Introduction

Hello everyone,

My name is Angelina Davern and I'm a senior in the museum studies program. I used to be in the Game Design and Development program but changed majors one year ago. I feel bad because I believe this introduction is going to repeat a lot of what I've already said in my classes, but I don't have a whole lot else to go off of.

I've lived in and around Buffalo, New York all my life. I had grown up going to museums both there and in Washington D.C. but had not seriously considered museums as a career until college. My main interests in the field are in history museums and archival work. As a result of working at the Wallace Library for most of college, I am also considering a career in library management and plan to pursue a graduate degree in Library and Information Studies.

Over the summer, I interned in the archives of the Burchfield Penney Arts Center. This was my first meaningful venture into museum work and it was a valuable experience. My main project was processing the recently donated collection of a  deceased Western New York artist who taught at SUNY Buffalo State. Collaborating with two fellow interns, I completed my first archival processing project and compiled a finding aid. I hope the finding aid will help facilitate research into the collection in the future. In addition to processing, I learned other skills associated with working in art museums, such as handling and installing artwork. I also started writing biographies for all of the artists that completed an artist in residency at Artpark. This project kept me engaged with local history and has led me to consider a career in staff writing. I may consider incorporating this work into my thesis.

I look forward to developing my thesis with my classmates over the semester! Below is a low quality image of a zebra at the Akagera National Park. This is from when I studied abroad in Rwanda last January.


-Angie

    

Introduction

Hello! My name is Gaby Gonzalez and I am a third year Museum Studies major. Although this is only my second semester in the major I am very much looking forward to all it has to offer and to find my path with where exactly I want to go in the museum field

I was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and lived there until I was six years old, which gave me the wonderful gift of being bilingual.  I grew up on Long Island and was exposed to many beautiful and amazing museums, being in such close proximity to New York City which I believe led me to where I am today. I moved to Rochester with my family three years ago and really enjoy this city and the art culture surrounding it as well as the opportunities made available to me here.

My path to Museum Studies was a rather convoluted one, I began my college career at Clarkson University as a Chemical Engineering major, which ended up not being the right fit for me. I then decided to try Chemistry on its own as a major, but again there was no passion there for me. I decided to get my Associates in Liberal Arts at Monroe Community College when I stumbled upon the Museum Studies field and was lucky enough to live withing driving distance of one of the only schools in the nation offering it as an undergraduate major. Although I have not yet had the chance to intern anywhere I hope to do so next summer, I am not sure exactly where just yet but I think I am leaning towards something in museum education. I want to be able to give somebody else the joy I felt growing up every time I got to see something new or different in a museum.

If you spend enough time with me you will quickly learn that I talk mostly about food and my pets. Cooking and animals are two of my biggest  so I have decided to share a picture of my oldest ferret, Stormageddon, inside my crockpot (don't worry I washed it). I have three wonderful ferrets and a cat who always manage to put a smile on my face at the end of the day. I hope this picture brings a smile to yours!
I am looking forward to this semester and hearing about all of your wonderful projects!

Get to know me!

Hello all!

My name is Emily King and I'm a fourth year in the Museum Studies program. I'm from Poughkeepsie, New York, but I was born in a little parish outside of Belfast, Northern Ireland, where I lived until I was five years old.

I've always had an interest in museums, specifically the curatorial and collections management side of things. My main field of interest is art and art history, and my ultimate goal is to seek a master's degree and potentially a PhD in modern and contemporary art. Anyone who's ever spent more than 20 minutes with me can probably guess that my other major interest is sports (specifically soccer, but also basketball and baseball). I spend a large amount of my free time watching and reading about sports, bothering all my friends with random trivia tidbits, and being overdramatic about the results of games. I've always said that if I hadn't fallen in love with the museum field, I would have chosen to study sports management. However, I feel that sports fans are a largely untapped market in the museum field, and I would love to work in a large institution such as the Baseball Hall of Fame or the Basketball Hall of Fame.

This summer I completed my internship at the Eastman Kodak Company, working with several other RIT Museum Studies students to develop a historical archive with objects and documents that had been accumulated by the company over its nearly 130 year history. It was an incredible experience that allowed me to apply what I'd learned in my collections management and archival theory classes to a real-world project. I'm hoping to incorporate my experiences working at Kodak into my thesis.

The photo below was taken on the Dom Luis I Bridge, which connects Porto to Vila Nova de Gaia across the Douro River. I was fortunate enough to be able to study abroad in Portugal this past July. Our class traveled from Lisbon to Coimbra to Porto over the course of four weeks, taking in the incredible art and architecture of Portugal while studying electronic literature and worldbuilding. We also participated in the 2017 Electronic Literature Organization Conference at the Universidade Fernando Pessoa in Porto, assisting with the curation of exhibits centered around main themes in electronic literature.

I'm looking forward to a great semester with you all!

Emily

Please allow me to introduce myself...

Hi, all!  I think that everyone in the Research Methods class has at the very least met me, but for anyone reading this who hasn’t, my name is Jess Andrews, I am a 4th year in the Museum Studies program, and I anticipate graduating in May 2018 with a BS in Museum Studies with a focus in public history.  This will be my second degree, as I previously earned an AA in Liberal Arts with a focus in creative writing, western mythology, and art history from Cottey College in Nevada, MO in 2015.

Ever since I was very young, I have had a passion for learning and teaching others about history.  I have been fortunate enough to work at a number of different collecting institutions since high school, including the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor, ME, the Bangor Historical Society (formerly the Bangor Museum and Center for History), the Roberson Museum and Science Center in Binghamton, NY, and the RIT Archives.  While all of these institutions have offered me unique and valuable opportunities, I have to admit that I preferred working at the historical institutions over the others.  In addition to this love of history, I am highly creative in all aspects of my life, from baking and cooking, to how I dress and decorate my space, to how I complete assignments and solve problems.  This also means that no matter what institution I am working at, I tend towards the more creative aspects of museum work, such as exhibition design, tour writing, public programming and event planning, and museum promotions.  The majority of my experience has been in tour writing, specifically historical ghost and cemetery tours, which allow me to delve into another passion of mine-- the macabre and illicit.  Ghosts, ghouls, and goodtime girls, I’m fascinated by it all, and I enjoy channeling this fascination into museum projects such as tours, exhibits, and presentations, because there’s more to history than rulers, battles, and innovations.

Now, most of you are probably wondering by what a hamster has to do with all of this. That is Nugget, and there are several very good reasons that the picture above is of her, and not of me.  One, I don’t actually have any recent pictures of me in which I look like a normal human being (i.e. pictures in which I’m not wearing elf ears or faerie wings).  Two, who doesn’t like cute, furry critters?  Monsters, that’s who…  And three, I honestly can’t think of a better animal to use to describe myself than a chubby, anxious, slightly neurotic rodent whose favorite way to spend a Saturday is sleeping and eating, and who very well might squeak and fall over if you talk too loudly or poke it suddenly.  Or maybe it will bite you instead… it all depends on the day.

My Name is...

Hey, I'm Kayla!

I have met many of you, but I know that not all of you may know a lot about me so I'll go ahead and fill in my background for all who are interested.

For starters, I love to dance, and have been in various dance classes and performing arts my entire life. Right now, and for the last year and a half, I've been learning ballroom dance. Waltz, Viennese Waltz, Tango, Foxtroxt, Argentine Tango, Rumba, Bolero, Quickstep, East Coast Swing, West Coast Swing, Hustle, and Cha-cha are most of the dances I have learned from ballroom. Before I took ballroom classes, I was in ballet, tap dance, color guard, and Winterguard. If you can't tell, I really like dance.  I also like to go on walks in the woods from time to time, and I like to travel.

I also recently finished a Co-op at the Strong Museum of Play, where I worked in the Curatorial, Public Programming, and Institutional Advancement offices. The coolest Museum that I've ever been to is the St.Louis City Museum, in St. Louis, MO, which is where I was born. I love that museum so much, and I have yet to find a museum that compares. It has a gutted plane that is suspended in the air that children can climb into; and that's in the parking lot, before you even enter the place.

That's all for now, until next time.

Be well.

-Kayla

Poster Session 2017 is a Wrap!

Congrats to all of our seniors! And, thank you to all who came to support them at the poster session!

Post Poster Session

Compared to the beginning of the academic year, I have accomplished much more than I thought I could. Even though I was not able to finish the 3D model of the back cover, spine and foredge, the scans have been made. Even though only one accurate print was made, the files are prepped and ready to make more. Even though it isn't 100% accurate, next steps are theorized to push the mold of the newest iteration. A thesis is never done and any next steps are ready to be made by the Cary Collection. I wish I had more time to add a real silk backing or try to make the print into a mold for more papiermache bindings. Even though I didn't accomplish everything, I still have a complete thesis. I have confirmed small institutions can perform digitization and accurate facsimile creation with borrowed resources.

Museum Studies & Public History Roundup!

Today, RIT hosted the Inaugural Museum Studies/Public History Student Research Conference.  We were hanging out in the University Gallery of the Vignelli Center from 3-6 PM where three of our seniors presented their research projects, as did 9 students from Nazareth College and The College at Brockport, SUNY.

Thank you, all, and we look forward to our next gathering!