Ellie Harrison

Hi Friends! 

My name is Ellie Harrison and I am a second year student in the Museum Education MA program. I have a very complicated answer to where I am from, but in essence I have lived all over the country and world. I did my undergraduate at Barnard College and majored in Art History. While I was there, I fell in love with museums and teaching. I worked in a summer camp for 5 years teaching ukulele, and after graduating I started working in school programs and classrooms. 

Since starting at Tufts, I have worked at the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Paul Revere House, and I am currently doing my practicum at the Harvard Art Museums. My practicum project is based around museum literacy and making the museum an equitable and understandable space. I am so excited to continue teaching about history, art, and making them both fun and engaging for school age audiences!

Madeline Smith

Hello everyone! My name is Madeline Smith, and I am a second-year student in the History and Museum Studies MA program here at Tufts. I grew up in Northern Illinois, then moved to Texas to earn my B.A. in History from Trinity University in San Antonio. During my studies, I interned at the Witte Museum and Institute of Texan Cultures. It was during these internships that I discovered my passion for repatriation and decolonizing museums. Museum ethics are entering a new era, and I realized that I wanted to help push this change forward. I was drawn to the program at Tufts because of its dual program in history and museum studies.

My main interests are in provenance research and collaborating with stakeholder communities. I am specializing in Early American history and implementation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. I believe that museums should share authority with communities to thoughtfully and accurately represent the cultures to which the objects in collections belong. Through this blog I hope to support museums in their efforts to decolonize and shine a light on critical issues in the field. 

Lauryn Weigold

Hi folks!

My name is Lauryn Weigold and I’m a first year Museum Education MA student. I’m from Las Vegas, Nevada but have lived in New York city, Boston, and Indiana. I spent the vast majority of my life wanting to be a public-school teacher, so my Bachelor’s is in Elementary Education (grades 1-6) from St. John’s University, but I also have a Master’s in Children’s Literature from Simmons University as well as a Master’s in Teaching of English for Adolescents (grades 7-12) from Teachers College, Columbia University. Despite being a lifelong lover of museums, I’m still new to working in them, having only worked at Minnetrista Museum & Gardens in Muncie, Indiana as both a retail associate in the Orchard Shop as well as a visitor connector in the main building before coming to Tufts.

Pivoting from classroom teaching to educating in museums is something I’m incredibly excited to learn more about, including working with audiences other than K-12 students, working in various institutions with different types of collections, and trying a little bit of everything. The interdisciplinary aspect of learning in the Tufts Museum Education program is actually one of the things that won me over and I look forward to having an opportunity to explore, learn, and broaden my curiosity and horizons throughout this program.