Author: Claudia E. Haines (Page 6 of 6)

As Museum Studies students, we love to celebrate museums year-round. But did you know that there’s an internationally-recognized day each year when museums get to take center stage? Last week, on May 18, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) hosted the forty-fourth annual International Museum Day, an observance that has taken place every year since 1977. According to ICOM’s website, the primary goal of International Museum Day is to raise awareness that “museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding, cooperation and peace among peoples.”

The first International Museum Day was observed in 1977, but the idea of setting aside a day each year to honor museums first emerged nearly three decades prior. In 1951, ICOM hosted an international gathering for museum professionals called “Crusade for Museums,” where the necessity of increasing education and accessibility in museums was a hot topic of conversation. Out of these discussions emerged the idea of an annual observance celebrating museums, and during the 1977 ICOM General Assembly in Moscow, International Museum Day was formally established.

The theme of this year’s International Museum Day was “The Future of Museums: Recover and Reimagine.” After a year that has presented museums worldwide with immense economic, social, and political challenges, this theme asks museum professionals and museum-lovers alike to consider how all types of museums can best serve their publics as we move into a hopefully-brighter future. As ICOM President Alberto Garlandini expressed in his message for International Museum Day 2021, it is not enough for museums to simply recover from the difficulties of the past year; they must reinvent themselves “and seize the opportunity to build back a better world.” You can check out the full message in the video below!

But while International Museum Day has a unique theme each year, the overall goals of the observance have remained the same through the decades: to encourage museums around the world to plan fun and engaging events for their publics and to raise awareness of museums’ ever-important role in our world. Accordingly, museums around the world planned a wide range of digital and in-person activities to acknowledge International Museum Day, many of which you can still enjoy via ICOM’s interactive WeMap.

If you missed this year’s International Museum Day, don’t fret—there will be another opportunity to celebrate museums coming up in June with MuseumWeek, an international event slated for June 7–13. MuseumWeek, first established in 2014, will take place virtually across a range of social media outlets, and the theme for this year is Creativity. You can read more about MuseumWeek and how you can participate on the MuseumWeek website, and you can also follow along on their Twitter feed!

Another academic year has passed, and it’s time for three new editors to take the reins of the Museum Studies blog! A huge thank you to Alexandra, Abigail, Eric, and Sayyara for their hard work on the blog over the past year, and good luck with your future endeavors. We’re so excited to follow in your footsteps and keep producing great content for the Museum Studies blog!

Now, introducing your new editors…

Claudia Haines

Hello everyone! My name is Claudia Haines, and I am a second-year student in the Art History and Museum Studies MA program here at Tufts. Growing up in central Pennsylvania, I always loved art and history and looked forward to visiting museums, but it wasn’t until my first year at the University of Pittsburgh that I learned it was possible to study museums in the classroom. That realization, combined with a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art during a family trip to New York City in 2017, led to my decision to make art and museums my full-time focus. I graduated with my BA in Art History and Museum Studies in 2020, and I have loved continuing my studies at Tufts during the past year!

Over the past several years, I have held positions at a range of museums and cultural institutions, including the University of Pittsburgh’s Nationality Rooms, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Cumberland County Historical Society, and the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, and I’ve also contributed to several exhibitions at the University Art Galleries at both Pitt and Tufts. These positions have helped me to discover my interests in curatorial work, research, and museum education, and I’m thrilled about the opportunity to develop and share those interests as a blog editor this year!

E. Jane Lapasaran

Hi everyone! My name is Jane Lapasaran and I am beginning my second year in the Museum Education MA program. I currently live in Virginia and work at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian where I assist in educational programs and gallery safety. I am originally from Florida, where I received my BA in Anthropology from the University of Florida. During my undergraduate studies, I worked at the Florida Museum of Natural History and the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention. At the Florida Museum, I discovered my love for working with butterflies and moths and I helped teach camps where students and younger children could learn about curating and working in natural history collections. At the Cade Museum, I focused more on teaching and worked as an educator, leading tours and different hands-on activities for visitors of all ages. This museum also helped me find a particular passion for working with visitors of varying levels of accessibility and developing programming and specialized tours to ensure that visitors from all backgrounds could have a meaningful museum experience.

My enthusiasm for museums has carried me through many different jobs and internships, and I have learned so much about how different museums reach their audiences and how these meaningful relationships between museums and their neighbors can transform communities. Being at Tufts has exposed me to even more styles of engagement and teaching, and I look forward to using this blog to share my excitement and discoveries with other museum lovers!

Lucy Wickstrom

Hi everyone! My name is Lucy Wickstrom, and I’m a second-year student in the History and Museum Studies MA program here at Tufts. I grew up on the central coast of California, where my mom often took me and my two younger sisters to our local children’s museum so that we could play, explore, and learn about the world around us. I’ve loved history since elementary school and have a passion for learning about the human beings who lived before us—what they dreamed, who they loved, and how they saw the world. I adore the detective work involved in digging through sources, trying to get into the heads of people from the past.

I studied history at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, but didn’t know that I wanted to pursue a career in the museum field until I interned at the Point San Luis Lighthouse in Avila Beach, California. At this beautiful historic site with a breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean, I discovered just how much I loved combing through dusty archives, staging objects inside the historic house, and sharing stories about the people who once made the lighthouse their home. The light in visitors’ eyes while they took in their surroundings, and the excitement in their voices as they asked questions, wanting to learn more, filled me with joy, and I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life sharing history in this way.

I chose Tufts for my graduate studies because of the incredible museum studies program, and because I have dreamed of living in the Boston area since my early teenage years. My period of focus is early American and United States history, so it is a dream come true for me to explore all the incredible museums and historic sites in New England. At Tufts, I have learned so much about the world of museums already. I have worked as a research assistant to my history advisor, met amazing peers and professors, and loved every moment. I’m so excited to have the opportunity to run this blog with my brilliant classmates, and I can’t wait to continue learning here at Tufts.