Monday, September 4, 2017

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


5 comments:

  1. Emily, I am glad that you were able to continue working at Kodak and that the work may be the origins of a thesis project. That could be both interesting and useful. Nice photo, too! Talk soon!

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  2. I knew you liked sports, but I guess I never realized how much... Also, what type of worldbuilding did you study in Portugal?

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  3. The fact that you got the opportunity to study in Portugal is amazing, it is definitely one of the places I would love to visit someday!

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  4. Oh man, since you like sports I have to ask: What is your opinion on the wages sports players receive as opposed to those in other professions such as teaching or medical science? To preface: I think athletes are awesome and put a lot of time and effort into perfecting their physical skills. Still, I'm curious as to what you may think.

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  5. Your time abroad sounds incredible! To have such a broader range of experience is invaluable and you really packed a lot in this summer!

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