First Post!

Hello!

My name is Mandy and I am a fourth-year museum studies student!

My earliest memories of interacting with a museum as a child took place in the little library in my hometown. It had a small collection of an assortment of materials and objects on display, but its star object was tucked into its own little room deep in the library -- Its own mummy. As a child, if I'm being honest, it terrified me because "wow that's just.... a dead person??? lying there??? and we're looking at them?" But now as an adult and with the education, I've had with museum spaces I'm able to look at it and ponder the life that the person lived and how this mummy ended up in this weird little small town and the implications of that.

That tangent aside -- I'm also interested in what ways Museums can move to be more environmentally sustainable, and basically anything else I can learn about the museum world overall. I'm very excited to see what my fellow peers will dive into for their theses and where I end up as well!

Also, I did an internship last year at GCV&M that was super great and taught me a lot about the item accession process and about handling collections

Here is a mount I made for an exhibition that they had been working on!

Beer in Rochester

In the past week or so I've been doing some refining of my topic, and expansion also. As I wrote previously I'm interested in the beer history and culture in Rochester. Although initially I was thinking more about research, but after some very helpful discussions I've expanded on this idea. The Genesee Country Village and Museum already has two beers on the market that are based off of historical methods and recipes. So I'm going to begin thinking about how I could expand my historic research into a modern creation or program. It could just involve developing a program at the GCVM during the winter (the prime time for brewing), or talk with local craft breweries about some sort of joint project I could do with them. Of course, this idea is just budding, and is still largely unexplored.