars.

One concert I think was about 13 or 1500, but that person was higher cost.

And that was a single person.

But I felt if we can get that.

Are working with youth orchestras and chamber orchestras.

Um, I've reached out to Monterey Symphony, I've reached out to the different groups out there in Carmel to see would they be willing to share any musicians or willing to have like a quartet or something like that?

But it takes a lot of time on my part to call people up to email people to meet with them and schedule.

But if I know a group that has says, hey, I can book somebody, it's gonna be a lot easier.

And we could put that in the hands of the choosing it rather than bringing up back.

We won't know if we bring it back to a subcommittee.

I don't even know when the next time we have a meeting is because we won't have a quorum until new commissioners are reappointed.

So it's if we want to get this done September or October, November, I I say we just put it in the hands of a working with me and or Melissa and our commissioners, one or two directly and just go forward.

So that'd be my recommendation going forward on that.

Well, I'm happy to work on that.

And in fact, I would love to work on that.

So I have the time and I will do whatever we need to do.

I would uh wonder if they have openings.

I mean, if there are people who are interested that they don't necessarily have on their list, can they apply to them?

Or is there some method to make it open to any of the local musicians who are interested?

And to doing concerts at Well, no, I think that might be something to look at for next year, but it because if it's, I think if it's we want to get things done this fall, and we're already in August, we need to move forward with just booking it.

I in my mind, like we need to book it and get the dates booked so that we know we have them on there.

If we want to do something next year, then we have to figure out how are we doing that call to action?

How are we doing that call?

Because right now, going back to it, is that it goes back to the how are we doing the promotion to people?

Because if we put out something on like the arts council website or something like that, are they going to charge us for doing an advertisement?

You know, or if we do something on another website or ad, who's going to charge us for that advertisement to do that work as well.

So we just have to figure out because we could do it in like maybe the library newsletter or something, a call to artists interested, you could do that.

But I well, can do you have the list of what they have on their list, or could you share that with me so we can work on that?

Yeah, yeah, there's actually a list of of different types of music, different performers.

And that's what I mean.

You and I could would be able to sit down and just move forward and say this is kind of the groups we want.

This is what we want for these four concerts for this fall.

So we'd have the fall series booked, and then moving forward, seeing how the funds come in, because then if we can go in the end of new calendar year, whether we go back to spring or summer, or is it spring, summer, or fall, and then when the commission, when we get more the reappointments, and they're bringing it back to the commission at the next time we have a commission meeting when we have more commissioners here to discuss how it went to move forward.

And did we um finalize the time?

Because we had discussed that before, and I had suggested that afternoon is a lot better for a lot of people.

They don't want to drive at night, you know.

Um a Sunday afternoon or something like that would be an ideal time, in my view, having worked with a lot of groups around here and um the people that generally had attended, because I attended past ones, we're not usually very young people.

There were an older group that were interested in that.

And I think um it's better if it's an afternoon time time frame.

Yes, I put on this either 2 p.m.

or 4 p.m.

Perfect.

And that's where I thought, because also if we around that time, we currently have if it's at Colton Hall.

If it was at Colton Hall at 2 p.m., we use the staff that are already there.

Saturdays and Sundays, we already have staff that are serving there at 2 p.m.

If it's at 4 p.m., then one of us has to stay longer, but we can we can adjust and figure that out, whether that's us or somebody from the library that's there to help staff that that day.

But Saturday or Sunday, Sunday is if we're doing Saturday, I would I would prefer Saturday just for the fact that typically um Melissa also works Saturdays, she supports our um library programs.

We have library staff that work Saturday.

They don't work Sundays, and so if we needed help, we could lean on the library staff to help us out on that Saturday looking at as a program and get people in there helping people you know set up, checking in and everything, so it's not just on a single person for that day.

Okay, and can we establish a meeting time?

For this first meeting.

I am happy if this commission wants to go move forward.

I think um if you're free next, either the 11th on Monday or the 13th, which is Wednesday.

September 11th or 13th.

Oh, not for the no for for us to meet, just for us to meet before scheduling scheduling the upcoming meetings.

I understand.

The 11th, there's something going on.

Could I let you know in the next couple of days?

Yeah, just get back to the I need to look at my calendar at home.

Sorry.

Well, it's fine.

But that's where I I don't know if the commissioners have other thoughts or comments on just going forward and well, I certainly would be interested in seeing what the the uh universe is as far as um what we're picking from or what you will be picking from.

But uh well, we could probably make that available.

If you have the list, we could make it available to all the commissioners to review.

Um, is uh two o'clock on a Saturday gonna interfere with the public visiting Colton Hall.

Possibly a bit, but it's the same thing where we've done other programs like when we do the Constitution Convention reenactment and we've done other daytime concerts there, and typically when we have people going through Colton Hall, sporadic through the day.

There's sometimes there's two, three, four, five, no, what zero one hour, ten at the next hour, so it's hit or miss at Colton Hall.

So I would say we would just set it as capacity for the you know, for that once that once it was full, we would have to have like a block the doors, you know.

But I I don't I don't have an issue with that because it's the same thing where we do public tours of the library.

I'm sorry, of Colton Hall for groups for school groups, and often the schools request to do the the tours at the same time as public hours.

So you might see 40 kids in Colton Hall, and all of a sudden, like two tourists walk in there and they're looking at what's going on in there, and then there's 40 kids walking through.

So it's just kind of how the building is used currently.

Okay, it was just the question.

Yeah, flash through.

Okay.

I think we got enough guidance for the moment um on the music program.

Well, so we can work for work forward and and you know, this is first time in a number of years, and yeah, we need to get a baseline.

Okay, that brings us to the end of the uh everything but the uh informational reports.

I see that the staff has been busy, but of course it's been three months or so.

So uh Ryan, can you give us a yeah quick version of for perfect?

I want to go through line by line, but first off, I want to highlight that our assistant library director Melissa Mejia started in may 2025 and then and brianna uh moved to full time as of july one so i don't know if either of you want to say anything yeah make it right actually button yep there you go all right hi commissioners uh yes i started in in mid-May and it's been about two and a half months now but there's been a lot of a lot of learning a lot of the the history side of of the job has been by far some of the most invigorating so that's been exciting uh it's been really great working with both sides of Brian's world so getting and tapping into the museum side but also learning about the library and so I do one of the conversations I had with Brian about the concerts and I do think it's a good way to kind of bridge those two worlds if we do it on a Saturday.

So I do think that that would be a great way for us to bring some of our library patrons over to Colton Hall.

But yeah so I'm excited to be here I'm excited to learn from from Brian and from Brianna and to work with you all.

So thank you so much.

Yeah.

And with that I'll just go through a couple of things in here and then we'll let my team chime in if you guys have any questions from us.

Um there you'll notice new statue inside of the lobby of Monterey Sports Center that was a private donor the daughters of Odessa um and so we worked on creating same thing as Brianna's talking about one of my things has been interpretive signage because I find that oftentimes we haven't always put up signs that are show where an item is or what um what the provenance is on it.

So um Dennis and Menace one of the two Dennis and Menace statues was moved in there.

So we added um signage for both the daughters of Odessa that one and the other uh school of fish that was in there the a couple things that I've been working on also is that I purchased a new what they call a Hanson Seacal which is a Johnson seahorse motor for the Pacific biological laboratories basement and been updating photos for interpretive photos for the lab because um the lab has been set up kind of like in their current state but we don't we I'm sorry we don't but we we operate open hours on those saturday dates so we do tours and the docents tend to have to do like a full talk because there's nothing is described nothing is really explained about where it is and so because it's a looking at it as a historic building we want to have things in there like okay this is this is Ed Ricketts this is John Steinbeck this is Carol Steinbeck.

These are this why these people this is why this is important because otherwise people are walking into the lab what is this like and some have a big huge knowledge and others do not so it's about adding some of the more descriptions in that space um there's a American planning association Northern California it's a conference of planners throughout the state it's going to be here in Monterey um September 28th through October 1st so we are planning to have a booth at that conference and on three days where we will talk about specific topics and I will have out some of different signage and different interpretive signage from around town I'll have the tiles that are used at Canary Row the walking tiles of the canning labels I'll have one of the new directional signs that I made around town um some new QR code signs I'll have path of history tiles there for people to see the physical signage that we use around town but then also get photos developed that show different areas of um Monterey and how Monterey became Monterey and the different developments so we'll be focusing on certain things so there are opportunities for people that may want to volunteer to help us out at that so I'll be in touch with commissioners if they're interested um I have a question yeah absolutely they have a focus for this meeting, or is it planning in general?

This well, it's generally it's for planners, like so it's for like planning department.

Oh, okay.

So they asked the state historical.

I think it was state's historical one of the contacts from state Historical uh society contacted us and said, Can you put up a display about it?

And I saw the display that was done at the last conference last year, and it was a bunch of little photos and small text.

And I wanted something that looked about, especially for planners who are looking at how do you do roadways and how do you change uh, you know, like how do you turn the train into uh a walking path, right?

To me, that's more interesting than a biography, like a photo and a little biography.

Planners are going to be more interested in how to use interpretive signage.

So for that, our booth is just gonna be focused.

I'm gonna try to focus it on that and focus on four kind of topics of Monterey History because Monterey History is so wide that you can cover a lot.

So we're gonna focus on a couple different topics on there and build out things, and then people can talk specifically on that.

Thank you.

Any anything related to the like the path of history?

Because I think that would be something that planners might be interested in.

So that's where um if you look at the if you're on the back of the packet where the one of the signs is the new Colton Hall sign that I had made, and you'll see it actually on Pacific Street.

So I'm gonna bring out that sign that's a 24 by 36 inch sign, which has the QR code, the phone number.

Um, I added those signs at three spots right now.

Um, Colton Hall, Cooper Molera Adobe, and Custom House, but I have the Casa Serrano sign.

I haven't put it up yet.

So I'm gonna bring that one over, but it's gonna have the the app to take them to the path of history and show them the tiles.

So we'll have the packs of the map for people to hand out, but we will talk about path of history too.

And then um, we are finalizing the specific dates.

We know the week of October 6th, the California State Supreme Court has confirmed that they'll be out at Colton Hall.

It would be interesting, yeah.

Last time was 1959, I believe.

Um let's see, there's gonna be a proclamation at the August Board of Supervisors meeting for this California 175th, so it's a 175th of statehood, so our admission day, and um that's actually one of the days I thought would be great for a concert just to do it on the admission day because it'd be the 175th of California.

Um, but I'm working with James Perry and Susan Klusmeyer from the Monterey County Historical Society on displays for that.

We're gonna do a display in the county lobby as well.

And uh exhibit signage, just so if you guys have seen uh if you go inside the jail, we updated the exhibit signs all throughout the jail.

Last time the text had been updated was 1983.

So it's been quite a few years, so we updated um all of that and a new timeline, did a lot of research on that, and it's been really helpful.

I think for that, and um yeah, Colton Hall, and then just on the packet in the back, you'll see the picture of the timeline on the back.

But this is the statistics on the back has a list of total people that we have from um January through July of this year.

So that's the so 4,225 people were counted at Colton Hall in that period.

Uh Presidio Monterey Museum as a reminder, that's only open Saturdays and Sundays.

That's 2033, and Pacific Biological Laboratories, seven public days, but 19 private tours, so that's 997 people.

And as a reminder, we are charging for private tours for our sites now, so it's not a huge amount, but it is cost recovery for that.

And the audio tours, the story, that's the that's the public art, that's the path of history.

We had 2,458 people use those right there.

So as of total, we had 9,713 people in this period interact with some of something on there.

With that, just there are some images on the back.

You'll see the displays, you know.

I have had two mannequins placed in the jail now, put in new signs throughout, and this the 24 by 36 signs.

I did those, um, I designed those and had those done by fossil graphics.

And um, I think they're I think they're they're good, but happy to answer any questions.

There's more in there, but as there are any questions for me and the team.

Um the um brain freeze.

Um, is a menace.

Yes, is there still a Dennis and Menace in the park?

And then there's another one in the in the uh sports center.

Is that or did the one in the park get moved to the sports center, or has it disappeared permanently?

So the one that was actually there was one that was in front of the Vasquez Adobe, the one that was in the Vasquez Adobe went to Monterey Sports Center.

So that was the one that came from Florida.

That was the one that was found over there was actually not the one that was stolen, it was the one that they a hospital was getting rid of and they thought it was the one that was stolen years back, but we actually got that one.

That's the one from the Monterey Sports Center, um, from that original cast that was done by the Carmel artist.

The one that was from the um Dennis and Menace Park that was damaged and repaired, is moved into the youth center building indoors.

So it's moved inside the lobby.

So if you go inside the youth center there at Dennis and Menace Park.

It had it next door to Dennis.

It's right next to, yeah.

The park doesn't actually have a Dennis the Menace anymore.

What no, what they actually actually what they did is they they made a new custom dentist statue made out of uh a material that is the material's not worth a lot.

You know, something I've had communicated this with Parks and Rec team, which is that if you're gonna build something like that, build it out of a material where the material isn't gonna be worth uh, it doesn't look good bronze, so it's basically it's a gold color, but it's made out of like a plastic thing.

So it's next to the train.

If you go inside the park in the train, the Dennis and Menace is there.

So I've been in contact with them.

We met with them because I said, you know, we should have a same thing about interpretation.

We should put something in there that says material plastic or resin, you know, so people don't think it's solved gold.

And then you say, um, built at this date and why Dennis and Menace is important because most kids today don't recognize and catch him.

They don't recognize Dennis the Menace.

And so if they come to this park getting some new signs that say why this is important and who donated Bing Crosby.

I think most people don't recognize Bing Crosby built the center.

Yeah, right.

So it's like those kind of things are getting lost to history.

So we should have more interpretation that says this is why they did that.

Yeah, that's for the parents.

The kids are there to play.

Exactly.

But the parents are sitting there bored out of their minds.

Yeah, the the jail sign is terrific.

Um especially the sign in or the log.

I thought that was really kind of neat.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, we went through a lot of um, we had a um a staff member I hired for a bit and I had him help me do some research, and we went through a lot of kind of did a drawing of what we wanted to do and in there and looking through the California history room and finding the old the jail logs and scan.

I took some scans from the state archives of the original rules for uh prisons and everything.

So using that is kind of like just getting a lot of different topics and reading I read a lot of newspapers for a lot of the additional dates and things.

That's great.

Notice that um there's one constitution reenactment this year, not two.

Possibly two, we're not sure.

We're we're we're at the talk with the performers.

I will say last year I think we paid for both, and it was it was a large cost, and because of the decrease in our budget for this fiscal year and certain things, we I I couldn't approve both.

Um, but they were looking at getting a from last time they talked with staff, they were looking at getting a sponsor or or doing another one.

But we just booked the one time, but they were talking about also for them doing two on the same day.

So thank you.

I think that'd be possible with the visiting court, might be interested in seeing one and maybe they would provide some funding.

Hey, if that's worth a try, yeah.

Well, we can always we always talk talk to them about the different programs and where they're coming from because I think a lot of the stake supreme court members are coming from San Francisco, you know, typically from out there.

But yeah, we'll see um what's there.

I mean, I will say the Constitution Convention, it is a uh large cost for us to do that program for one day.

We we will not get our money back from donations from people on there.

So it's um because they spend the time practicing all the different things, and it's not like most theater shows, you know, where you do it and you recoup your costs because you're doing 20 shows or or something like that.

You're doing multiple shows, but we just do one show.

So we're spending all that money and paying it.

So it's definitely be at time to try out the existing recording of we won't talk about that.

Yeah.

Brian, could you um tell me you said you're working on the contract for the tile art map?

Is that actually in place or it's still in process?

So, still in process because I noticed um an error was made in our um I noticed an error was made in our the budget that I submitted for the the city.

So I'm gonna have to ask for amendment and see if I can, I might have to go back to council to put money basically.

There's carryover funds from the trust, which I need to use to spend the money and uh commission had appropriated the funding and I'd asked for it in this budget, but it didn't get added into the trust budget.

So I'd need to go back to add that money into there before we go forward to ask for it.

But I've identified an artist that does tile art that would that could make a custom size over there for that um for that for that deanza map.

So they've already I've already identified I've contacted different artists and found an artist that would be willing to do it.

So you think it is still possible by the 250th anniversary?

Yes, yeah, that'll be next year, and they're I talked with them and they said they would be able to do it by next by March.

Thank you.

Are there other activities with regard to the Deanza anniversary that we know of?

Like is the state doing anything, or is the city other parts of the city doing anything?

Um yeah, so I'm let's see, I'd probably look at my email because I actually caught I got in contact with there's a there's a nonprofit, right?

There's a non-profit that's that's tied to the Deanza group, and I've reached out to them and I said, What's do you know of anything going on, or is there anything anything out there?

And they didn't have anything in this region of going on there in the map because um so I initially reached out to a couple different groups and talked with honorary history and art association and state parks and just said we get our heads together at some point to think about what's gonna be for there's also next year's the you know United States 250, right?

And so you've got the Deanza, you've got the United States, like we should get together and do that.

So I think that might be um good to do.

And I think there's also there is a group of uh what's called the Californianos, which are as a group of people that are descendants of from that original like Dean's expedition and things, and so I'll need to reach out to them because contacts that I've made so far.

I haven't seen any plans for any reenactment.

I haven't seen any plans for anything.

So I'd be open to ideas on what else we would be able to do.

The one thought that I had with my team was that can we because we have our new art display panels in Colton Hall, can we do even just like a Dianza display inside of Colton Hall?

Because I saw another museum that was rotating Deanza exhibits and like with information panels.

So if we could do something there, and I know we have some paintings um that reflect Tianza, I was at um MHAA, I was over at the Dowd House earlier, like last week, and they have some documents from nineteen seventy-six that were related, you know, the to the 200 year um celebration.

So if there was a even just a celebration at Colton Hall could be a possibility for us.

Like if there are other historical groups that are doing enactments either in San Francisco or other areas out there too.

There are families in Monterey who oh yeah.

Okay.

And uh do we need to urge the the mayor and vice mayor to get with the program so that we get people appointed.

Uh and that we can have another commission meeting in September or October or sooner.

Because we certainly want to see the music program moving on.

Absolutely, and we want to see that the commission continues.

Oh, absolutely.

And in my experience, it's not easy to find members of the commission.

All right, that's my own account.

Did you have a comment?

I would just like to say I'm delighted that we are moving forward with the music program.

You know, for a long time I've been talking about that.

I think it's just a wonderful program.

We have a beautiful setting for it too.

So yay.

Any members uh we don't have a public here, but I don't know, anybody online waiting to say anything?

Uh there are no hands are easy online or in the chamber.

Well, adjourn.

All right.

Thank you.

Yeah.