Greetings and Salutations-- Renee Guerin

 Hello, everyone! My name is Renee Guerin, and I am a fourth year Museum Studies and Painting dual major going into my final year here at RIT. 

As I’ve continued here at this institution, I have discovered a passion for preservation and conservation, especially within my jobs at a multispectral imaging lab on campus, focused on historical artifacts and accessibility, as well as at the Archives center in the Wallace Library. These opportunities, and my course work from both programs, has greatly influenced the development of my thesis, one of which I had been formulating since I transferred here a little over a year and a half ago. 

While I am still in the process of creating a title, my thesis will be a mixture of research paper, experimentation, and projects. My goal is creating two egg tempera pigments using traditional 15th century Italian techniques and recipes, as well as having a control variable of mainstream manufactured egg tempera, and testing of half life, pigment longevity, effectiveness as a media, and how it differs based on use of humane versus inhumane (ethical vs unethical) practices (i.e. caged eggs versus cage free, as an example). My end goal is to create a master copy of a tempera piece using these handmade pigments, and store bought ones, to see overall differences, how they interact with one another, and their reactions through experimentation. I will be focused on the use of accelerated aging ovens and multispectral imaging to understand the pigments further, and my tests will focus on these factors.

I aim, with this project and paper, to connect both the sciences and the arts in an interdisciplinary fashion, and be able to gain more hands-on experience and skill sets related to the field of painting conservation. Thank you for reading, and I will continue with more updates in the time to come!

Blog Post #12: Slowly Adjusting

Hi everyone. It's been a couple of weeks and I am slowly settling into this new "normal."

One of the benefits of being a part time student this semester and last is that I already had a LOT of extra time on my hands, but now that school is cancelled and my three part-time jobs are cancelled, I have like a LOT times five free time now. Primarily this means extra sleep ;)

But since I've had to work at managing at my time for thesis all year anyhow, the lack of in-person contact isn't a world-ending shift for me. Luckily I got my case study done in February so I don't need to worry about that, and really it's all about finishing going through my edits from my advisors (and my mom!)

I hope everything is going well for the rest of you and I am so so sorry we won't get to celebrate our accomplishments in person in May. I'm still in Rochester so if anyone needs anything, whether it's a food delivery or anything else, please let me know!!

Blog Post 5: Feelin Good!

Hey y'all, long time no see!

It's week 9 and progress is definitely being made. I have both my advisors locked in and I've started my story-board. Right now the story-board is just my research question and and some major topics i'm thinking of hitting on but its something!

I think for the first two weeks of my research I was spending too much time looking at language acquisition studies and discourse analysis studies and then I tried to mold my topic around that. I'm definitely branching out now after writing and revising my lit review. I feel like I have a much better idea of where my topic is going. I'm definitely going to focus less on language acquisition and more on language barriers, power structures, and communication through multiple modes. Within this I will be addressing the ways in which language use can alienate visitors. Two of these ways are high level language use and jargon in label copy, and the ways certain groups are talked about (i.e. are they being voyeuristic, oversimplifying, patronizing, paternalistic, or primitivist in any way). 

After meeting with my secondary advisor and doing my own research, I'm grounding my research in a socio-cultural direction and running with it. I need to do more research on things like code-switching, museum accessibility, and meta-discursive functions. Meta-discursive functions are basically how the language we use is interpreted by other people and then integrated.  An important part of meta-discursive functions is lexical indexing, meaning how we want people to interpret us through the way we speak. Focusing on these parts of linguistics will help me make my recommendations about language use changes that can happen in the museum. I'm excited for the next few weeks and the things I'm gonna learn in them! 

Revised Topic Draft and Citations!

Research Question:

How can museums use language to end visitor alienation and increase engagement?

In this project, I will be looking at how language use in society creates inside groups and establishes a social hierarchy and how this is reflected in museums. Many other types of organizations are already doing this, museums can too. AAM's LGBTQ+ Alliance is already making efforts to make museum language more inclusive for all people, this could be a great case-study on expanded language use in the museum[1]. It is my belief that changing or evolving language use in museums can help to stop alienation of visitors. It is important to create a broader insider group through the way we speak to our visitors. Currently there is a major gap in how museums communicate with their visitors and how visitors and the general public communicate with each other. This includes the languages that are prominent in the museum, as well as the different words that we use regularly, i.e. the slang you use with your friends. Can museums seize upon an opportunity to majorly impact language use and preservation in America today?

Recently, the International Council of Museums held a contentious vote on changing the definition of the museum; some important parts of this proposed definition for my project, “Museums are democratizing, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures…safeguard diverse memories for future generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for all people… and work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collection, preserve, research, interpret, exhibit, and enhance understandings of the world.”[2]  Although this definition was not adopted at the 2019 conference, I think it is worthwhile to see how the language we use can help shift meaning for the visitors in this context.

---

[1] Anshel, Nancy, Erin Bailey, Johanna Blume, James Burns, Wesley Chenault, Barbara Cohenstratyner, Heather Doggett, et al. 2016. “LGBTQ Alliance Welcoming Guidelines for Museums.” American Alliance of Museums.

[2] “ICOM Announces the Alternative Museum Definition That Will Be Subject to a Vote,” ICOM, accessed October 1, 2019, https://icom.museum/en/news/icom-announces-the-alternative-museum-definition-that-will-be-subject-to-a-vote/.

Resources:

1.     1. Anshel, Nancy, Erin Bailey, Johanna Blume, James Burns, Wesley Chenault, Barbara Cohenstratyner, Heather Doggett, et al. 2016. “LGBTQ Alliance Welcoming Guidelines for Museums.” American Alliance of Museums.

a.       This source is a great example of a museum language guide. It explains its target groups and goes in depth on word usage and how to respectfully address specific people. It provides no harsh judgement of the people it is targeted towards and tries to act as educationally as possible. 10/10 love this one.

2.     2. Eastaugh, Erik. “The Concept of a Linguistic Community.” University of Toronto Law Journal 69, no. 1 (Winter 2019): 117–58.

a.       This source is more on the legal side of language and tries to address how to define a linguistic community in reference to language-based laws and language preservation. One important aspect of this article is how it attempts to define the relationship between language and culture. Eastaugh emphasizes that just because you share a language with someone does not mean that you are participants in a shared “mono-culture”. This article got me thinking about language laws and rights in America; I’m not sure how helpful that will be for my project, but it’ll be interesting to learn about.

3.     3. Huong, Le Pham Hoai. “The More Knowledgeable Peer, Target Language Use, and Group Participation.” The Canadian Modern Language Review 64, no. 2 (December 2007): 333–54.

a.       This source was really great and will be really helpful for me. It talked a lot about educational concepts as they relate to language acquisition. This made me think about language development and progression in children. If museums already act as a secondary source for educational development for children, what are they doing and what more could they do for language acquisition? This doesn’t just apply to children, it is also useful to think about adults, especially adults learning a new language! The concept of the “zone of Proximal development” which deals with your language development and problem solving is interesting for language acquisition regardless of age.

4.    4.  “ICOM Announces the Alternative Museum Definition That Will Be Subject to a Vote.” n.d. ICOM. Accessed October 1, 2019. https://icom.museum/en/news/icom-announces-the-alternative-museum-definition-that-will-be-subject-to-a-vote/.

5.     5. Lee, Thomas, and Linh Cao. “Language Use in Family and Society.” English Journal 89, no. 1 (September 1999): 107–13. https://doi.org/10.2307/821364.

a.       This source is an ethnographic look at a Vietnamese family in America that takes a look at the role of language in families and how that affects their interactions with society. This article got me thinking about translation sources in museum’s because the family in the article speaks 4 languages at varying levels of proficiency that leads to a major communication gap between the older members and the younger members of the family. Is this something that the museum can address? Is it even something museum’s should care about?

6.     6. Reid, Robin. “Philology and Language Studies: Tolkien’s Use of English.” Tolkien Studies 13 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1353/tks.2016.0026.

a.       This source wasn’t all that helpful, it spoke about the specific aspects of Tolkien’s use of language and their literary impact which isn’t very useful for my purposes. Very interesting read if you’re interested in learning about the impact of Tolkien’s naming conventions though!

It's a Topic!

Research Question: 

How can the education system improve their programs surrounding the mental health of their students? 

Changing the stigma surrounding mental illness is a very important issue that our society is facing today. I believe it is important to start the conversation anywhere you can. 

            So, for my thesis, I will be focusing on the programs that the secondary education system, specifically in New York state, has in motion now to improve the mental health of their students. 

My research will see what resources if any, schools have in place for their students to use when it comes to their mental health. I will also focus on what is required by New York State’s Board of Education when it comes to teaching about mental health. I want to know when schools implement these requirements into their curriculum, and how they go about it. I think it’d be interesting to see if the schools do the bare minimum of what is required or if they go above and beyond. However, I think it will also be important to see how access to resources, funding, and location of the school affects how they tackle this problem and ways the state can improve this.

            I also would like to research what students think of what the school is doing by surveying classes in multiple schools about the topic of mental health and see the baseline of what they know, what the school has taught them, and if the school itself helps them in a way they feel is adequate. I do not think my research would be complete without student’s opinions who actually attend New York schools and experience what they have to offer. What they have to say about how they believe their school could improve is extremely significant to my research because the point of my work is to succor them. 
          At the end of my research, I hope to create a curriculum or public program that can be implemented in schools or other educational institutions aimed at these students that help educate on mental illness, and ways to improve how schools handle the conversation and education on mental health. 

Blog Post 3: Language is Power

Research Question:
How can museums use language to end visitor alienation and increase engagement?

Changing or evolving language use in museums can help to stop alienation of visitors. It is important to create a broader insider group through the way we speak to our visitors. Currently there is a major gap in how museums communicate their visitors and how visitors and the general public communicate with each other. This includes the languages that are prominent in the museum, as well as the different slang and pop culture level words that we use regularly. If visitors don't feel welcome in our institutions, or can't understand what we're trying to say then we need to reevaluate how we communicate. 

Recently, the International Council of Museums held a contentious vote on changing the definition of the museum; the results of this vote were to postpone the conversation. The word "colonizer" proved too much for the conference attendees to bear and they did not look beyond the word into the meaning and message that the shift in definition would mean for the field. It is worthwhile to see how the language we use can help shift meaning for the visitors. I will be looking at how language use in society creates inside groups and establishes a social hierarchy and how this is reflected in museums. Many other types of organizations are already doing this, museums can too. AAM's LGBTQ+ Alliance is already making efforts to make museum language more inclusive for all people, I'm hoping to use this as a case study and expand on it beyond gender and family related language. 

Who...knows?

Hello all!

Picking a thesis idea has been haunting me since freshman year. Since starting my journey in the museum studies field, I could not pinpoint an area where I was die-hard interested in. This alone made me nervous when it came to thesis, because I wanted to be sure I was passionate about whatever I was writing about. Over the last four years my interests have changed and evolved, and I decided I wanted to move past the museum field after graduation and focus my professional journey in education. 

So for my thesis project, I’m going to take the public history route to focus on the education system and their relationship to mental health initiatives. I’d focus on grades 9-12 for this thesis. I do not know whether or not I want to do a project-based thesis, or solely focus on the research.

If I were to a more project-based thesis, I’d want to focus on maybe creating a curriculum / program schools could follow to help improve their mental health initiatives for their students. If I did research, I’d mostly write about what their doing and how they could improve upon it. 

Not only do I have to research about what they are doing now in schools, I also have to research a lot about psychology and mental health disorders that affect people around the world.

I know I want to at least start by surveying highschools in the area of Rochester to see what they are doing, and what they think they can improve in regards to their mental health and wellness programs they have in place

Blog post 2: narrowing a topic

Hello! I have two main ideas for my thesis right now, I'll lay them out and then discuss possible pros and cons of each. This will not only fulfill the required blog post for this week, but will hopefully help me to think through them more fully, inching myself closer to a decision.

My first idea is to work with the independent living facility my grandfather lives at in Fairport, NY and a local museum and/or library to bring the residents an educational program.

Possible pros of this are it's highly related to my career goal, museum education, and it would be a great project to put on my resume for future employment and grad school. I also think the personal connection to this home would motivate me more than working with any other audience, and would hold me more accountable. Not only would my grandfather and his neighbors stand to benefit, but my parents, aunts, and uncles would all be invested too. I wouldn't want to slack off and not do my best for all of them!

One major con of this idea is that my ability to finish it relies heavily on the home allowing me to begin, a museum or library allowing me to use their collection for the project, and being able to sync my schedule up to everyone else's. While I can't envision anyone turning away a highly motivated college kid wanting to do free work for them, you never know, and I'd hate to get halfway through and suddenly be left out on the sidewalk. Another potential issue is that perhaps the home used to have programs like the one I'm envisioning, and they were a flop with the residents. Finally, I'm not sure how to articulate a research question for this project. I understand the question is something that evolves all year, but I don't even know where to start.

All that being said, my other idea is to work with the Kodak archive and do an oral history project of how Kodak affected Rochester residents.

Pros of this include the fact that I already have strong connections to Kodak and the people working with the archive and I have a good sense of the company history which would serve as my background knowledge before I began talking with people. Also, if anyone were to do a Kodak oral history project, there would be no better place to do it than right here in Rochester, and here I am!

Cons could include the Kodak archive not wanting to make use of the oral histories if they paint a negative picture of the downfall of the company. This is understandable, the bottom line of the exhibit on Ridge Road was to create an "uplifting" portrait of Kodak in the 21st century, and my hypothesis is that very few folks these days would have positive, uplifting messages to share. This could be fixed by working with the city historian or a different museum in Rochester, but if I change who I'm working with then I lose the "pro" of having those strong connections I mentioned above. The other major con for this is that while I'm incredibly interested in oral history, Rochester, Kodak, et cetera, this project does not directly tie into the whole museum education career I'm currently envisioning for myself. Of course, that's okay, but should I stick with something more focused on what I want to do in the future? Should I reconsider what I want to do in the future, if this project is pulling me in? I have no answers yet!

First Post

Hello everyone,

My name is Rebecca Jarrett, and I'm a fourth-year student. This is my second semester in the Museum Studies program. It's nerve-wracking to start the thesis process, but I am excited to see where it leads me. I love public history and am primarily interested in curation, education, and visitor studies. Conservation is also intriguing, but my hands are definitely not steady enough for that! I want to spread historical knowledge to as many people as possible because it teaches us so much about our world and is applicable to every area of life. In my free time, I like to write and watch video essays on YouTube.

I got my first experience in museum work this summer when I started volunteering at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. I worked in the Astronomy Education department, which runs an on-site observatory, as well as indoor hands-on activities. I worked with solar telescopes outside, and then inside with Discovery Stations about meteorites, spectroscopy (the study of the light spectrum from celestial bodies), and a black hole model. The position is year-long, so I will be returning there to volunteer during holidays. Below is a picture of the Phoebe Waterman Haas Public Observatory, which is the main base for observatory volunteers if the sky is clear.

Image source: Observatory website

Thesis Ideas

During my internship at Kodak in June, I focused primarily on processing a large collection of documents, photographs, and objects related to the Kodak Camera Club (KCC). The KCC was an organization of Kodak employees who were interested in amateur photography. At the height of Kodak's success in the mid-to-late twentieth century, the Camera Club had hundreds of members across all departments in the company. Members could rent photographic equipment and enter their work in salons and exhibitions that took place several times a year. The organization disbanded entirely in the early 2000s when Kodak was struggling financially, but all of the meeting minutes, exhibition planning materials, event photographs, and other materials remain in the Kodak Archive. In trying to piece together the story of this employee organization, I realized quickly that almost none of the current employees at Kodak had any knowledge of the KCC, as many of the employees who were members of the club have either retired or lost their jobs when the company declared bankruptcy.

My idea for my thesis is to record oral histories from retired and former Kodak employees who were members of the Kodak Camera Club, to get a better understanding of how the club functioned and the role that it played in the corporate culture at Kodak in the second half of the 20th century. As many of the people who were employed at Kodak in its heyday are either deceased or very elderly, there is an immediate need for oral history research. These interviews, coupled with the resources in the Kodak Archive, could result in an online exhibition about the history of the Kodak Camera Club.

Pinball Survey

Since my last post, "Pinball Prologue," I have narrowed the scope of my thesis, created a survey to code and quantify data about pinball machine artwork, and discovered additional sources that will aid me in conducting my analyses (both quantitative and qualitative). According to my abstract, my analysis is meant to  "[document] how the depiction of women has or has not changed in pinball artwork over time, and what it might mean today for a [pinball] industry to depend on the visual sexualization of women for its commercial success."


Before I decided to do a quantitative survey, I was going to examine machines from 1930 to present. Once I decided I was going to do a more thorough investigation in a narrower time frame, 1970-1989, I estimated how many survey entries I would have, total, based on the number of pinball machines produced by six major manufacturers. That early estimate revealed I would average 30 entries per year, for an approximate total of 300 machines! I would need to find a way to make the sample size smaller if I was going to complete the survey by the end of spring break.
I also decided I would eliminate entries that did not reach a certain production number, since very limited quantities meant less visibility in the public sphere, but I wasn't sure where that "cut-off" number would be.

So, during yesterday's meeting with my primary advisor, Dr. Tamar Carroll, we considered several ways to refine the quantitative survey parameters to make the selected sample more manageable. In addition to what I discussed above, we decided to eliminate one of the manufacturers from our criteria. Chicago Coin was not as competitive in the pinball market during the 1970s as it had been in prior decades, and production numbers were hard to come by. Stern was not as competitive in the 1970s as the other major manufacturers, so while it would be a huge oversight to exclude them from an analysis of the 1980s, onward, it doesn't seem unreasonable to exclude them in my sample. This is a tough decision and I would be more comfortable making it after a discussion with my secondary advisor.

I discovered early on that despite having different titles, many pinball machines form 1970 to 1978 shared the same artwork with another title. There might have been 2 to 4 machines with the same artwork, because in order to create certain features within electro-mechanical pinball machines, like the ability to add-a-ball OR a replay as a reward, different machines had to be produced to accommodate these features (this began to change with the introduction of solid state electronics in 1977). Duplicate machines with different titles were also produced when a company made a two-player and four-player version of the same game. Sometimes games for foreign markets also received a new title. In all of these instances, because I was focusing on the artwork, I could use the earliest example of the artwork as the baseline for the entry, and simply note 1) how many machines were produced with the same artwork; and 2) list alternate titles within that single entry.

Combined, these methods of narrowing my survey tell me what to prioritize. After all, I can always add entries if I have the time to do so. For now, I should be conservative and develop a solid survey for analysis.

I have also changed my survey sample "questions" from an original set, to a set based on sociologist Erving Goffman's survey in Gender Advertisements, then back to my original set (with revision) again! Although Goffman's survey seemed like a neat ready-to-use package of period-appropriate questions for gender analysis, they were neither as straight forward, nor as appropriate for my thesis, as I originally thought they would be. After receiving positive feedback on my initial set of questions, including suggestions for improvements, I decided I would move forward with those.

My primary advisor and I will meet more regularly following Spring Break to ensure my survey and the thesis, overall, are on the right track.

Finally, there is one more event worth mentioning here. From December to February, I assisted the development of a pinball timeline to be used in conjunction with Pinball Playfields, a permanent exhibit at The Strong National Museum of Play, which opened on February 27, 2016. The timeline is called "Pinball in America." It exists as an interactive display on the exterior of the exhibit space at The Strong, and as an online exhibit, though the Google Cultural Institute. That version is embedded in The Strong's web page (linked above). In addition to the timeline, there are interpretive texts and displays throughout the exhibit that I can now utilize as additional sources for my thesis! What an exciting time.

Stern Pinball Cluster in the Pinball Playfields exhibit at The Strong National Museum of Play. Press photographs of the exhibit, like this one, capture interactions visitors have with pinball machines and other visitors. Staged or not, the content of this photograph demonstrates the behavior that is expected from museum visitors within the exhibit space. Is female participation contingent upon their relationships with male players? Look closely and you can see two individual female players in the back row.

The exterior of the Pinball Playfields exhibit at The Strong National Museum of Play. Photograph taken by author. The digital display that features the Pinball in America timeline is out of the frame, on the right side of the exhibit. Can you believe this used to be a gift shop for butterfly-related merchandise? I'd call this an upgrade. More exhibits mean more opportunities for play, and more play means more opportunities to learn and grow.

What's next? While I have also made progress in writing the body of my thesis, there is still a long way to go! First I will focus on completing the survey, then I will continue writing content.

Progression of Thesis

The semester is going by quickly and my thesis is progressing wonderfully. I have not faced any major challenges and I am very happy with the way my paper is turning out.

I have spent this week working on figures and captions, and on the appendix while I wait for feedback on my second draft. I have a couple more pages worth of content to write, which I will pick up again once I have received the feedback. Spring break starts this weekend and I intend to complete my thesis during that time.
   
Below is an image I took when visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame's Museum, and it is also one of the images I have included in my paper. This portion was a part of a case about "The Changing Face of Baseball." The blue label in particular caught my interest, and has been a great supplement to my paper.  It reads:
       Reviving African American Baseball

       Integration of African-Americans into the majors reached a peak of 18.7% in 1981, but their                participation has dropped since then, sinking below 8% in 2009. "Nowadays, kids think that                baseball is a white man's game," said Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities [RBI] founder John                 Young in 1992. His program to organize youth teams in black communities is an effort to reverse        that trend.

Progression of Thesis

        Over intersession I was able to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and make my observations. I went on a Sunday, and arrived a little after 9 a.m. I was the first visitor there so I had the museum to myself for about an hour before other people started trickling in, which was nice, but different because I had never been in the Baseball Hall of Fame when it was so empty!    
        My thesis is progressing the way I want it to. I haven't had to make any significant changes, and I don't think I will need to.  I have begun writing the paper, and recently finished ten pages for my first draft. The writing process is going well, however I am still playing around with the order of section two of my paper, in which I will discuss the study of sports, sports museums, the study of baseball, the history of baseball, African Americans in baseball, the Negro Leagues, and the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (not necessarily in that order). As I add more content, and fill out the sections in more detail, I will be able to see more clearly how I want that section of my paper to flow. 

Below is a picture I took at the Museum. This quote caught my eye given the nature of my thesis, in which I have been conducting research on the history of baseball and how African Americans were marginalized within the sport, in order to answer my question of whether the Baseball Hall of Fame's museum challenges the traditional marginalization of African Americans in baseball.

"Major League Baseball has an enormous social responsibility to provide equal opportunities for all people, both on and off the field."  -- Commissioner Bud Selig, 2013

Audience Engagement with high school student

My thesis focus has changed so much since first few weeks of the semester. While working with Professor Carroll and Dr. Kitzel, they both helped me realized that my thesis were too broad and might be difficult for me research on. I decided to shift my focus from digitalizing Laurent Clerc Collection to a consortium to Audience engagement with high school students.

My thesis focus to discover a subtype pilot program as extracurricular program for high school students to participate in digitizing history archives. The goal is to show that archivists, educators, and students could work together in participatory audience engagement  in museum and archive. My part would be developing surveys, assessment and meetings with professionals.

Historical Violent History & Staff

My thesis has to deal with the violent history at historical sites & museums and how the staff at the museum handle it. Reactions to violent history can range from making it a gimmick to attempting not to mention it at all. Sometimes you only get the information on specific tours, sometimes it's played up for Halloween. Yet, what does a museum really gain from hiding this information, or on the opposite end, playing it up? I want to interview staff from 4 different historical places: The Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast, Antietam national park, Alcatraz, and The Sloss Furnaces. I want their take on this phenomenon and how they view the treatment of violent histories at their own sites. Do they have a hand in why they talk about it like they do? Do they think it should be different? And how does this attract visitors?

History of Baseball in Rochester

Chapter 2 of the Turabian text suggested searching your interests when considering a topic, and that is how I began my project. I love history and I love baseball, and so I chose to look at the history of the Rochester Red Wings as the topic for my thesis. I contacted Michelle Finn of the Rochester Public Library and found out from her that the library has quite a few baseball related items in its collection, such as scrapbooks, photographs, yearbooks, and other memorabilia related to the Red Wings. Through the research that I have done so far, I know that the Rochester Public Library had an exhibition on the history of baseball in Rochester, called "Pride and Passion," a couple years ago. So I think that it would be interesting to create an online exhibit that the public would be able to view on the library's website. As I continue with this project I will need to figure out what story I want the exhibit to tell. Right now I am entertaining the question of whether baseball is still considered to be "America's Pastime." I think this question might help my topic to "fit into a larger context"(Turabian, p.15).

Past Thesis Ideas

At this point I have my topic picked out but I wanted to share with you the other ideas I had in mind.

My first idea was to write a paper on Trauma Tourism. I had written a paper on it in Exhibition Design and wrote a similar paper in an anthropology class I took called, Genocide and Post Conflict Justice. I wanted to focus on memorials and museums in places that experienced turmoil (concentrating on genocide) and how the museum / memorial worked in the grieving process. I wanted to focus on the memorials and memorial museums in Rwanda and the Tuol Sleng Museum in Cambodia.

Other topic ideas I had included cultural patrimony issues, conversation of mummies / where should the mummies be exhibited / ethics of displaying human corpses, and social media within cultural institutions with a case study of creating the Pinterest page for the Archives.

I am very excited to get to work on my thesis about the Hynerotomachia Poliphili  

Reader Response in Columbia University's 1499 copy of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili 

Rubrication is still present in the Newberry Library's 1499 copy of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili 

Possible Thesis Topic

The current topic that I am considering is, working with the Department of Photography at the George Eastman House, to itemize, catalog, and rehouse the Colorama collection. Colorama was an advertisement campaign used by Kodak from 1950-1990. Images were displayed in along Grand Central Station in New York City. Backlit, the images were transparent panoramas that were 18ft tall and 60ft wide. The images I will be working with are, much smaller, original prints. According to Ross Knapper, head archivist at GEH, there are approximately 500 left. I hope to complete the project to its full extent, however, 500 images would be an incredible feat.

Image from Kodak Colorama series 

Image from Kodak Colorama series

Jenna Bossert's Introduction

     Cultural institutions have long been of interest to me, but it was not until halfway through college, I realized that this line of work was my calling. I have visited many museums in my lifetime across the country. However in all that time, I had not thought about how the museum was run or who was in charge of different aspects of the museum.

     When I began college, I was a New Media Interactive Development student. While I still have a love of new media and technology, I realized my passions were more aligned with the following: history, art, fashion, education, information sciences, and other cultural institutions. I joined the Museum Studies major officially in Fall 2014 though I had already taken nearly 1/2 of my course requirements for the program. Interning in the summer of 2014 at the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology (MOST) in Syracuse, NY solidified my decision to switch my major. 

     While I worked at the MOST, I was a Marketing and Public Relations intern and I had a variety of tasks. I am going to focus on my main project throughout my internship. I coordinated event programming for the MOST's July and August Science Socials through organizing volunteers, vendors, and concepts for the event. I led the July Science Social and I worked with the Education department to create scientific demonstrations for attendees at the MOST's Science Social. I worked with the Marketing and PR department to advertise and brand the Science Socials.

The poster for the Science Socials @ the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technoly (MOST)

      Another pivotal position that inspired me to change my major is my job as an archival assistant at the RIT Archives. I began in Fall 2014 and fell in love with many aspects that come with the job. Since working there, I have gained a wealth of knowledge about RIT. However my favorite objects that the RIT Archives has are not at all related to RIT or Rochester. These objects would have to be the artist books and the plethora of older issues of magazines such as Seventeen, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue. A potential proposal for my senior thesis is researching how 20^th century women’s fashions are depicted in various mediums, such as these magazines, films, books, social media, and of course, the museum. In addition to researching the different depictions, I plan to research the styles of clothing and trends, as well as why they came about and how they are tied to historical happenings of the same time period. An example of this would be the loose flapper dresses that were all the rage in the 1920’s. This freeing fashion came about during a time of revolution for women’s rights. Clothes and trends with fashion may have more of a historical meaning than an aesthetic meaning, or at least more than meets the eye.

Introductions

As a first blog post we have been asked to give introductions and potential thoughts about thesis topics. 

I started in museums during high school through the Capstone program, internships benefiting students who are highly motivated in their career fields, where I spent half of my school day volunteering at the Oliver Archive Center on the grounds of Chautauqua Institution. There I worked with the Thomas Edison and Lewis Miller family photograph collections and managed all incoming inquires for other facets of the photograph collection. My work primarily focused on receiving, analyzing, documenting, digitizing, and caring for the Thomas Edison/Lewis Miller family photographs and its corresponding family genealogy. I then went on to write and submit my first contract to the Chautauqua Institution Board of Trustees, purposing a paid position for the rehousing and digitization of the Chautauqua post card collection. The proposal was accepted and the project was completed before the 2013 Chautauqua season began.

From there I moved to Rochester, NY to start my college education where I immediately began volunteering at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. I spent six months volunteering in the Technology collection, labeling and helping to identify cameras. Simultaneously, I also volunteered in the Department of Moving Image during their Monday screenings in the Dryden Theater. These experiences lead me to becoming close friends with Ania Michas, former conservator of the Polish National Archives, and beginning my first contract with the Kay R. Whitmore Conservation Center. The six-month contract was through the Saving America’s Treasures grant for the rehousing of the famous Southworth and Hawes Daguerreotype collection. After completing my portion of the contract, I was asked back by the conservation center, six months later, to complete a second contract in digitization and deterioration identification of the daguerreotypes. I would later go on to be accepted into the museum’s, highly competitive, Department of Photography Undergraduate Internship.

Currently, I have been assigned to work on rehousing, identifying, and cataloging the Colorama collection, also at the George Eastman House, which I may potentially use towards a project-based thesis. However, there is another potential proposal that I may accept and use instead.

I look forward to hearing about what everyone else is considering on over these next two semesters!

Kenzie Mencer in the Kay R. Whitmore Conservation Center after helping to complete the Save America's Treasures Project