Introduction and Forethoughts

Hello everyone!

I hope this blog post finds you well. My name is Claire Gallucci, and like many of you, I am in my final year at RIT. My primary area of focus is in Modern art history, particularly the feminist, installation, and performance art disciplines. As an emerging museum professional, I have thought deeply about the public-facing side of art collecting institutions. 

Of all types of museums, art museums have the most foreboding reputation as inaccessible cultural heritage sites, grounded in elitism and their content curated for visitors from exclusive demographics. Often, galleries are curated to encourage passive viewership, forcing a sense of value or institutional importance onto audiences. As a result, these institutions end up alienated from the broader communities in which they reside. Conversely, living history museums have been successful in connecting with visitors who have varying levels of competency in the era the museum aims to interpret. They have taken controversial, complex, and even painful subject matter and made it approachable for the masses. They accomplish this through immersion, intentional use of material culture, and cultivating an ethos of active participation and co-authorship. The museum guest is empowered to be in charge of the experience they come away with. I would like to investigate the interpretive framework that allows for living history institutions to succeed and see how it may apply to contemporary/modern art museums. I intend to prove that the concept of active viewership is not estranged from art institutions from a historical standpoint, even as it has not been at the forefront of art exhibition development; movements like feminist performance art and installation art have succeeded in activating gallery viewers in the creation and perception of art; therefore, it is feasible to implement concepts founded in living history into the traditional art museum framework, creating something that is in part new and in part old. 

Research is an intimate practice that is often executed in an extremely public setting. It is a difficult feat to approach developing a research topic, and even more of a challenge to defend its rigor as academia often prompts. As of late, I have found myself reflecting on how my research topic has evolved from my very first semester as a museum studies major. I'm looking forward to continuing to develop this project over the next seven months alongside my peers. 

Research Methods Introduction

 Hello, 

My name is Bella Herendeen. I'm a fourth and final year student majoring in Museum Studies and pursuing a minor in Women and Gender Studies. I'm interested in how different areas of history are represented in archives and exhibitions and how underrepresented voices are handled by GLAM institutions. 

With this in mind, I hope to pursue a thesis paper examining transfers of power within archives and how these changes affect what is prioritized by an institution. Questions I will be asking vary from "who is given the highest position of authority?", "why are certain people gifted this power?", "how is the public affected by these changes, for better or worse?", etc. I do not have a definitive thesis statement at the moment but I hope to introduce one to my concept within the week. Courses I have taken in Museum Studies and History will provide me with a strong background to build my thesis on. Although I will be focusing on archival practices, there will likely be exhibition related case studies included to support the paper.

As someone who's goal is to work with archives in a way that uplifts marginalized voices, I hope this capstone thesis will help me gain an important perspective that I could attribute to whichever institution I might find myself in. 

Thesis Introduction

 Hello, I am Kai Schiesel, and I am a 4th-year Museum Studies Major with a Minor in Film Studies. Initially, I sought out to write a thesis paper on the filmmaker John Cassavetes, but I am now seeking to write a paper on cultural heritage in media. I'll be discussing such films as Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev due to their close attention to detail and for fully utilizing cultural heritage to make wonderful pieces of art. This idea is still quite rough, but I am excited to combine my interest in cinema and museums/archives together to write a thesis.

I'm looking forward to working with this topic and making it a well-fleshed-out idea.

-Kai

Introduction

 Hello! My name is Priscilla Anderson, but most people call me by my middle name, Sawyer. While my major is Museum Studies, my minor is in Geographic Information Systems drives my focus. If I could define my ‘area of interest,’ I would say my focus is in historical spatial data science for libraries, archives, and special collections, as well as the creation of spatial applications to enhance accessibility.

As I begin to think about my research I realize perhaps the most important thing for me is to make a difference. I don’t want the things I do to disappear into the annals of the internet or languish on a shelf somewhere. I have no expectation of my project actually going anywhere - but I want to create proof that spatial analysis of historical data is useful. I want to show the cultural heritage community that using code and geospatial information systems we can create accessible applications that reach more than just researchers. We can make history fun for individuals who might otherwise avoid it. I want to show that we need to stop seeing AI as the death to intellectual freedom and realize it’s a tool. The fear and distrust I see is, quite simply, a lack of knowledge. AI has the potential to allow us to process big data in a way that was previously untenable, especially to those of us without a background in coding. I’m not suggesting using AI to create catalog records; rather, I propose the use of AI for OCR and vibe coding. Specifically, I want to reprocess NARA’s approximately 9 million record raw WWII enlistment record data file to improve accuracy, create an accessible interactive, and analyze data trends. Ideally, this would begin with conducting AI OCR on the original microfilm, however there is a slim likelihood that I will be able to gain access to these files within a reasonable time frame. Thus, I’d like to begin by cleaning the data with Excel, using python (AI-assisted) to convert the numeric codes to text, geo-coding the locations, examining spatial correlation between records, and creating a spatial search engine.

Introduction- Patrick Showers

Hello, I am Patrick Showers, I am majoring in Museum Studies with a minor in History. My tentative plan for my thesis is to research how museums can/do interpret substances which have been used for medicinal, spiritual, and social/recreational purposes, and how the broader cultural and historical context alters how they’re interpreted. I have always been interested in how different cultures across the globe have independently discovered substances with mind-altering properties and how they have justified their use for spiritual and medicinal purposes. This subject is (and likely will be) subject to change as it is an extremely broad subject that has some basis in nearly every culture. This topic will be combining my passion for history with museum studies by compiling historical and modern information and looking at it through a museum lens. Some other topics I am exploring are to continue my summer research project of building interest in MISHA (Multispectral Imaging for Historical Artifacts) amongst smaller organizations, to research the effects of museums architecture on how people perceive their collections, and looking into how museums can and do navigate reinterpreting historical exhibits with outdated language and interpretations.

Introductions- Alexandra Cassella

Hello everyone! I’m Alexandra, but I usually go by Allie. I’m a fifth year Museum Studies major minoring in Criminal Justice. I’m very excited (and a little nervous) to finally be starting my thesis project. The time came faster than I expected, which could partially be because I transferred into Museum Studies in my third year. I started out at RIT as a Chemical Engineering major, but found that I really was not passionate about what I was doing as a ChemE. I plan to graduate in May, and hopefully go into something in museum education or maybe curation. During my Spring 2026 semester, I started working in the Cultural Heritage Imaging lab on campus with the MISHA system. I still have an interest in chemistry, and wanted to make use of my criminal justice minor to see if there would be forensic capabilities with the system. There are paints that have animal blood in them, or artifacts made with poison materials, and I was curious if those would look different when imaged than regular paints. I briefly discussed with a professor about seeing if different drugs painted on paper could be identified under multispectral imaging, which I could also explore. I have done smaller research projects in previous semesters. Hopefully some of what I learned doing those projects I can take into my thesis and expand upon.

Looking forward to a great semester and a great year!

Allie Cassella

Introductions: Danni Kuntz

Hello, everyone! My name is Dannahe Kuntz, also known as Danni. I am a fourth-year Museum Studies major, but I also have interests in other fields, being a dual major in "Humanities, Computing, and Design" and having an immersion in Evolutionary Biology & Ecology.

In terms of my person journey in Museum Studies, it actually started off as my minor. HCD (as Humanities, Computing and Design is often abbreviated to) is my first and primary major, but as someone who has had a lifelong interest in museums, the program enraptured me, and I decided that I not only would take it on as a second major, that I also would choose it for my capstone/thesis.

I have many interests, which is a bit of a problem when deciding what to focus on for a project, or choosing a major, including for grad school, which I am in the process of applying to-- but I've narrowed it down to a few topics by now. However, what I do know is that my project will culminate in an exhibit: ideally a physical one as I already have worked on digital exhibits and want to expand my repertoire, but if necessary I can create a digital exhibit or exhibit prototype.

At the moment, these are the topics I am considering:

-Everyday life in Ancient Rome

I have always had an interest in Ancient Rome, as well as the everyday lives of Ancient people. In choosing this topic, I seek to humanize people of the past. I like this topic, because it's specific enough to develop a concise exhibit, but expansive enough for me to discuss different aspects of life, and pick whatever piques my interest. (I especially love Roman Graffiti, so if I pick this, I will definitely include it as a part of the project!)

-Design Philosophy and Cultural heritage in Genshin Impact

 Yes, this is a very specific topic! I have actually already focused on this topic for another Museum Studies class years ago, but as the game continues to update, the discourse surrounding the game has expanded. Genshin Impact is particularly interesting to me, because there are many things it does regarding designs & cultural heritage that are done incredibly well, and other aspects that border on abysmal. In this hypothetical project, I can speak on the complexities of Genshin Impact's design philosophy and representation of cultural heritage. One potential downside of this topic is that because of its specificity, it may be hard to find peer-reviewed sources. I am sure I could create enough content out of this to fill an exhibit, but a larger than desired portion of information would be from less formal sources.

-Internet Communities and/or Fandom culture 

These two often go hand-in-hand. This topic is sort of a love letter to my adolescence, covering communities that shaped me into the person I am today. Being a very contemporary topic (Alongside my second topic), there may not be a large pool of academic resources, but I think what exists will be sufficient, although I know that what I focus on will definitely be inspired by the range of specific internet culture topics covered by academia.

I also had other topics I was considering, such as The Permian Era and its animals, Anomalocaris, the domestication and history of cats, Carthage, and early human evolution. Many of these are related to evolutionary biology, and while it is still a topic I am very interested in, I think choosing a subject that has more room for interpretation would be beneficial.

Introduction

 Hi everyone!

My name is Katie Lawson, and I'm excited to be entering my 5th (and hopefully final) year of my undergraduate degree at RIT. I was originally a Software Engineering major for the first three years of my undergraduate career, but I decided to transfer into Museum Studies before the beginning of last fall semester, and I am continually more grateful and satisfied that I did so! Not only do I enjoy the kind of work I'm doing more than I did before, but the spectrum of topics in the potential classes I can take is far more varied in a way I really like. 

I am looking forward to not only completing this final year and getting my BS in Museum Studies and my minors in ASL & Deaf Cultural Studies, Art History, and Software Engineering, but to hopefully be beginning my master's journey next year to further my goal in becoming a professional archivist one day (hopefully in the near future). I've already gotten some hands-on experience under my belt (having been an intern in the Cultural Heritage Imaging lab on campus this previous summer), but I am eager to get more!

I can't wait to continue in this semester and beyond!

- Katie