Arizona Historical Foundation

The Arizona Historical Foundation will clean, organize, repair, and re-house approximately 3,000 glass lantern slides. Often sold in “thematic sets,” lantern slides were at one time a near ubiquitous form of audiovisual material, a forerunner of the filmstrip. Due to their size and fragility, however, many have been lost. The Arizona Historical Foundation’s collection dates from 1880-1930 and documents Navajo, Hopi, and Apache reservation life, in addition to the area’s changing desert and mountain landscapes. This material is in high demand by archeologists, cartographers, hydrologists, conservationists, ethnologists, Native Americans, and historians seeking visual documentation for the history of the American southwest.