We're doing our best here (Von Stevens)

    For those reading this that don't know me, I'm Von Stevens, a senior Museum Studies student currently enrolled in Research Methods. Originally I came to RIT as an Illustration major that had transferred from Monroe Community College, but switched majors when I realized how burnt out I was.

    My capstone project is to create a cohesive narrative using exhibition design and make an exhibit about Cambodia's culture post Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979). I was adopted from Cambodia and the country means a lot to me personally which is why I am quite passionate and motivated about doing my capstone in the first place. It has both been hard and interesting to go through so many sources about Cambodia. "Hard" in the sense that it's truly difficult to even imagine the awful things that the people of Cambodia went through during Pol Pot's reign, a time of devastating genocide.

    I want to keep going and I want to make this project successful since it is important to me for many reasons. For majority of my life I've felt useless and unable to do anything successfully, but the Museum Studies program and faculty have made me feel good about myself and school. I feel as if I owe it to everyone to try my best. I struggle a lot with anxiety and depression and even as I write this right now, I'm struggling. I'm struggling but I'm still trying. I want to believe that I'll make it to the finish. If it is something I truly care about then I'll definitely find a way to pull through.

    Thank you for reading and I hope everyone remembers to eat well and stay hydrated.
    Also please enjoy this picture of my dogs! Orange one is Peachy, black one is Piper.

Kaitlyn Troutman- Beginning my Thesis

    Hello! My name is Kaitlyn Troutman I am a third year Museum Studies Major with a Legal Studies Minor. I am currently in the 3 + 3 program with Syracuse Law, and so I am currently working on my law school application as well as my thesis.

    I came into my senior thesis class with no real idea of what I wanted to do my thesis on, only that I wanted it to involve legal studies, museums, and art. This led me, with the help of Dr. Decker, to my topic "What can smaller museums, such as the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester (MAG), NY reasonably do to complete provenance research?" I will studying the Memorial Art Gallery's incomplete provenance research. The museum currently has 33 items with incomplete Nazi-Era provenance. 

    These pieces were flagged as they are missing ownership information around the time of World War II, (1933-1945). The Memorial Art Gallery is guided by the the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and the Association of American Museums (AAM) in their mission to provide to establish a complete provenance for items within the collection and make the information publicly accessible. Since the establishment of the Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal by the AAM in 2003, new information and portals have surfaced.

    I will be working with the Memorial Art Gallery to explore this new information along with an examination of the collection. I will explore this path of research to see if any new information can be added to the provenance research of the items and possibly explore new digital avenues of making the provenance research more readily available to the public. I have recently examined some of the objects files of incomplete Nazi-Era provenance at the MAG, and have been reading journals involving provenance. I will discuss my findings in my next blog post. See you soon! 

Monday Vibes

Happy Monday Friends! 

I hope your thesis research and literature review are going well. I am finishing up my literature review in light of tomorrow's class and feeling the senioritis. I am trying to get re-motivated on my topic, so I'm sure there are others feeling this way. 

Remember to rest as hard as you work and that your research matters! 

Cassidy Ohol Introduction!

    Hello and welcome to the beginning of my long journey! I would like to start by introducing myself and my topic. My name is Cassidy Ohol and I am a third year Museum Studies major with a minor in Archaeology. I grew up around Niagara Falls, New York and always had a deep appreciation and fascination for history. If I'm being so completely honest with you, Indiana Jones definitely had more than a little to do with why I chose this career path. 

    For my thesis, I wasn't quite sure what to do, but I thought back to my summer internship abroad in Genova, Italy and I thought about everything I saw. The cities and museums are filled with such history and beautifully designed architecture, it was like stepping into a new world. One memory that stood out was my trip to the Museo Egizio in Torino. In English, this translates to Egypt Museum and it is known to be the second largest collection of Egyptian artifacts in the world. Everything was fascinating and there was so much to see! There was an unsettling factor that I could not get over however, and it was the fact that so many human remains were on display, some being those of children. I further learned that some of the mummified remains were not even placed with the sarcophagus they were buried in. This made me very uncomfortable and I felt like Ancient Egyptian funerary practices and traditions weren't being respected. 

    After researching, I found out more about human remain curation and controversies surrounding it such as the ethics and issues of consent. This also led to me learning about NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. This act allows funerary items, remains, and more that are being displayed or kept in storage at institutions and museums to be returned to their original native cultures. Recently revamped, this act has allowed for more understanding and cultural respect on sensitive issues. The aim of my thesis is to explore the evolution of NAGPRA and how it has changed along with the improving guidelines on human remain curation.

I hope all who read this find it interesting and follow along with me on this journey! 

Goodbye for now,

Cass

                                                            Photo by me at Museo Egizio

Topic Introduction - Riley Mason

Hi all!

My name is Riley Mason, and I’m a fourth-year Museum Studies student with a minor in History. My home is ‘Oahu, Hawai’i, where I developed my love of museums (and their gift shops!). This is my second year as a student employee at the RIT Archives, where I’ve developed an interest in collections management, database management, and archival work.

Another significant personal and academic passion of mine is fashion history, which is where I’ve found my inspiration for my thesis project. I’ll be focusing on the GCV&M’s Susan Greene Costume Collection, curating a selection of objects and researching their construction, provenance, and cultural context. From this research, I’ll develop a set of “fun facts,” bite-sized, attention-grabbing pieces of information about each object that facilitate informal learning and make both fashion history and the museum’s collection more accessible and understandable to visitors.

This project aims to be a combination of the best parts of my experience as both a MUSE student and a museum visitor. As a visitor, I enjoy leaving a museum with both a broader appreciation of a collection and more focused snippets of information I can share with others and commiserate over. As a student and aspiring museum professional, I enjoy engaging with and activating collection objects, as well as deeply exploring their individual history and context. I am captivated by the finer details of collections and the novelty of a unique object, both of which can be used as tools to engage and convey information to visitors.

A secondary motivation behind my focus on the subject of fashion history in particular is its increasing relevance and frequent misinterpretation in American popular culture. The rise in popularity of the Met Gala in recent years and the inherently cyclical nature of fashion has led to an increase in the feature of archival garments on the red carpet and the catwalk. In addition, the rise in popularity and production ability of fast fashion has led to rapidly evolving trends and “vintage” styles that bear minimal contextual information about the extant garments and periods in fashion history that inform their silhouettes. Facilitating informal means of education to young visitors of the museum can promote a deeper understanding of modern fashion from a reliable source. This, in turn, can promote educated, well-informed decisions about clothing purchases and veer away from overconsumption and linear fashion practices.

I’m currently compiling sources to inform my research and selecting objects from the Susan Greene Costume Collection, but I enthusiastically welcome feedback on any part of this project. If you’ve got a favorite garment at GCV&M with an interesting history or any relevant insights, please share it with me at ram3077@rit.edu!

Looking forward to sharing the fun facts I find as I go along! :)

Riley

Introduction to project

Hello!

To introduce myself, my name is Finn Bishop-Duford. However, if you know too many Finns, Fern works too! I prefer he/they pronouns. I am a fourth-year museum studies student with an immersion in political science.

As I studied here at RIT, I began working with my community within the museum world. Because of this, my thesis and project are no exception to this. For my project, I will work with my alma mater, Ogdensburg Free Academy, to curate at the James F. Montpelier Gallery in Ogdensburg, New York. I am working with my old art teacher, Dianne Drayse-Alonso along with three other curators to explore our theme; "Finding Balance: Exploring our Relationship with Nature." The artwork displayed will be a variety of mediums including digital art, ceramics, paintings, drawings, and sculptures. All of these pieces will be made by students from Kindergarten to 12th grade, at Ogdensburg City School District. 

My desire for this project stems from my childhood dream to have one of my art pieces displayed in the gallery. This dream came true when I was in high school, but now I would like to take part in curating in the gallery with children who may have a similar dream. 

I am excited to be working on this project and updating everyone on my progress! Thank you for reading :)

Finn/Fern

Here is a photo of me and my cat Prismo!

Eliot Gavin Introduction to Topic

     Hi, my name is Eliot Gavin and I am a 3rd Year Museum Studies major with a minor in Human Resources Management. I am from Conesus, NY, and am passionate about accessibility, inclusion and community development in museums. I have been involved with my local history society (Livingston County Historical Society) for about five years and wanted to focus my undergraduate thesis on local history, specifically on The Castle on the Hill.

    

The Explorographer, Castle on the Hill, 2012, https://www.theexplorographer.com/2012/02/our-castle-on-the-hill/

    The Castle on the Hill has a long history that I will briefly go over, but you can read more about the history here. The Castle on the Hill is located in Dansville, NY (about 40 minutes from RIT) and first opened in 1854. The Castle on the Hill has operated as a water cure facility, a World War I psychiatric hospital, and most recently a health and wellness spa. Most Livingston County residents call the building The Castle on the Hill due to its location overlooking the Genesee Valley. 

    The era I want to focus on is from 1929 to 1971 when the building operated as "The Physical Culture Hotel" under the leadership of famous publisher and businessman, Bernarr Macfadden. The Physical Culture Hotel was a health and wellness resort that attracted many tourists to Dansville as well as employed many Dansville residents. In my role as a docent at the Livingston County Historical Society, I have heard many tales of locals meeting celebrities or having treasured family moments at the hotel. After MacFadden's death, the hotel closed and was bought by a private owner in the 1990s. 

    This has not stopped people from visiting the Castle. The Castle is a popular urban exploration destination in the Greater Rochester Area and unfortunately has undergone a lot of vandalism and deterioration due to neglect. Recently in 2023, there was a report of fire inside the Castle. Much of the original building was burned down. 

    In the past 20 years, there have been many futile attempts to "save" the Castle including trying to turn it into a medical office building. All these attempts have failed probably due to the dilapidated structure. I want to see how oral history can be a sufficient alternative to historical building preservation in the case of The Castle on the Hill. Right now, oral history seems like a cheaper and more practical way to capture the collective memory of the Castle on the Hill. 

    I will get into more detail about my plan for this project in my next post, but for right now I am looking at capturing 3 oral histories from people who have a personal connection to the Castle and host them on a blog. 

    Please reach out to me via email at ejg9342@rit.edu if you have any questions or concerns! I am so excited to start this project!

Hey Y'all!

Before I talk your ear off about accessibility, let me introduce myself! My name is Alexandra Suarez, and I also go by Ara :) I am a fourth-year Museum Studies transfer student with an immersion in Legal Studies. I will be graduating in the Spring of 2025. 

            Accessibility is one of the stables of my interests. Since the beginning of my college career, I have always been involved with projects that allow me to be of service to the public. Whether this is the Women's Self-Defense Workshops I've hosted or tending to and expanding a public garden to aid with the food scarcity crisis in the heart of Ybor City, Florida. While this desire has been met with different means, the focus has always been the same--to help others with social and economic disadvantages. 

In a previous position at the Genesee Country Village & Museum, I interned for the collections manager there, I was tasked with many opportunities to design, preserve, and catalog artifacts and exhibitions. I was able to focus on cataloging and creating a guideline for future interns. A key factor for cataloging is the data. I wanted to ensure the most readable, and detailed descriptions and data of an object to aid in when the collection is offered to the public. 

While I was able to help those who needed alt text and detailed descriptions, my experience at GCVM opened my eyes to another opportunity to make the museum more accessible. As my internship was coming to a close, my partner and mother-in-law wanted to come visit the museum. At first, I met them with excitement, but that soon faded as I realized they wouldn't be able to physically navigate the museum and historic houses. Locomotive disabilities are the most common disability in America. Whether this is due to a condition, or old age, museums should be accounting for this. With this brought to my attention I've decided to make Accessibility in Living Museums my thesis for my Museum Studies Bachelors. 

I am in the process of rendering my thesis further, and will keep the MUSE family updated on my journey! 

If you, or someone you know have had experiences with inaccessibility within Living Museums, or have a thought to share, please feel free to contact me via email. (ars3575@g.rit.edu). 

Thank you for listening & remember to rest as hard as you work! 

Ara~

(artist @titsay on twitter).