We may be uncertain about our opemimg date, but other things are happening!

Register for the Museum Foundation AGM

The Annual General Meeting of the Cobourg Museum Foundation will be held on Wednesday April 21st at 7pm via a Zoom Video conference. All members are encouraged to attend.

To register please send an email to info@cobourgmuseum.ca or call 905-373-7222 to leave your email address. On Tuesday April 20th the link to the Zoom meeting will be emailed to those who have registered.

COVID 19 and Opening Day

With the recently announced Stay At Home order it appears increasi

ngly unlikely that the Sifton-Cook Heritage Centre will be opening for business on the scheduled May 22 date. The CMF Board will continue to monitor the situation, but a certain amount of lead time is necessary to prepare for opening and that window moves forward as the pandemic maintains its grip.

The plan remains that when we do open next it will be with the exhibit originally planned for 2020, The Heinous, The Heroic and The High Flyers.

In the meantime, we wish you all the very best in these troubling times. Please stay safe! Updates will be posted on our website: www.cobourgmuseum.ca

A Future for the Brookside Property

Strathmore Mansion at the Brookside Estate, Cobourg, ON

There has been quite a stir in Cobourg’s arts and heritage community lately. Since the Province announced its intention to vacate the grounds and buildings which have long served as a youth detention facility our imaginations have been working overtime.

Well aware of the fact that low cost housing is a high priority need, many see the facility as a once in a lifetime opportunity to consolidate the various aspects of heritage and the arts in a way never before possible. The main building, known as Strathmore, is undoubtedly a heritage gem, the last remaining of the large summer homes of the area. Many local organizations have expressed an interest in it for rehearsal and performance space. Another suggestion put forward is for it to be a training facility for the hospitality industry with meals being prepared and served by students.

All the dreams depend on so many contingencies. Will some branch of the Province move in? Is there any will to raise the necessary funds? Is it even practical to consider upgrading Strathmore to meet current standards? What part might the Town play? Etc? But in the meantime dreams are being built, and the various arts and heritage organizations are wondering whether, for this project at least, they can find common ground and work together.

The Certo Building

Certo Building in need of repair, Cobourg

Since the Kraft property is still up for

sale no one knows what will happen to the little Certo building which has attracted so much attention. But from the outside at least, its renovation looks to have gone well suggesting that the current owners are serious about their commitment to its restoration.

Here is a recent picture to compare with the state it was in just a few months ago. Presumably one of the conditions for the new ownership will be to keep the building as a heritage artifact.

Fern has Easter Visitors

Fern Blodgett Sunde Statue with visitors Easter 2021

It’s good to see that the Fern Blodgett Sunde Statue was welcoming an increased number of visitors over the Easter season. Thank you to Experience Cobourg.

I never Understood Bitcoin - Now there are NFTs

Illustration for NFTs and Bitcoin from www.filmdaily.co.

To the best of my knowledge, NFTs are just like Bitcoin, mysterious things out there, which I don’t understand, but somehow are valuable and are attached to a blockchain, whatever that is. If you understand more than that, and think you might be able to enlighten me, do feel free to reply and someday we can have a session at Tim’s, physically distant but intellectually engaged!

I’m not really interested in Bitcoin, but would really like to understand NFTs, and it appears that the two are related. So, here is what I’m finding out.

From what I read, “an NFT (non-fungible token) is, in essence, a collectible digital asset, which holds value as a form of crypto currency. Much like art is seen as a value-holding investment, now so are NFTs.” In the same way that a picture can be converted into a digital form which I can send to you over the Internet, many things can be converted into digital form. But that doesn’t make the digital form (token) particularly valuable. The value comes largely from supply and demand.

But, since almost everything is already available digitally for free, in those cases the supply is unlimited and the value limited. So the real value seems to come in new creations, “virtual” ones, not “real” ones. Apparently a Toronto artist/architect recently created a virtual “Mars House” which she sold for $500,000! NFTs have been created from world famous art which was then virtually “enhanced”. It has been suggested that every modern home should have a virtual wall where the NFTs can be displayed.

I haven’t even mentioned that purchases and sales take place in cryptocurrency. And then there’s “mining” and the challenge to the environment (real, not virtual) which that represents! Although It made me feel only moderately wiser, I do recommend this article:
https://www.creativebloq.com/features/what-are-nfts
No charge, cryptocurrency or otherwise.

(Stanley Isherwood. Illustration: www.filmdaily.co)

"bringing our story back to life..."

We may be uncertain about our opemimg date, but other things are happening!

Register for the Museum Foundation AGM