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