Amelia Earhart

Museum Monday: Amelia Earhart’s Goggles

January 31, 2021Harriet BaskasAviation historyAmelia Earhart, Barbie airline pilot, Children's Museum of Indianapolis, Museums

Courtesy Children’s Museum of Indianapolis

Here’s proof that you never know when you’ll come across something cool in an unexpected place.

Case in point: the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. The sprawling museum is not just the largest children’s museum in the world. It is also home to more than 130,000 artifacts, many of them true treasures.

One example: these aviator goggles that belonged to Amelia Earhart. According to museum notes, Earhart “supposedly didn’t enjoy wearing goggles, and would only put them on at the end of the runway and would take them off as soon as she landed.” The museum says these goggles were given to Earhart by a friend who also gave her a leather jacket and a flight cap.

No word on what happened to the leather jacket and the flight cap. But the goggles are on display at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis right now as part of an exhibit called Barbie You Can Be Anything: The Experience. In addition to telling the story of the iconic doll, the exhibit highlights more than 200 careers Barbie has had over the years. Airline pilot is one of them.

Mattel’s Amelia Earhart Barbie doll and the museum’s Amelia Earhart goggles are part of the exhibit.

Chill like Amelia Earhart

April 6, 2020Harriet BaskasAviation historyAmelia Earhart, history

It’s been a tough few weeks for a lot of us. And there are more tough weeks on the way.

We’re being told to stay home, keep our distance from others and stay away from airports and airplanes.

Yet, we’re being encouraged to stay busy.

So today we’re sharing two great “be chill” photos we found in the collection of the International Women’s Air & Space Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.

The photos are from a collection focusing on Amelia Earhart.

One shows her relaxing and reading a book.

The other shows Amelia in her garden.

If Amelia Earhart can take a break, I guess we can too.

Stay safe!

Amelia Earhart’s flight jacket – in Wyoming

June 23, 2015Harriet BaskasAviation historyAmelia Earhart, Buffalo Bill Center of the West, flight jacket

Amelia Earhart flight jacket – courtesy Buffalo Bill Center of the West

I’m putting finishing touches on a presentation I’ll be making at the Washington Museum Association conference this week about objects museums have that they rarely or never show to the public.

One of the treasures I’ll be featuring is Amelia Earhart’s flight jacket.

Not the one she was wearing on that last flight, of course, but one she clearly treasured.

The jacket is in the collection of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming (formerly the Buffalo Bill Historical Center) and there are photographs from the 1920s and 1930s showing her wearing jackets that look just like this one.

According to the museum, Earhart wore this jacket during a two week visit to a friend’s Wyoming ranch in 1934, when she an her husband were on a delayed honeymoon – and when they asked the friend to begin building a cabin for them on property they’d purchased in the Cowboy State.

In 1937, as Earhart was preparing for what would become her final flight, she began sending personal possessions – including this coat – out to Wyoming to have for use in her cabin.

But, as we know, Earhart and and her navigator, Frederick Noonan, vanished over the South Pacific on July 2, 1937.

That cabin never got finished and the jacket ended up in storage at the museum.

Amelia Earhart with with Carl Dunrud, who was building a cabin for Earhart and her husband in Wyoming. Courtesy Buffalo Bill Center of the West. Charles J. Belden, photographer, 1934.

Finding Amelia Earhart – in Cleveland

April 17, 2015Harriet BaskasAviation history, HistoryAmelia Earhart, Cleveland, Internatioal Women's Air & Space Museum

I had the great pleasure of visiting the International Women’s Air & Space Museum this week for a tour and a look inside a few storage boxes, including one holding artifacts relating to Amelia Earhart.

Here are a few snaps from the visit:

Storage box for Amelia Earhart’s items at International Women’s Air & Space Museum

Amelia Earhart’s flight suit

Amelia Earhart’s scarf

Helsinki Airport art cinema & Earhart’s plane twin

October 4, 2013Harriet BaskasArt, Exhibits, History, MusicAmelia Earhart, art cinema, Helsinki Airport, Museum of Flight

Helsinki Airport just opened a relaxation area.

Now there’s yet another cool amenity at that airport: an art cinema.

For the next six month’s the airport’s art gallery at gate 37 will be hosting an Art Cinema and showing the work of Finnish media artists.

First up: films about the Finnish people’s relationship with nature.

“Enter the red interior of ArtCinema. Take a seat and allow media art to steer your mind to another world. Return with a refreshed mind, and enjoy your flight,” said Art Cinema Anna Forsman in a statement.

And a new exhibit about Amelia Earhart is opening in Seattle on October 12 at the Museum of Flight.

“In Search of Amelia Earhart,” features a 1935 Lockheed Electra airliner that is the same type of plane as Amelia Earhart’s and one of only two in existence. This one has the same modifications as those made to Earhart’s plane and this one was flown around the world in 1997 on the 60th anniversary of Earhart’s global flight attempt.

The Museum’s Lockheed Electra passes Seattle on its final flight, Sept. 21, 2013. Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/The Museum of Flight.

The museum’s “Amelia” exhibit tells Earhart’s story through original photographs, newspapers, newsreel footage and Earhart’s personal belongings including her pilot’s helmet and goggles, and the only known surviving piece of the Lockheed Electra Earhart flew on her ill-fated flight around the world in 1937.

Not in that exhibit: Earhart’s iconic leather flight jacket which is in storage at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. More about that here.