Museum Studies at Tufts University

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Meet the New Editors!

May 17, 2021 / / 0 Comments

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.

Trials and Tribulations of Finding an Internship During a Global Pandemic

April 25, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Last March, the museum world shut down. Closing to the public, many museums laid off staff and shifted into survival mode. It was a scary prospect for students in the museum programs at Tufts—would there be jobs when we graduate? Even more immediately—how could we fulfill our practicum requirements?*

Personally, I had a lot of trouble finding an internship. I scoured empty internship portals and sent my resume and cover letters into countless voids. I heard from a few institutions that had halted their internship programming because they did not have the budget to pay their interns. While I appreciated that more museums are paying their interns, things were starting to feel hopeless.

Eventually, I lucked out and coordinated an internship at the Harvard Museum of Natural History after reaching out to the Director of Education. I had the opportunity to help translate HMNH’s annual ‘I Heart Science’ festival into a virtual event and created a series of ‘Specimen Spotlights’ with museum volunteers.

After my ordeal of finding an internship, I wanted to know how my colleagues navigated the museum internship wasteland. I sent out a survey to everyone in the Tufts museum studies program who completed an internship in Summer 2020, Fall 2020, or Spring 2021. Only students who completed the survey are included in the data.

First of all, where did students complete their internships?

Hannah McIsaac, Margot Rashba, Alexandra Harter, and Julia Wohlforth interned at Historic New England in the Study Center, conducting research using HNE’s extensive archives. Other students interned at a variety of museums and cultural organizations around New England in operations, education, collections, and exhibitions.

Natalie Gearin interned at Step Into Art, Inc. where she “spent the duration of the internship developing and teaching a new third-grade curriculum, taught exclusively on Zoom, on the art of Kehinde Wiley including an initial lesson, a portrait making activity, a poetry workshop, and a sketching activity.”

Like Natalie, most of us had to adjust our internships to work through Zoom. Many museums remained closed throughout the summer, and some still have not reopened. Amanda Leith and Abigail Lynn were able to land in-person internships for the spring at the McAuliffe-Shephard Discovery Center and Griffin Museum of Photography, respectively.

“I was lucky enough to have found an internship where I could be on-site, but the majority of my work could have been completed remotely in case everything shut down again.”

Abigail Lynn

Sayyara Huseynli, who works both remotely and in person at the Boston Children’s Museum, found a silver lining in her museum’s continued closure. “I am going to the museum in person on Saturdays, so my supervisor, security, and I are the only people in the whole building. Thanks to this, I was able to have some playtime in the exhibits. My favorite experience was crawling through the hanging bridge in the Construction Exhibit.”

When searching for an internship, I threw my resume at many walls, hoping something would stick.  Eventually, it did. I was curious about how my peers fared in their internship hunt.

Many students met their supervisor through Tufts, either as a professor or guest lecturer. Rachel Christ interned at ObjectIDEA, an exhibit design and interpretation planning firm founded by Matt Kirchman, one of the Exhibition Planning professors at Tufts. Others met their supervisors through Tufts advisors. A few of us managed to find internships with cold calling, but no one just applied to a posted position. There were just were so few options. Fortunately, we were able to find opportunities after a little digging.

This year has hit the museum world hard, yet I feel so privileged to have been able to learn and grow in an institution that was navigating the catastrophe. Though it’s not what I expected my practicum to look like when I enrolled in the program, I learn a ton and developed into a more well-rounded museum professional.

*Due to the pandemic, students could opt to take a class in lieu of an internship.

Where was your last museum visit?

April 19, 2021 / / 2 Comments

One of the assignments in my Exhibition Planning course is to share about an interesting exhibition that we went to see. Most of my classmates tended to share about the most recent exhibition that they saw, myself included. Whether in-person or virtual, as museums start to open up more and more it’s been wonderful to be in gallery spaces again.

For myself, my last visit in-person was to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts here in Richmond, Virginia to see the Sunken Cities exhibition. 

Photo: Christoph Gerigk © Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation

This traveling exhibition was the last stop before these artifacts returned to Egypt and it was focused on the ancient cities of Thonis-Heraclion and Canopus which are located under the sea, along the coast of Alexandria.

I really have enjoyed learning about underwater archaeology in the course of my studies at Tufts, and I had never seen an exhibition that included a focus on how these artifacts were excavated. With Sunken Cities, this was really one of the major aspects that the exhibition focused on. Visitors got to see footage of the excavations and learn about where these cities were and how much is left to excavate. There’s still quite a lot of work to do at these sites, yet there are already enough artifacts to have an entire exhibition! As a visitor, this was really exciting.

I would say the other major focus of this exhibition was the cosmopolitan culture of these ancient port cities, especially the religious ceremonies. An entire section of the exhibit walked visitors through the mysteries of Osiris, religious ceremonies that took place at a certain time of year.

image

British Museum, “The Mysteries of Osiris”

It was really wonderful to go and see this exhibit, and I’m looking forward to going to museums again as things open up now that we are getting vaccinated!

What was your last museum visit? Are there any exhibitions that you are looking forward to visiting in the near future? Feel free to leave a comment below!

My Home is a Museum: Balance

March 17, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Layla Gabulova

Baku, Azerbaijan

For me one form of balance, is depicted on the Strength card which is the highest arcana of the tarot deck. It shows a woman who is taming a lion with her bare hands. The image stands for the balance of strength, wisdom and kindness. One needs to have inner strength to avoid break downs in sight of challenges. Therefore, it is crucial to maintain a healthy balance of forces, otherwise one will turn into a victim or a tyrant.

The characters and their actions also serve as symbolical representation of balance. The lion stands for human passions and fears, while the woman symbolizes awareness and the higher self. If the woman treats the animal with cruelty, the latter can cause unpredictable destructions. Thus, taming the lion needs strength and understanding, power of will and goodness. The infinity sign above the woman’s head, informs of her connection to supernatural. There needs to be a harmony of consciousness and subconscious.

 

Prashant Mishra

Pune, Maharashtra, India

“Mirror on the wall, here we are again through my rise and fall you’ve been my only friend”
When Li’ll Wayne says that in a song, I am reminded of this piece of balance hanging on my wall. Every day I wake up and right before I walk out into the world, it makes me stop and look for a second, doing away with any doubts about myself, assuring to walk out with confidence.

Then once you are through our day, it is the same you reflected in the mirror there. Knowing this brings me back to myself, overlooking the scars on the surface and bringing the focus back to myself. After all, when I look back at the reflection, I hear Wayne’s voice.


“I see the truth in your lies
I see nobody by your side
But I’m with you when you’re all alone
And you correct me when I’m looking wrong”

The Museum Experience

March 1, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Now more than ever, museums seem to be striving towards creating memorable experiences for visitors. The pandemic necessitated the use of technology and virtual tours so that exhibits could still be enjoyed. Suddenly you didn’t need a plane ticket to take a tour of the Louvre or ancient Egyptian sites. Personally, I did not often seek these online experiences out — while of course it is incredible to be able to take “tours” of museums from the comfort of your home, it mostly just made me long to be there in those spaces in person and seeing the artifact with my own eyes. And I’m sure I’m not alone in this feeling. 

However, after viewing the Peabody Essex Museum’s exhibition, “The Salem Witch Trials, 1692,” I was rather impressed with the quality of the experience. Of course, I still would rather have been able to go in person. But at least I could still view an exhibit that I had planned on visiting and feel that I had a pretty good sense of the exhibit itself and what it would have been like to have gone in person. I was also able to learn just as much as I would have if I had physically been there, as all of the text, artifacts, and art that were on display were available for the virtual experience as you “walked through” the exhibit. I felt very impressed, and felt that by “visiting” the exhibition in this way, I hadn’t missed out on any aspect of the visit had I been able to go in person.

Tompkins Harrison Matteson, Trial of George Jacobs, Sr. for Witchcraft, 1855. Oil on canvas. Gift of R. W. Ropes, 1859. 1246. Peabody Essex Museum. Photo by Mark Sexton and Jeffrey R. Dykes.

Tompkins Harrison Matteson, Trial of George Jacobs, Sr. for Witchcraft, 1855. Oil on canvas. Gift of R. W. Ropes, 1859. 1246. Peabody Essex Museum. Photo by Mark Sexton and Jeffrey R. Dykes.

Experiences like these seem to be on the rise in museums, starting with virtual visits like this one at PEM, but also expanding to include increased use of technology and VR experiences for visitors who go to the museum in person. For instance, the wildly popular Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience has traveled to numerous cities and advertises its experience, described as allowing visitors to step into the artist’s paintings. With 360° projections, use of virtual reality, and gigantic screens, the event is certainly immersive. I am curious as to whether exhibitions like this one offer much of an educational outcome for guests, or if it’s meant to simply impress with the quality of the technology and use of Van Gogh’s work to create an attraction. 

Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience - Washington

Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience

Recently, I visited a museum that seems as though it is in some ways similar to the Van Gogh Immersive Experience. And it was largely used as an opportunity to get cool pictures for visitors’ Instagram profiles. The Museum of Illusions at the Walk of Cairo did have explanatory text for the numerous visual illusions that guests interacted with, and we were given a tour of the first floor to explain these optical illusions as well. The focus was definitely placed more on the experience than anything, and I definitely had more of a feeling of visiting an amusement park than a museum. The more interactive experience did remind me of children’s museums I had visited when I was kid, but every station served as a photo opportunity for a cool picture. Unsurprisingly, the museum’s Instagram page is filled with people’s pictures.

Ames room

The Ames Room at the Museum of Illusions, Walk of Cairo

It was definitely fun, and my recent experiences at the Museum of Illusions and the PEM’s Salem exhibition — while very different from each other — have made me more interested in these experiences that museums are advertising now more than ever. While I was initially skeptical, I think these experiences have the potential to attract visitors who usually might not choose to visit a museum exhibition, and can create memorable educational experiences for visitors to enjoy by taking advantage of the technology available.

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