Praxis Course: Museum Studies Praxis Seminar
Semester: Spring 2026
Faculty Advisor/Professor: Monique Scott
Community Partner(s): University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology/ Penn Museum
Field Supervisor: Katherine Blanchard
Praxis Poster:
HART_PearleBromley-compressed
Further Context:
For my Museum Studies Praxis Internship this semester, I worked as a collections management intern at the Penn Museum beneath Near Eastern Section Keeper Katherine Blanchard. As to how I secured my placement at the museum, I had initially cold-emailed Katy in June of last year. With a brief email exchange, we zoomed together several times over the summer discussing my interests and academic background, at which point she confirmed that I would be interning with her in the fall.
Throughout the semester, my praxis work focused on one main project, in which I was tasked with acquisitioning material from the site of Gibeon—or el Jib. The site itself is just Northwest of Jerusalem in the Palestinian Territories, more specifically in the West Bank. The city is over 5,000 years old, with initial settlement dating back to the Early Bronze Age (c. 3300–2000 BCE), and is most famous for its presence in the Old Testament with it being the location where Joshua made a peace treaty with its inhabitants. Its excavation was led by archaeologist James B. Pritchard through the University of Pennsylvania, with over five field seasons between 1956 and 1962. The majority of objects maintained by the museum from Gibeon originate from tomb groups, and are primarily ceramics, including oil lamps, jugs, bowls, as well as small finds such as human and animal figurines, metal jewelry, knives, and other miscellaneous pieces.
As to my role in acquisitioning this collection, I would typically process a group of objects, one shelf—or drawer—at a time. In order to acquisition an object group, I engaged in several steps including confirming the museum and registration numbers of the artifacts, taking them to be photographed in either the shot-on or shot-down photography studio, sending the digital photographs to my supervisors to be edited and uploaded to the website for publication, and then finally rehousing and reorganizing the artifacts back on the shelf/drawer from where they originated.
Ultimately, I was able to process and upload over 2,000+ object photos, which are publicly accessible on the Penn Museum’s Digital Collections Website for the first time since their excavation. I learned a lot from this internship, not only how to acquisition collection material, but how to properly engage as a steward of a collection. While these artifacts may be housed within the walls of the Penn Museum, they are not inherently owned by the museum, but rather maintained by its wonderful staff. Objects like those excavated at Gibeon hold great cultural value for the ancient heritages they represent, and in properly maintaining them, not only are they kept safe and accessible, but are given the respect they deserve as pieces of an ancient past—emblematic of contemporary cultures in Palestine today.