Jenna Bossert's Introduction

     Cultural institutions have long been of interest to me, but it was not until halfway through college, I realized that this line of work was my calling. I have visited many museums in my lifetime across the country. However in all that time, I had not thought about how the museum was run or who was in charge of different aspects of the museum.

     When I began college, I was a New Media Interactive Development student. While I still have a love of new media and technology, I realized my passions were more aligned with the following: history, art, fashion, education, information sciences, and other cultural institutions. I joined the Museum Studies major officially in Fall 2014 though I had already taken nearly 1/2 of my course requirements for the program. Interning in the summer of 2014 at the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology (MOST) in Syracuse, NY solidified my decision to switch my major. 

     While I worked at the MOST, I was a Marketing and Public Relations intern and I had a variety of tasks. I am going to focus on my main project throughout my internship. I coordinated event programming for the MOST's July and August Science Socials through organizing volunteers, vendors, and concepts for the event. I led the July Science Social and I worked with the Education department to create scientific demonstrations for attendees at the MOST's Science Social. I worked with the Marketing and PR department to advertise and brand the Science Socials.

The poster for the Science Socials @ the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technoly (MOST)

      Another pivotal position that inspired me to change my major is my job as an archival assistant at the RIT Archives. I began in Fall 2014 and fell in love with many aspects that come with the job. Since working there, I have gained a wealth of knowledge about RIT. However my favorite objects that the RIT Archives has are not at all related to RIT or Rochester. These objects would have to be the artist books and the plethora of older issues of magazines such as Seventeen, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue. A potential proposal for my senior thesis is researching how 20^th century women’s fashions are depicted in various mediums, such as these magazines, films, books, social media, and of course, the museum. In addition to researching the different depictions, I plan to research the styles of clothing and trends, as well as why they came about and how they are tied to historical happenings of the same time period. An example of this would be the loose flapper dresses that were all the rage in the 1920’s. This freeing fashion came about during a time of revolution for women’s rights. Clothes and trends with fashion may have more of a historical meaning than an aesthetic meaning, or at least more than meets the eye.