Close Reading Conclusions

I believe I have been exposed to the concepts of close reading before Research Methods began, but perhaps have just never called it by its name. I have utilized scholarly articles before for other classes and research projects, so I do have some experience dissecting literature to pinpoint an argument. However I haven't, until starting Research Methods, engaged with an article in such a structured way as identifying not only the research question and conclusion, but also identifying the research methodology and type of evidence the author presents.

I think that in learning to recognize and identify methodologies and evidence, I am getting better at comparing and qualifying different articles, especially while doing research for my thesis. I just read an article about the use of Web 2.0 features in online archives catalogs to enhance user browsability. The research methodology included a review of existing literature on the subject, a survey of a number of online catalogs of archives, and interviewed archives staff members regarding their opinions of the use of Web 2.0 features. Unfortunately, I feel that the researcher left out a major group which could have led to a more sound conclusion: users of digital catalogs. The research question asked if the effects of Web 2.0 enhanced users' ability to browse online catalogs, but the researcher never interviewed users of online catalogs. The interviews with archives staff did provide some insight into other aspects of the study that were beneficial to it's results, however there was not enough evidence collected to reach a conclusion one way or another about the effects of Web 2.0 regarding the success of online archives catalogs. After reading this article, I realized it probably isn't the strongest source of evidence for my own research topic.


Gresham, Emily, and Sarah Higgins. "Improving Browsability of Archive Catalogues using Web 2.0." Library Review 61.5 (2012): 309-26. ProQuest. Web. 27 Sep. 2017.

Joseph, Frances. “The New Zealand Design Archives: Digital Resource Building and Design History.” Journal of Design History, vol. 14, no. 3, 2001, pp. 227–236. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3527148.

Lessons in Research, Both Old and New

Prior to taking this class, I have had some experience with literature reviews as well as ideas related to close reading. I had spent one summer in 2015 gathering and reviewing articles related to disaster management simulations and the evaluation of pedagogic components of games. At the summer's conclusion, I wrote two literature reviews that would eventually become the basis for the chapter, "GIS and Serious Games" in the book Comprehensive Geographic Systems. For the research component, I was taught to condense my notes regarding literature into separate slides, where I would write a few quotes or key points. This way, I could easily extract them later if I wanted to use them in my paper. 

It turns out this method was quite helpful for me and I do not believe the research approach is much different for the field of museum studies. However, this class has taught me useful strategies for better optimizing my close reading. I particularly like the way we approach the dissection of articles by determining the question, methodology, evidence, and conclusion. This approach has helped me better understand research methodologies (namely qualitative ones) and also makes it easier for me to compare articles and their arguments side by side. Closely scrutinizing evidence has also helped me more clearly see the flaws in the author's arguments. For example, for this week I read the article "“Aesthetic Regard for Nature in Environmental and Land Art” by Emily Brady. Although I felt her argument defending land art was solid, closely examining the evidence revealed that she may have relied too much on artist testimony.This class has additionally helped with locating resources and better managing them via Zotero. Previously, I had mainly settled for vague keywords and sometimes less than stellar databases. For my paper, I expect to integrate my previous experiences with the lessons I have recently learned to best optimize the research process. 

B. Tomaszewski, A. Konovitz-Davern, D.I. Schwartz, J. Szarzynski, L. Siedentopp, A. Miller, J. Hartz, GIS and Serious Games, in: T.J. Cova, M.-H. Tsou (Eds.) Comprehensive Geographic Information Systems, Elsevier, 2017, pp. 15 pages.

Brady, Emily. "Aesthetic regard for nature in environmental and land art." Ethics Place and Environment (Ethics, Place & Environment (Merged with Philosophy and Geography)) 10.3 (2007): 287-300.

Musings on Museum Studies Research Methods and Close Reading

Before starting this class, I had a vague recollection of what close reading was.  I say a ‘vague recollection,’ because I’m fairly certain we covered close reading in a class in high school-- and then I never thought about it again.  This is because, at the time, it seemed like a colossal waste of time.  I’ll admit that sometimes it still does, especially when I know that I’m looking at a source solely to glean a single, specific fact or piece of evidence to support my argument or idea.  However, in light of the work we have been doing on close reading over the past few weeks, I can see its value in some situations.  For example, I frequently use academic search engines such as ProQuest to locate articles and texts to use for papers and projects.  However, as we all know, while search engines can be wonderful tools that save us time we would otherwise spend searching through every publication known to man for one article that suits our needs, there’s still a necessary element of human evaluation that is required after they return our search results.  Keyword searching, even with the use of parenthesis and modifiers (e.g. AND/OR), is an imperfect science.  For instance, for my thesis research I have tried every combination and permutation of “science museum/centre” and “history exhibit” that I can think of.  And of course, these searches have turned up hundreds of well-written scholarly articles that happen to feature those phrases… and have absolutely no relevance to my topic.  Some of these articles even have titles that appear to be relevant, like Alan Friedman’s October 2010 Physics Today article entitled “The Evolution of the Science Museum,” which, unfortunately for me and my work, covers more of a shift in visitor groups than in the types of content displayed.  I wouldn’t have known this, however, unless I performed a close reading of the article and determined that Friedman’s research question was something akin to “who were-- and are-- science museums for?” rather than, “how did the content displayed my science museums shift?” as I had hoped.1  In this way, close reading has helped me to weed out the works that are not appropriate (leaving me with disappointingly little to work with at the moment), which ultimately saves me the time and eventual headache when I realize that what I thought was an appropriate source actually isn’t.

Aside from those revelations about close reading, what has struck me the most about researching for museum studies is that it differs little from researching any other topic with regards to the wide range of methods that are used.  To write one article, an author might conduct a survey, read previous academic literature on the topic, pull from primary sources like newspapers, magazines, interviews or diaries, or even use simple websites.  However, despite the wealth of information provided by this variety of research methods, it is important to remember that not all sources are created equal.  For example, it is perfectly acceptable to conduct a survey to gain insight or data.  However, you have to go about doing so in a way that minimizes bias and maximizes diversity within your chosen sample.  As was discussed in class, this was not the case with Emily Fekete’s Facebook survey on the Garbage Plate, which she later used as significant evidence in her article, “‘I Know I’m Home When I Have One:’ The Cultural Significance of the Garbage Plate of Rochester, NY.”  Fekete never specified if this survey was conducted publically, or simply amongst her Facebook friends.  If it was the later, then it is safe to assume the existence of bias and a lack of diversity amongst the friend group of Rochester native Fekete.  In addition to this, a close reading and examination of her sources reveals the use of a number of private or commercial websites, which can be easily influenced or manipulated by their owners.  This makes them unreliable sources and anything published on them should be taken with a grain of salt, something which Fekete does not appear to do.2  In short, while variety in sources and research methods is good, sources cited within sources should be checked for accuracy and reliability, something which close reading can aid in.

1Alan Friedman. "The Evolution of the Science Museum." Physics Today 63, no. 10 (October 2010): 45.

2Emily Fekete.  “‘I Know I’m Home When I Have One:’ The Cultural Significance of the Garbage Plate of Rochester, NY,” Material Culture, Vol 46, No. 1, pp. 25-43 (2014)

Articles and Research Meathods

I have learned that academic articles are some of the best means of gathering information about a topic you can use. This is also good because the articles themselves have been reviewed by students and professors at your or other colleges and tend to help those searching for a specific topic. These topics include well known and researched subjects that most people have done research on, or unknown and obscure articles based on a project that is far more unique or uncommon on college campus. T-Rex in Wonderland: Kentucky’s 27-million-dollar Creation Museum Turns One
is one example of these articles that can help people with their topic on the Creation Museum if say they are comparing it to a Natural History museum that uses science to tell their message where the Creation Museum uses the bible to tell its message.

Using the different research methods of the Museum Studies program has helped me on several occasions over the past school year with many different projects. These include using historical documents and literature to research my projects with relative ease. Yet these are not the only means of gathering information, videos, audio recordings, images, and journals are great way of gathering information for projects.

 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12052-008-0063-6

http://www.libraryweb.org/~rochhist/v5_1943/v5i4.pdf

WW1 and Rochester

I have always been fascinated by military history and how the wars and conflicts of the past shaped how we live today. Yet it is not just the fighting that I am solely interested in, although that is a big part of it, I am also fascinated by the technology used during the wars and what caused the conflict to begin, and how did the war end. These are just as important as the fighting as it tells us what led up to the war and why the two or more nations were fighting.
From my experience at the Military History Society of Rochester and some research in another class I was able to learn quite a bit about the people of Rochester who went to war during World War 1 and what they did in the service. I also learned about some of the businesses that contributed to the war effort by making weapons and equipment to help those fighting in Europe. Even RIT(known at that time as the Mechanical Institute) helped train military personnel, and had several graduates serve in the military in various roles throughout the war.
The idea is to create an exhibit that will help people understand the role the city of Rochester and its people played in the war effort on both the Home Front and the Western Front. This will get people interested in not only World War 1 but also how Rochester, and in turn America, was able to adapt for war using their factories to create tools for war and their schools to train their troops helping America and her allies achieve victory in war.

Cameron Forbes

My name is Cameron Forbes and I am Senior in the Museum Studies Program. I have spent most of my life moving across the nation which has molded me into the person that I am today. My love of museums started when I was just a little kid going to museums with my family looking at the dinosaurs and interacting with the numerous exhibits. As I grew older I began to fall in love history and how it is relevant to today's society.
When I found out that RIT had a Museum Studies program I jumped at the opportunity to join the program. I have enjoyed the program so far and with the experiences I have had during my internship at the Military History Society of Rochester have encouraged me to continue my goal to become a museum curator. I don't know what the future will hold for me but I will do my best to try and meet the challenges head on.

Thesis Topics

I have always been interested in film preservation ever since high school but never knew much into the topic. Even after my internship at the Eastman Museum, I knew I wanted to do my thesis on some aspect of film preservation but had no clue what. I gave it some thought and came up with a few topic ideas that are strictly research based. I will be using the Image Permanence Institute (IPI) and the George Eastman Museum as my two main places for research. A few of my topics so far include film preservation standards and techniques over the past decade, advancements in digital preservation specifically color grading and color correction, and film preservation standards and techniques since the founding of International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) in 1938. 

As far as I have researched there is not an exact timeline of how film preservation has changed since movies started being made. A timeline will better explain why many films that were made before 1929 are now lost forever. Also, how film archives were started and have progressed through the 20th century and into the 21st century. Standards and techniques of film preservation have changed a lot because of technology and it is the technology of film preservation that interests me the most since we are in the digital age. 

Thesis Topics

During my internship at the Burchfield Penney Arts Center, I had briefly spent time processing files from the Artpark Archival Collection. Obtained by the Burchfield in 2013, the collection contains 180 boxes of textual records and over 80,000 images documenting the history of Artpark and its administration. Located in Lewiston, New York, Artpark has provided residencies to diverse local and international artists throughout its history. Many of the artists represented by Artpark are present in major public and private collections. Artpark has been a major agent in supporting emerging artists while making public art accessible to the masses.   

I had wanted do a project related to local history, and I believe there is a lot of untapped potential in the Artpark Archival Collection. The collection is currently only partly processed, making historical research using the documents challenging. However, using the information we already know and the resources available (such as old catalogues), there is likely opportunity for a project that can better make sense of the cultural, administrative and social history surrounding the park and its emerging artists. Potential topics of interest include where these participating artists came from and how artists may have been connected (and how this may have influenced who would in turn be selected for residencies in subsequent years). Although I do not have a specific research question or project proposal yet, I do envision the project itself would be accessible, potentially as a micro digital humanities project. I had contacted the project archivist for this collection and hopefully it will become clearer over the next few weeks how I can best foster greater understanding of this massive collection. 

Thesis topic

Over the past few years, my home state of Florida has endured major upheavals to the public education system. Issues such as funding charter schools, redesigning standardized testing, and improving teacher evaluations are continually being debated. Reading about these reform efforts has made me reflect on the role public institutions like museums play in our education.

Some of my classes have discussed what is known as the Museum School model. The main theory behind this model is that students learn best through hands-on experience. Museum schools allow students to explore topics in ways that traditional schools are unable to provide, due to their partnerships with museums and other research institutions. Museum school curriculums are project-based, and allow students to create their own exhibits to share what they've learned.

With schools across the country cutting back on field trips in an effort to save money, the Museum School model is especially interesting to me. I was thinking about comparing traditional and Museum School curriculums as a basis for my thesis. I want to do more research about the benefits of experiential learning, and maybe I'll find a way to narrow down my topic to a specific research question.

Not the Oral History You're Thinking Of...

During my time abroad this summer I had a lot of long flights and bus rides where I would get a bit queasy if I was reading, so as an alternative I turned to my other favorite form of "storytelling", podcasts. For me, podcasts (or "on-demand radio" as I like to refer to it) are a great way to casually, or sometimes intently, learn something through auditory storytelling. There are heaps of topics these podcasts cover, and with independent people making them they are essentially endless, but what I'm specifically interested in for my thesis is the realm of history podcasts.

This isn't quite as easily definable as I'd originally hoped; even a quick glance at the iTunes Podcast App categories shows that "history" is not listed. On further investigation, most of the history-minded podcasts are not even located under the "Education" category, but rather in "Society & Culture". This raises the first of many interesting questions I have about history podcasts as a form of public history, and the even bigger question of do they even count as that?

If anyone can produce a podcast then how do we know who we're getting information from? How do we know where they got their information? If the information and sources are strong, then does it even matter who is presenting it?

These were just a few of the questions I started with when looking into this subject and I've only gotten more interested since in the complex identity of the history podcast as education, entertainment, business, leisure, etc.

For my thesis I'd like to examine a sample set of podcasts to compare and contrast their modes of presenting information, what information they present, where can they be found, who is making it, and a variety of other questions to examine if history-minded podcasts can be reliable, and if they may be a new form of oral history to engage us in a more technologically driven world.

Everyone Eats

Over the summer I was invited to join 3 of my friends at the Rochester Public Market, located on North Union Street. It was the first time I had ever been to that particular public market, and I promptly grew enamored with the place. Between the all the fresh food and flowers, a large and diverse population of people gathered in a communal space, for business, for fun, and for conversation. I want to who built it, why they built it there, and how. I want to know how the rules and regulations of the Rochester Public Market have morphed over time; as well as what might have stayed the same. I'd like to compare how the operations and structure of the Rochester Public Market compares to others; where do they get their food from and  how much are they selling it for? Where does the money come from to run something like this? Where does it go? Who lived in the area when the market was initially created and who lives there now? What are the demographics of the attendees? I just have so many questions.

I noticed when visiting, that people arrived by various modes of transportation, and were (superficially at least) composed of many different socio-economic backgrounds. Furthermore, although many people may have posed more money than others, the style of dress for most adults and little children was mostly casual or "blue collar," the exception being people around my age (high school/college kids). If I had to guess, it's because public markets are being seen as cool/trendy/fun places to just go and enjoy; thus encouraging visitor participation and business through "cheap" advertising.

I think I'm researching this topic, a lot of constructive knowledge can be gleaned on successful visitor engagement, as the Rochester Public Market is a thriving place of color sound and experiences that's drawing in all different demographics consistently in droves. Furthermore, I believe that the Public Market would be a great place to facilitate academic learning about business,food, and hospitality to younger audiences. I have found that the market already hosts so many other events, ranging from musician performances to impromptu consortiums on whichever popular topic. I'm interested in /considering  what a public program might look like for educating children about food in more depth in a place of informal learning.

I was told that a popular idea for instutions of early 1900's was for the place in question to be located near the heart of a city , ideally next to public transportation  centers, with affordable pricing and accessible facilities/hours. While the Rochester Public Market is not a museum, I feel that there are a lot of ideas that can be transplanted and repurposed for museums to better improve themselves; expanding knowledge of public history in the process.

I really like this idea for a thesis project, because I got to learn about and experience Rochester history in a really fun way without being drowned in factoid after factoid of written prose. Also, I wanted to chose something that I thought others would like to read about.

How can you not be interested? After all,
Everybody eats.

My thesis project

Immigration is currently one of the most hotly debated issues in our current political climate. With the recent news about DACA and Trump's comments on Latin Americans, Mexicans in particular. I find that no time is better than now to do a project centered around Latino immigrants. My senior thesis idea is to make a website with a collection of immigration stories straight from the mouths of immigrants. I will most likely be narrowing this idea down even further to have the stories of immigrants in the Rochester area. 

This topic is incredibly important to me as an immigrant and the daughter of an immigrant. So often people are detached from this issue and look at it as something that is black and white. I think that by handing the power back to the people whose story this is and giving them the chance to tell it, we can lessen the vilification that has been happening to the Latino community. Being bilingual will also help me gather these stories because I would like to make the interviewees as comfortable as possible in sharing something so intimate with me. I am hoping to provide transcriptions of these interviews as well as audio recordings to make the information as accessible as possible. I am incredibly excited to begin this project and cannot wait until I can put some leg work behind it. 

Thesis Ideas

During my internship at Kodak in June, I focused primarily on processing a large collection of documents, photographs, and objects related to the Kodak Camera Club (KCC). The KCC was an organization of Kodak employees who were interested in amateur photography. At the height of Kodak's success in the mid-to-late twentieth century, the Camera Club had hundreds of members across all departments in the company. Members could rent photographic equipment and enter their work in salons and exhibitions that took place several times a year. The organization disbanded entirely in the early 2000s when Kodak was struggling financially, but all of the meeting minutes, exhibition planning materials, event photographs, and other materials remain in the Kodak Archive. In trying to piece together the story of this employee organization, I realized quickly that almost none of the current employees at Kodak had any knowledge of the KCC, as many of the employees who were members of the club have either retired or lost their jobs when the company declared bankruptcy.

My idea for my thesis is to record oral histories from retired and former Kodak employees who were members of the Kodak Camera Club, to get a better understanding of how the club functioned and the role that it played in the corporate culture at Kodak in the second half of the 20th century. As many of the people who were employed at Kodak in its heyday are either deceased or very elderly, there is an immediate need for oral history research. These interviews, coupled with the resources in the Kodak Archive, could result in an online exhibition about the history of the Kodak Camera Club.

Thesis Thoughts...

It appears to be universally agreed upon, at least amongst the people that I have discussed my thesis ideas with, that the history exhibits at the Rochester Museum and Science Center (RMSC) are very out of place.  My personal impression upon my first visit there was that, despite the history exhibits (and I am primarily referring here to the Native Peoples of the Americas and At the Western Door exhibits) being interesting, they didn’t seem to fit very well with the rest of the museum, which had a far more interactive, scientific focus.  And upon reviewing the museum’s website (which expressly refers to the RMSC as a “science museum”) and mission statement (to “[stimulate] broad community interest and understanding of science and technology, and their impact — past, present, and future — on our lives”), these exhibits appear to mesh even less with the others at the museum.  There are a number of reasons why these history exhibits exist in their current form at the museum, and this disconnect between these history exhibits and the rest of the museum is not so much a true failure on the museum’s part as simply a failure to evaluate and evolve these exhibits as the mission and themes of the museum changed.  This begs the question, can these exhibits be altered in such a way as to make them more relevant to the RMSC’s mission?  Or, even more fundamentally, do they belong in the RMSC at all?

In order to attempt to answer those questions, I have devised a three-part research methodology.  The first will be to conduct traditional, document-based research on the history and evolution of both the RMSC’s mission and its historical exhibits, how mission shift and change affects collections and exhibits (through the lens of another local institution, the Strong Museum of Play), and examples of popular history exhibits at successful science museums/centers (if such a thing truly exists).  The next phase involves interviewing key staff members of the RMSC, to gain insight into what they themselves view the mission of the RMSC to be, how the history exhibits currently fit (or don't) into it, and how they might envision them best being redone.  The third and, most likely, final stage of research will be to study and survey visitors to the RMSC’s history exhibits to gain the visitor’s perspective on how the exhibits fit (or don’t) with the rest of the RMSC, as well as how they might be updated and improved for a more cohesive visitor experience throughout the museum.  

The end result of this research would be a set of recommendations for ways the RMSC’s history exhibits could be updated or altered to better fit not only the museum’s current mission, but the museum’s vision of its future.

Nice to meet you!

Hello everyone! My name is Alexandra Serpikov and I am currently a fourth year Museum Studies Student here at RIT. I say "currently" because I wasn't always in this program; I originally came to RIT as a Fine Arts Photo major. After almost two years I was introduced to the Museum Studies program through my immersion and fell in love with it, eventually switching over.

For the past few years I have first volunteered, then eventually worked at the Vignelli Center Archives, which has definitely influenced me in the fact that I now want to pursue archival work in the future. In addition to the Vignelli Center during the school year, I have also completed two internships with Eastman Kodak Company, along with a few other RIT Museum Studies students. With Kodak, we worked to create an archive for them to effectively house and organize their historical objects, and in the later part of the internship to help use the archive to further develop other projects. The experience there was very valuable, especially since I was able to see our archive form, and then have another, more critical look back at it upon returning to the project.

This summer I was also extremely lucky to have been able to travel around Europe for a month, having fun and of course visiting plenty of museums and historical sites! My favorite experience was at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and although it may be somewhat controversial to say, my least favorite was the Louvre! Maybe I had bad timing though, and if I'm lucky one day I'll be able to give it another shot.

Since I transferred programs I'm a tad behind, but I hope and plan to graduate in the Spring, and after that, who knows? Grad school is on the mind but nothing has been set in stone for me yet, though maybe through the development of my thesis I will point myself in a more concrete direction.

Below are some photos from my travels this summer of the outside of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, and from inside the museum. This was a sort of dream come true visit for me since I'd always wanted to see Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" in person for some reason, and they had a cool touch-tour rendition of the piece right beside it.

I look forward to this last year and wish everyone the best!

Alexandra Serpikov

Introduction

Hi, everyone.

My name is Elizabeth Gwilt and I’m a senior in the museum studies program. Although I’m from Tampa, Florida, I transferred to RIT from a college in Oregon a couple years ago.  Growing up outside of Washington, D.C. led to many visits to the Smithsonian, which sparked my interest in museums.

After taking several MUSE classes, I’ve discovered a preference for interacting with visitors and the general public over collections and archival work. Specifically, my interests include public programming, education, and accessibility.

Over the summer, I worked at Genesee Country Village & Museum surveying the historic structures and researching ways to make improvements to their accessibility. I also created a social narrative, which is a tool for visitors on the autism spectrum to acquaint themselves with the guidelines and expectations of going to a museum.

I had a great internship experience, and perhaps that might inspire a topic for my thesis! 

Also, I attached a photo of some ducks that live at the historic village, since I loved walking by them every time I was there. 

Introduction

Hello everyone! My name is Claire Popoli, and I'm a 4th year Museum Studies student. I'm a Rochester native, but before coming to RIT in 2015 I went to college in San Francisco where I studied fashion design, and then cinamotgraphy. Neither of which courses of study really interested me. I moved back home in 2013 and essentially started over at Monroe Comunity College, where I fell in love with art history and decided to transfer to R.I.T. to study Museum Studies. As a second year at R.I.T. I got hired in the R.I.T. Archives Collections and the Vignelli Center for Design Studies and realized my passion for archival work.

This past summer I spent most of my time working on campus at the Vignelli Center, where I assisted with processing collections, exhibition work, and starting a new digitization project of the Design Vignelli exhibition in the gallery attached to the University Gallery on campus. I also had the opportunity to intern at the Heorge Eastman Museum in their Stills, Posters and Paper collections archive. During my internship, I catalogued, implemented metadata and rehoused many collection materials.

After graduation this Spring I am not entirely certain what I want to do next. I do know I want to go to grad school, but what to study is another question.

My coworker at the Vignelli Center, Emily Sharp, photographing a Design Vignelli collection item to be added to the online exhibition.

Nice To Meet...Me...

Hi everyone, my name is Lauren Hubbs, I am a fourth year in the Museum Studies program. Before I found this program I was majoring in Motion Picture Science where I quickly learned I was not cut out for coding. My interests lie with film, film preservation and film archiving; and Museum Studies was the perfect place to start to learn all the basics with museums and archiving. 

I didn't start falling in love with Rochester until my third year and I'm glad I fell in love because my plans for graduate school have me staying in Rochester. The Selznick School of Film Preservation is where I want to be after this year. Fingers crossed. 

This summer, 2017, I worked at the Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) in their film archive inspecting magnetic tape, digitizing tapes, and cataloging film. I also was beyond thrilled to get an internship at the George Eastman Museum working in the Moving Image Department working directly with the Collections Manager, Deborah Stoiber, and a couple of students from the graduate program. I did hands-on work with film, doing inspection and inspection reports, creating catalogue records, film labels, and viewing films on a Steenbeck flatbed. Overall, one of the best and most unforgettable summers I've ever had. I'm hoping my work at VSW and the Eastman Museum will help me produce a thesis idea...soon.

Below is a picture I took from a portion of the film "Garden of Allah", which you can tell is in rough shape. This is a film blister caused by a projector light. This is a rare shape for a film blister to look like a smiley face :) 

Wishing you all the best this semester!

Lauren

Introduction

Hello everyone,

My name is Angelina Davern and I'm a senior in the museum studies program. I used to be in the Game Design and Development program but changed majors one year ago. I feel bad because I believe this introduction is going to repeat a lot of what I've already said in my classes, but I don't have a whole lot else to go off of.

I've lived in and around Buffalo, New York all my life. I had grown up going to museums both there and in Washington D.C. but had not seriously considered museums as a career until college. My main interests in the field are in history museums and archival work. As a result of working at the Wallace Library for most of college, I am also considering a career in library management and plan to pursue a graduate degree in Library and Information Studies.

Over the summer, I interned in the archives of the Burchfield Penney Arts Center. This was my first meaningful venture into museum work and it was a valuable experience. My main project was processing the recently donated collection of a  deceased Western New York artist who taught at SUNY Buffalo State. Collaborating with two fellow interns, I completed my first archival processing project and compiled a finding aid. I hope the finding aid will help facilitate research into the collection in the future. In addition to processing, I learned other skills associated with working in art museums, such as handling and installing artwork. I also started writing biographies for all of the artists that completed an artist in residency at Artpark. This project kept me engaged with local history and has led me to consider a career in staff writing. I may consider incorporating this work into my thesis.

I look forward to developing my thesis with my classmates over the semester! Below is a low quality image of a zebra at the Akagera National Park. This is from when I studied abroad in Rwanda last January.


-Angie

    

Introduction

Hello! My name is Gaby Gonzalez and I am a third year Museum Studies major. Although this is only my second semester in the major I am very much looking forward to all it has to offer and to find my path with where exactly I want to go in the museum field

I was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and lived there until I was six years old, which gave me the wonderful gift of being bilingual.  I grew up on Long Island and was exposed to many beautiful and amazing museums, being in such close proximity to New York City which I believe led me to where I am today. I moved to Rochester with my family three years ago and really enjoy this city and the art culture surrounding it as well as the opportunities made available to me here.

My path to Museum Studies was a rather convoluted one, I began my college career at Clarkson University as a Chemical Engineering major, which ended up not being the right fit for me. I then decided to try Chemistry on its own as a major, but again there was no passion there for me. I decided to get my Associates in Liberal Arts at Monroe Community College when I stumbled upon the Museum Studies field and was lucky enough to live withing driving distance of one of the only schools in the nation offering it as an undergraduate major. Although I have not yet had the chance to intern anywhere I hope to do so next summer, I am not sure exactly where just yet but I think I am leaning towards something in museum education. I want to be able to give somebody else the joy I felt growing up every time I got to see something new or different in a museum.

If you spend enough time with me you will quickly learn that I talk mostly about food and my pets. Cooking and animals are two of my biggest  so I have decided to share a picture of my oldest ferret, Stormageddon, inside my crockpot (don't worry I washed it). I have three wonderful ferrets and a cat who always manage to put a smile on my face at the end of the day. I hope this picture brings a smile to yours!
I am looking forward to this semester and hearing about all of your wonderful projects!

Get to know me!

Hello all!

My name is Emily King and I'm a fourth year in the Museum Studies program. I'm from Poughkeepsie, New York, but I was born in a little parish outside of Belfast, Northern Ireland, where I lived until I was five years old.

I've always had an interest in museums, specifically the curatorial and collections management side of things. My main field of interest is art and art history, and my ultimate goal is to seek a master's degree and potentially a PhD in modern and contemporary art. Anyone who's ever spent more than 20 minutes with me can probably guess that my other major interest is sports (specifically soccer, but also basketball and baseball). I spend a large amount of my free time watching and reading about sports, bothering all my friends with random trivia tidbits, and being overdramatic about the results of games. I've always said that if I hadn't fallen in love with the museum field, I would have chosen to study sports management. However, I feel that sports fans are a largely untapped market in the museum field, and I would love to work in a large institution such as the Baseball Hall of Fame or the Basketball Hall of Fame.

This summer I completed my internship at the Eastman Kodak Company, working with several other RIT Museum Studies students to develop a historical archive with objects and documents that had been accumulated by the company over its nearly 130 year history. It was an incredible experience that allowed me to apply what I'd learned in my collections management and archival theory classes to a real-world project. I'm hoping to incorporate my experiences working at Kodak into my thesis.

The photo below was taken on the Dom Luis I Bridge, which connects Porto to Vila Nova de Gaia across the Douro River. I was fortunate enough to be able to study abroad in Portugal this past July. Our class traveled from Lisbon to Coimbra to Porto over the course of four weeks, taking in the incredible art and architecture of Portugal while studying electronic literature and worldbuilding. We also participated in the 2017 Electronic Literature Organization Conference at the Universidade Fernando Pessoa in Porto, assisting with the curation of exhibits centered around main themes in electronic literature.

I'm looking forward to a great semester with you all!

Emily

Please allow me to introduce myself...

Hi, all!  I think that everyone in the Research Methods class has at the very least met me, but for anyone reading this who hasn’t, my name is Jess Andrews, I am a 4th year in the Museum Studies program, and I anticipate graduating in May 2018 with a BS in Museum Studies with a focus in public history.  This will be my second degree, as I previously earned an AA in Liberal Arts with a focus in creative writing, western mythology, and art history from Cottey College in Nevada, MO in 2015.

Ever since I was very young, I have had a passion for learning and teaching others about history.  I have been fortunate enough to work at a number of different collecting institutions since high school, including the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor, ME, the Bangor Historical Society (formerly the Bangor Museum and Center for History), the Roberson Museum and Science Center in Binghamton, NY, and the RIT Archives.  While all of these institutions have offered me unique and valuable opportunities, I have to admit that I preferred working at the historical institutions over the others.  In addition to this love of history, I am highly creative in all aspects of my life, from baking and cooking, to how I dress and decorate my space, to how I complete assignments and solve problems.  This also means that no matter what institution I am working at, I tend towards the more creative aspects of museum work, such as exhibition design, tour writing, public programming and event planning, and museum promotions.  The majority of my experience has been in tour writing, specifically historical ghost and cemetery tours, which allow me to delve into another passion of mine-- the macabre and illicit.  Ghosts, ghouls, and goodtime girls, I’m fascinated by it all, and I enjoy channeling this fascination into museum projects such as tours, exhibits, and presentations, because there’s more to history than rulers, battles, and innovations.

Now, most of you are probably wondering by what a hamster has to do with all of this. That is Nugget, and there are several very good reasons that the picture above is of her, and not of me.  One, I don’t actually have any recent pictures of me in which I look like a normal human being (i.e. pictures in which I’m not wearing elf ears or faerie wings).  Two, who doesn’t like cute, furry critters?  Monsters, that’s who…  And three, I honestly can’t think of a better animal to use to describe myself than a chubby, anxious, slightly neurotic rodent whose favorite way to spend a Saturday is sleeping and eating, and who very well might squeak and fall over if you talk too loudly or poke it suddenly.  Or maybe it will bite you instead… it all depends on the day.