Last week, I was in Columbia, Pennsylvania to remove all wristwatches, historical artifacts, and related materials from the “James Bond Originals” kiosk and James Bond Wore the Quartz Revolution™ gallery [1] that I had curated at the National Watch & Clock Museum [2].
This should be a good thing.
As touched upon during a recent local Fox43 WPMT news segment [3], the “Museum of Time” is preparing to undertake a major reimagining and expansion of its “Wristwatch Gallery” — which was itself a wholly new offering that opened in 2014. Its set expanse ranged from a physical collection of World War I wristlets [4], to a wall-dominating photograph of Elvis Presley with signature Hamilton Ventura [5]. The whole of it was developed in-house by staff member Adam Harris [6], under Museum Director Noel Poirier [7] and National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors (NAWCC) Executive Director Steve Humphrey [8].
My connection with that came through one of the two just-off-the-main-aisle display cases positioned front-and-center in that gallery. Highlighted content in each was to change every twelve months, six months out-of-phase [9]. To get things rolling, I was asked to return to produce a display that would uniquely run for approximately a year-and-a-half. Case approaches were not intended to be coordinated with overall gallery curation; mine was not.
My contribution, “By the Books, with Two Original James Bond Watches,” opened on December 19, 2013, which turned out to be a month or so before the full Wristwatch Gallery of which it was a part had been completed.
The timing of this broad-spectrum display had also brought this content “back by popular demand,” some two-and-a-half years after the close of the “Bond Watches, James Bond Watches” gallery in April of 2011 [10]. This next round cachet translated to an increasingly directed discussion of how affiliated James Bond wristwatches could move from consideration as clichéd “movie watches” or niche collecting interest (as they could and do appear at almost any other “museum”).
Any next exhibition had to deliver a substantive, if not unique, bridge between consumer and horology.
“The Quartz Revolution” [11-13] was a logical focus for this, based on the EON Productions product placements beginning with Live and Let Die in 1973, and running through GoldenEye in 1995 [14,15]. No other museum had ever compellingly told the Quartz Revolution story; NAWCC had very much wanted to, for decades, but it had never been able to create something satisfactory on its museum floor.
James Bond Wore the Quartz Revolution opened as its own stand-alone gallery on the heals of the completed run for “By the Books,” late May, 2015. It was situated directly across the aisle from the Wristwatch Gallery [16], a little less than half its size in total square feet.
One hiccup we had in terms of feedback came in the form of people wanting to know why they couldn’t see any wristwatches associated with Sean Connery, or Daniel Craig. I addressed this around Thanksgiving time in 2017 with the “James Bond Originals” kiosk, placed within the far end of Wristwatch.
I personally underwrote and carried all expenses associated with both exhibits throughout their full run. Ironically, providing for this “addition” far more than doubled my financial investment in the Museum of Time for the years 2018 through 2023. I wouldn’t be surprised if “Originals” had been the most expensive display among all in the Wristwatch Gallery during that period.
Executive Director Steve Humphrey and the entire National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors organization were extremely interested in understanding and leveraging Quartz Revolution; I always felt like that team truly “got it” [17]. This James Bond approach featured importantly in a presentation given by Museum Director Noel Poirier on “Our Shared Horological Heritage” before the Horological Society of New York in 2016 [18], and has served as a central icon representing the Museum to this day [19,20]. It was also followed by formation of an advisory group tasked with undertaking an end-to-end review of Museum layout and proposing a visitor-focused experience presentation.
Then Mr Humphrey retired and his position was filled by Tom Wilcox [21]. Mr Poirier was recruited to an executive leadership position at a larger, not-completely-unrelated museum. And the first quarter of 2020 closed with “15 Days to Slow the Spread” [22], which would not see the National Watch & Clock Museum open again until January 6, 2021 [23].
It has yet to recover from [24].
In May of 2021, Rory McEvoy became the third NAWCC Executive Director during my tenure, with a position that had been expanded to include all responsibilities formerly under the Museum Director [25]. As a British citizen then residing in the United Kingdom, immigration challenges and “ongoing travel restrictions due to COVID-19” necessitated that he work remotely in this new role, through well-into 2022.
I did not end up meeting him until we got together (sans masks) at the Annual Convention in Dayton, Ohio, on June 24, 2022.
The most important priority for Mr McEvoy during that meeting seemed to me to be ensuring stability of my James Bond watch properties as displayed at the Museum.
I noted that I had been an NAWCC member since 1993 [26] and that I had brought “James Bond” to the Museum because of that commitment to the organization and its mission — and not the other way around. I then revisited the needs and goals orientation on James Bond Wore the Quartz Revolution gallery in much the same way as I had recalled a parallel-purposed conversation that Noel Poirier and I had had with Tom Wilcox five years earlier. I further expressed my continued support and encouragement for the whole-of-museum recasting as I best as I recalled that original initiative by Mr Poirier.
The next annual convention was held last July in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania [27]. The Museum of Time in Columbia naturally featured significantly as a part of that.
Given its local history, arrangements were made with watchmaker Hamilton [28-30] to invest in a complete make-over of the space in which it was predominantly featured — a section of the Museum that shared walls with the Wristwatch and James Bond Wore the Quartz Revolution gallery. Work was still in process when the convention opened, so it was decided to make a number of ad hoc changes to the Wristwatch Gallery in support of spotlighting the brand. This included rough kiosk relocation and removal of the Elvis Presley graphic.
During my decommissioning of Quartz last week, I noticed that some important Hamilton materials were then-currently displayed in the space on the other side of the area that I was there to vacate.
Bigger picture, the July 2023 convention experience served as a crucible for support in establishing “a wristwatch gallery that is worthy of the current level of interest in collecting wristwatches,” as Rory McEvoy later summarized it to me in a personal eMail. Subsequently, an actual plan has been drafted to “completely overhaul the latter section of the museum” — meaning, from the opening to the current Wristwatch Gallery and James Bond Watches Wore the Quartz Revolution, right on to the doors that exit into the Gift Shop.
It was nice to further get feedback from him that my James Bond exhibits that I had stood out to him as examples of engaging experiences to be referenced in going forward with his own obviously ambitious next undertaking.
Rather than having Museum staff disassemble and store my properties to accommodate installation of new flooring, painting, and perhaps wall reconfigurations, we agreed that I would make a trip to Columbia and handle all James Bond watch display materials and historic artifacts myself. We initially discussed dates in May, then last March. But in order to maximize “blank sheet of paper” thinking and contractor scheduling efficiencies on their end, I made the last full week of February work for my travel planning.
Throughout this end-of-cycle process, and right up to the last minutes before I walked out the door just before noon last Friday, I was asked if I’d be willing to be part of the “Wristwatch Gallery 2.0” team. I said that I would; my read on the nature and repetition of the ask was that it was more than “being polite.”
But James Bond Wore the Quartz Revolution will not be returning to the National Watch & Clock Museum.
Like “Bond Watches, James Bond Watches,” and all of its successors that have appeared there since 2011, the special presentation of history that it represented in its time, ultimately made it, itself — to paraphrase my friend Noel Poirier — history. Now only those who were there to experience it will know that that meant, how it felt.
OFF-SITE REFERENCES
- “James Bond watches 2015 exhibit teaser video”
April 4, 2015 / Dell Deaton (via Vimeo, accessed February 27, 2024). - National Watch & Clock Museum
(accessed January 8, 2024). - “National Watch and Clock Museum helps people travel through time”
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May 27, 2015 / Uri Friedman / The Atlantic (accessed February 28, 2024). - “Designing an Icon”
March 27, 2018 / Hamilton (accessed February 28, 2024). - “Adam Harris: From Museum Curator to Spotting Luxury Watch Fakers”
September 25, 2020 / Keith Lehman / NAWCC watchnews (accessed February 27, 2024). - “About Me”
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January 10, 2021 / Steamboat Era Museum (accessed February 27, 2024). - “Captivate Repeat Visitors with Little to No Budget”
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March 28, 2017 / Fox43 (accessed February 28, 2024). - “Ghosts in the Museum?”
September 17, 2015 / National Watch & Clock Museum (via YouTube, accessed February 28, 2024). - “James Bond Wore Quartz Wristwatches: You Noticed
September-October 2013 / Dell Deaton / NAWCC Bulletin, pages 426-429 (National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors: Columbia, Pennsylvania). - “Our Shared Horological Heritage: The National Watch & Clock Museum, by Noel Poirier”
February 1, 2016 / Noel Poirier / Horological Society of New York (accessed February 28, 2024). - “Museum Exhibits”
August 21, 2015 / National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors (via Internet Archive, accessed February 29, 2024). - “Museum Collection”
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LinkedIn (accessed February 28, 2024). - “15 Days to Slow the Spread”
March 16, 2020 / Trump White House Archives (accessed February 28, 2024). - “National Watch & Clock Museum is Columbia Pennsylvania is scheduled to re-open for visitors today”
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January 18, 2023 / Unesco (accessed April 12, 2023). - “Important Executive Director Announcement from NAWCC”
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March 5, 2010 / Dell Deaton (via Internet Archive, accessed February 29, 2024). - “Watch and clock collectors gather in Lancaster County for national convention”
July 13, 2023 / WGAL News 8 Local Pennsylvania (accessed February 29, 2024). - “Company Histories: Keystone Watch Co (Hamilton – Lancaster, Keystone)”
American Timekeeper (accessed January 13, 2024). - “Company Histories: Aurora Watch Co,” Id.
- “5 moments that help tell the story of the Hamilton Watch Co in Lancaster [From the archives]”
July 5, 2023 / Jed Reinert / The Lancaster Examiner (via LNP Media Group, accessed January 13, 2024).
