Caris Windhausen (University Library Systems-Special Collections)
I work in the University Special Collections Department at the Hillman Library helping to develop two exhibits and their accompanying materials. The city of Pittsburgh is turning 200 years old this semester (March 2016), so we’re working to bring together some of the most interesting people (past and present) who’ve had an opinion about the Steel City and left behind books, letters, and more for us to share. Then, towards summer, we’re helping to celebrate Europe Day 2016 with a collection of unique and beautiful children’s books.
To make sure as many people can experience these exhibits as possible, I’ll be putting together online Lib-Guides. These content-rich subject guides act as a record of each exhibit as well as a springboard for further research.
Rich Moore (Soldiers & Sailors Museum)
My internship at Soldiers and Sailors is divided into two main aspects of the museum context; curation and education. I have spent time assisting with the acquisition, identification, cataloging and archiving of a wide range of artifacts donated to the museum. My internship has also covered educational events, such as veteran’s visits and off-site presentations.
Because of physical space limitations not all artifacts can be displayed in the Hall, so Soldiers and Sailors has developed a program to compile artifacts that would not normally be displayed, into traveling displays than can be loaned to other institutions. Both curation and education are key to any museum and I have been fortunate to experience elements of both at Soldiers and Sailors.
Caroline Fazzini (Carnegie Museum of Natural History)
As an intern at the Carnegie Museums, I work closely with Assistant Curator Dr. Erin Peters on analyzing visitor evaluations of the recent exhibition She Who Tells A Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World. The exhibition displayed the works of 12 women photographers with themes ranging from personal identity to the social and political issues of the Middle East. The museum provided visitor comment cards, each of which corresponded to particular artworks on view.
I categorized and entered the visitor’s self-reported demographic data by age, gender, location, text written on the card, etc. and created codes for when visitors responded to a specific work from the show, as well as their general responses to the themes from the exhibition. I am currently breaking down the transcribed data further by extracting more specific information such as the percentages of visitors’ age ranges, languages, genders, works that received the most response, etc. This project could possibly lead to the development of new viewer engagement activities and to help us further understand how demographic data and visitors’ responses can be applied to the planning of future exhibitions.
My work on this project has shown me the impact that the addition of simple, interactive elements such as comment cards, can have on visitor reception of exhibitions and why it is important to investigate further into future use of these elements.
Courtney Krauss (Carrie Furnace Graffiti Project)
This semester I am working in conjunction with Rivers of Steel at the Carrie Furnace--a steel mill shut down in the late 70's along the Monongahela River. The site has been transformed from a rusted out industrial wasteland to a canvas for Pittsburgh graffiti artists. While most of my time has been spent buried beneath library books and newspaper articles to gain a larger understanding of Pittsburgh graffiti and the steel industry, I will soon be interviewing former steel mill workers to learn about their memories of the site and how the graffiti has affected them emotionally as they come back to give tours to Carrie visitors.
I hope to continue merging both my background in Psychology and Art History into this project that has proven to be unique from any classroom work I have previously done. I have been challenged to research independently, form my own research questions, and have learned valuable techniques to collect oral histories.
Angelica Marks (Carrie Furnace Graffiti Project)
Angelica is working with the Rivers of Steel, an organization that seeks to preserve historical and cultural landmarks related to the steel industry, in order to create an online exhibition of the graffiti works found at the Carrie Furnaces. After the decline of the steel industry, the Carrie Furnaces were heavily frequented by graffiti artists due to its secluded location. This site was well known within the graffiti community, attracting artists from all over the country.
In preparing for this project, she has been compiling information on the history of graffiti in the US, the decline of the steel industry, and documentation of graffiti in Pittsburgh. In addition to this, she will be conducting interviews with local artists to not only broaden her understanding of this subculture but to use these oral histories to bring to life the experience of writing at Carrie under illegal conditions and the interconnected relationships and influences of the artists who frequented the area.
Sarah Pomfret (University Art Gallery)
As a University Art Gallery Intern, I am working to update and standardize the online database system, Collective Access, in conjunction with the old system, Past Perfect, and paper files to create a more comprehensive and accessible database. Additionally, I am creating a Collective Access Data Entry Guide to ensure the system is consistent in the future.
This position is very rewarding as it allows me to enrich the resources the UAG offers to art history researchers and to the curious public alike. The breadth of the database is quite extensive, cataloging basic information, physical characteristics, geography/culture, valuation, etc. Of all of these categories, I find the condition reports to be the most fascinating piece of information. It is interesting to see the natural aging of the materials and works by comparing condition reports across the years. This internship has been a fulfilling and unique capstone to the Museum Studies program.
Shannon McClenning (Archive Service Center)
My job as an intern at the Archives Service Center differs from that of most interns in that I generally do not work with the collections preserved here at the archives. Instead, I work primarily on the exhibits that recently went on display around Pitt’s campus. As an undergraduate pursuing a minor in Museum Studies, this experience has been both challenging and rewarding. I’m enjoying having the opportunity to work on several different projects and having different responsibilities for each one.
When I was asked to plan a small exhibit for the display case in the lobby of the Archives Service Center, I jumped at the opportunity. However, I soon discovered some interesting challenges, the first being what topic to choose for my exhibit. Initially, I had roughly a dozen ideas and was cycling through various online finding aids to get an idea of which ones I could realistically turn into an exhibit display. At first, the top contender was to focus the project on rivers in Pennsylvania. It felt especially relevant given that Pittsburgh is surrounded by rivers. But, while I was interested in the images and their stories, I realized that they weren’t eye-catching.
Later, after cycling through several more ideas, the Lillian Friedberg collection was brought to my attention. Friedberg, who was a popular member of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community in the 20th century, had collected postcards for the majority of her life and her entire collection was donated to the Archives some years after her death in 1978. Her postcards were perfect for the case exhibit: they are small enough to fit in the space and don’t need to be printed, the way the photographs would have to be. However, I was unprepared for the size of her collection, she had accumulated about 1,700 postcards over the course of nearly 60 years and I examined every single one… many times.
As I studied Lillian Friedberg’s postcards, I started to notice several different themes and decided to build the exhibit from those. Images of fine art make up the bulk of Friedberg’s postcards but she also had hundreds sent to her from friends and family on their various travels. It was incredibly difficult to narrow down the choices and I often found myself distracted by the messages written on the postcards. In the end, I decided upon 6 categories that would best represent the broad scope of Friedberg’s collection:
Art
Travel
Religion
WWII
Friedberg had many postcards featuring anti-Nazi propaganda from France and Germany
The World’s Fair
Radcliffe & Harvard
Friedberg was a graduate of Radcliffe College and her husband, Dr. Emanuel Friedberg was a graduate of Harvard Medical School.
When it came time for installation, I faced an interesting challenge in that I had many more postcards than display stands to prop them on and many of the stands that were available for my use were too big to hold the postcards without showing from behind. The trial-and-error to find a workable solution that followed was actually pretty fun. In what felt like a true MacGyver moment, I ended up manipulating paper clips to act as stands, which worked surprisingly well once I managed to make them more stable. They put the postcards on a lower angle so the ones on the lower shelves can be viewed more easily. They also prompt the viewer to move closer to the case to get a better look.
The entire experience of planning and installing my own exhibit was one I truly enjoyed. Even the challenges were interesting and taught me a great deal. Now when I walk through the door every week I get to see my own work and a reminder of the fun I had doing it.
