Praxis Course: Museum Studies Fieldwork Seminar
Semester: Spring 2026
Faculty Advisor/Professor: Monique Scott
Community Partner(s): The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Field Supervisor: Katherine Blanchard
Praxis Poster:
HART_TessRivera
Further Context:
This semester, I interned at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology with the Near Eastern collection. I worked under the keeper of the collection, Katherine (Katy) Blanchard, and alongside another Museum Studies Praxis student. Katy introduced me to the biblical site of Gibeon, which is located in current day El Jib, just outside of Jerusalem, Palestine. The site was excavated by the Penn Museum in conjunction with the Church Divinity School of the Pacific from 1956 to 1962. Finds from the excavations include pottery, jewelry, and small metal objects. I worked over the course of the semester on documenting the artifacts from this site, making them accessible to the public in the museum’s online collection website. Each day at the museum looked mostly the same. I would first check in with Katy in the basement’s storage rooms about how much I could ideally accomplish that day and whether we
had any additional meetings to attend between projects. I would then head over to the many shelves where the Gibeon objects lived, and I would take a shelf of artifacts into the next room to be inventoried. I made note of each field number and accession number, as well as any abnormalities such as pencil markings or incorrect information listed in the museum’s system.
Once the objects were inventoried, I transferred them to one of two camera setups with a gray backdrop, depending on whether the images needed to be taken from above or from a standing tripod. I photographed each object from all angles before rehousing the objects into fresh bags to be put back on their shelf. This process was repeated multiple times each day. Today, images of over 900 objects have been made available on the collection website. Objects from this site had never previously been photographed or otherwise documented outside of the names and numbers listed in the museum’s computer system. It was an extremely rewarding experience to be able to give these objects a new life. In addition to learning how to handle and photograph artifacts, I was able to gain a new perspective on what
museum work entails. There are so many museum career paths other than curation, and it was wonderful to be able to explore these other paths via hands-on participation. I look forward to utilizing the skills from this Praxis internship in my future museum career.