Winter Break Plans:

The work I do on my thesis over winter break depends mainly on what sort of feedback I get next week during critiques. Hopefully, I will have minimal changes to make to my literature review so I can focus my energy on break to doing more research on Massimo and Lella Vignelli and the history of the Vignelli Center for Design Studies. I am planning to complete the first draft of the section of my thesis focusing on the history of the Vignelli's, the establishment of the Vignelli Center at RIT, and a description of the scope of collections at the Vignelli Center. If I am way ahead of the game then I will also make plans to interview Jennifer Whitlock over winter break, but I won't know until after the critiques next week.

Tying Up Loose Ends...

I am pretty comfortable with the amount of work I've accomplished with my thesis thus far. However, I do have more research to do specifically on the history of Massimo and Lella Vignelli, as well as the Vignelli Center. On Wednesday before Thanksgiving I am going to check out a few more books related to collections management policies and archives to look over during break. Friday, Saturday and Sunday I am housesitting for my mom, so I am planning to set up shop in her apartment and use that time to clean up my literature review, and also to complete the ending of it. I also will be working on completing my thesis proposal during the break, including coming up with a title.

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.