Exhibition Labeling at Woodmere Art Museum
Semester: Spring 2025
Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork
Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling
Field Site: Woodmere Art Museum
Field Supervisor: Amy Gillette
Praxis Poster:
HART_DeoraStarobin_Revised
Further Context:
This semester I worked at the Woodmere Art Museum, located in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. This is a smaller scale institution that focuses on the artworks and artists of the greater Philadelphia region and their social ideas in the broader context of American art. They have a phenomenal collection of works inside their 19th-century building, as well as an array of outdoor sculpture installations. I had the incredible opportunity to work in the curatorial department under their Associate Curator, Amy Gillette.
In collaboration with two other interns from Bryn Mawr, I got to help Amy organize the artworks Woodmere was planning on exhibiting in their new building opening this fall, Maguire Hall. This project became something that I was able to work on in a hybrid format—Doing most work independently, while coming to Woodmere bi-weekly to check in on my progress and to get to know the museum a bit better. I started by sorting through a long document of all the works that would be displayed in the new building and figuring out which ones already have object labels and artist biographies. I was also responsible for cross-referencing the museum’s information with what is currently on their collections website. Many of these works already had labels and biographies online, though some had never been written about before. I found this part of the project to be repetitive and task-oriented, and thus it felt rewarding when the long document had finally been fully sorted through.
The next part of the project involved going through the pre-existing labels and biographies and creating revisions. Some of the artists are still living, so it was important to make sure their information was up to date. Some of the object labels were a bit short or lacked detail, so I did my best to create more nuanced formal descriptions and include some art historical analysis. I tried my hand at writing a couple artist biographies from my own research, which I found came much easier to me than the object labels. I also found supplemental readings for the labels, so readers could learn more about certain art movements or artists that were relevant to the piece.
Although this process was difficult at first, I really enjoyed doing this independent work. I feel as though my research and writing skills have improved substantially, and I think it will be neat to see what I worked on when I visit the new building in the fall. Additionally, I am so grateful to Amy, my supervisor, for introducing me to her colleagues and letting me sit in on various departmental meetings at the museum. I found this to be an incredibly fulfilling firsthand experience to the behind-the-scenes world of a local art museum.