1st post

For our first assignment, we were asked to write a paragraph on our interests and experience in the field of Museum Studies and post it to ritmuse.blogspot.com so here it goes.
Unlike most of my classmates who establish their interest in the museum studies field and then pursue their education, I was put in to the field as a necessity of my ever changing job. After being assigned part-time to the RIT Archive Collections, I discovered that I really enjoyed the work, and decided to get the education required for a degree in Museum Studies so that I would have a better understanding of what I was doing and why I was doing it.
My first assignment in the archives involved packing up 87 boxes of materials in the basement at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at RIT and moving them to the archives. Since then, other students and staff members have had the task of going through the boxes and organizing and sorting the materials.
I've been able to expand the types of projects that I've worked on for the archives in the years following that first project. Currently, I'm in charge of the social media for the archives as well as capturing RIT websites using a platform called Archive-It. Be sure to follow us on Facebook (RIT Archive Collections) and on Twitter (@ritarchives).

(Photo taken by me in celebration of Museum Selfie Day 2017- I'm on the far left next to Becky Simmons (RIT Archivist), Jody Sidlauskus (center- RIT Assistant Archivist) along with some of our student employees)

Intersession - Back to the Burchfield

Over the winter break, I plan on taking advantage of the time and location to make at least one visit to the Burchfield Penney archives to continue my research. My research will be driven by the direction my advisors and I decide to go in went we all meet together for the first time on Thursday. A major point of my thesis to resolve is determining what software I will use to develop my database. This discussion is critical to have now in order to make sure it can be supported by the archives. Additionally, the end users will have to be considered - is this going to be used by the archives only or will it be publicly accessible? The answers to these questions will likely lead to proposal revisions and may result in a section being added to the literature review. Research questions to continuously keep in my mind are what categories to include and the what is the scope of the artists' careers that I would like to include. Hopefully, the additional research and consultation will allow me to actually start constructing my final deliverable.

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.

Artpark: What Makes the Experience Democratic?

The essence of my research has been to what extent Artpark functioned as a democratic experiment within the 1970s. However, defining what makes the Artpark experience "democratic" in the first has become problematic. After all, "democracy" is a word with many philosophical and functional connotations. Is it the way artists were selected to complete a residency that is democratic? Or is it how theoretically any member of the public could access the site-specific art and interact with the artist, effectively breaking down the studio walls? The artistic process itself could potentially be framed as democratic as well, especially if artists had control over where and how they executed their ideas.

These were questions I had in mind when I made my visit to the Burchfield Penney archives for research last Friday. Jennifer, the project archivist for the Artpark Archival Collection, told me that approaching the question from certain angles (such as how Artpark and its artists were funded) would require extremely intensive archival investigation. Therefore, she suggested to focus specifically on how Artpark functioned as a democratic experiment only for the artists involved. A topic of interest would be examining the types of institutions representing these artists before they were selected (were they artist-led?). The documents I looked over on Friday provided a good starting point for this investigation. The Visual Arts Program catalogs provided useful biographical information for the artists who currently have little to no presence online. A study conducted in 1978 by Arts Development Associates also revealed significant information, such as how only 30% of artists came to Artpark through a personal connection. According to the study, this proved that Artpark was "not a closed shop." The documents also provided a consistent account of Artpark's vision for the arts in its early years: to encourage the realization of experimental ideas in the arts and to engage the public in unorthodox ways.

Situating Artpark in a greater historical context has provided some interesting insights as well. Artpark was one of many efforts during the late '60s and 1970s to free art from the traditional gallery space, or, as Brian O'Doherty calls it, the "white cube." Artpark was far from being the only alternative art space in Western New York during the 1970s. Hallwalls, which was founded in 1974 (the same year Artpark's programs began), also dedicated itself to featuring innovative works from young artists at the time. I am also researching federal and state funding for the arts during this time period and how that may have influenced Artpark's operations. 

The Burchfield Penney Art Center, the location of the Artpark Archival Collection

Relationships Within Artpark and the Question of Its Success as a Democratic Art Space

For my senior thesis project, I intend to develop a relational database of the artists in residency at Artpark throughout its history. I will map out and visualize the network of connections between artists, staff, and the museums and art institutions these artists passed through both prior to and after their time at Artpark. A broad goal of this project would be to better understand the complex interpersonal and institutional relationships involved in the network and how it has evolved over time.

To compile information, I will use annual visual arts program catalogs from the Burchfield-Penney's Artpark Archival Collection as well as other easily accessible, inventoried materials including media releases, surveys, and administrative employee credentials. For example, from the surveys it is possible to tell which artists recommended other artists to come to the park, and from employee credentials it is possible to discern how the staff’s outside institutional relationships may have influenced the network of artists over time. Another dimension we are interested in would be determining the relationship between artists who were selected for the “major project” category (formed for avant-garde artists) and the "crafts" category and how the balance in the numbers between each category has changed over time.

An extensive historical chronicle of Artpark and its significance among outdoor sculpture park has been conducted through the former UB gallery exhibition “Artpark 1974-84.” The thesis for this contextualized Artpark as "a radical experiment in artist-public interaction and site-specificity that successfully balanced a populist mission with the creation of experimental art”(Firmin 2010).  According to curator Sandra Firmin, the park welcomed artists of diverse backgrounds and allowed them to experiment with art in a spectacular geographic and mythic location. By uncovering the complex network of relationships between chosen artists, staff, and outside institutions, my working research question will be to determine to what extent Artpark adhered to its populist principles. To what extent was Artpark turly the democratic arts program it aimed to be?


Artpark 1974-1984

Firmin, Sandra Q. Artpark 1974-1984. Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.

Close Reading Conclusions

I believe I have been exposed to the concepts of close reading before Research Methods began, but perhaps have just never called it by its name. I have utilized scholarly articles before for other classes and research projects, so I do have some experience dissecting literature to pinpoint an argument. However I haven't, until starting Research Methods, engaged with an article in such a structured way as identifying not only the research question and conclusion, but also identifying the research methodology and type of evidence the author presents.

I think that in learning to recognize and identify methodologies and evidence, I am getting better at comparing and qualifying different articles, especially while doing research for my thesis. I just read an article about the use of Web 2.0 features in online archives catalogs to enhance user browsability. The research methodology included a review of existing literature on the subject, a survey of a number of online catalogs of archives, and interviewed archives staff members regarding their opinions of the use of Web 2.0 features. Unfortunately, I feel that the researcher left out a major group which could have led to a more sound conclusion: users of digital catalogs. The research question asked if the effects of Web 2.0 enhanced users' ability to browse online catalogs, but the researcher never interviewed users of online catalogs. The interviews with archives staff did provide some insight into other aspects of the study that were beneficial to it's results, however there was not enough evidence collected to reach a conclusion one way or another about the effects of Web 2.0 regarding the success of online archives catalogs. After reading this article, I realized it probably isn't the strongest source of evidence for my own research topic.


Gresham, Emily, and Sarah Higgins. "Improving Browsability of Archive Catalogues using Web 2.0." Library Review 61.5 (2012): 309-26. ProQuest. Web. 27 Sep. 2017.

Joseph, Frances. “The New Zealand Design Archives: Digital Resource Building and Design History.” Journal of Design History, vol. 14, no. 3, 2001, pp. 227–236. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3527148.

Thesis Topics

During my internship at the Burchfield Penney Arts Center, I had briefly spent time processing files from the Artpark Archival Collection. Obtained by the Burchfield in 2013, the collection contains 180 boxes of textual records and over 80,000 images documenting the history of Artpark and its administration. Located in Lewiston, New York, Artpark has provided residencies to diverse local and international artists throughout its history. Many of the artists represented by Artpark are present in major public and private collections. Artpark has been a major agent in supporting emerging artists while making public art accessible to the masses.   

I had wanted do a project related to local history, and I believe there is a lot of untapped potential in the Artpark Archival Collection. The collection is currently only partly processed, making historical research using the documents challenging. However, using the information we already know and the resources available (such as old catalogues), there is likely opportunity for a project that can better make sense of the cultural, administrative and social history surrounding the park and its emerging artists. Potential topics of interest include where these participating artists came from and how artists may have been connected (and how this may have influenced who would in turn be selected for residencies in subsequent years). Although I do not have a specific research question or project proposal yet, I do envision the project itself would be accessible, potentially as a micro digital humanities project. I had contacted the project archivist for this collection and hopefully it will become clearer over the next few weeks how I can best foster greater understanding of this massive collection. 

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

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.