Praxis Course: Museum Studies Praxis Seminar
Semester: Spring 2026
Faculty Advisor/Professor: Dr. Monique Scott
Community Partner: Arch Street Meeting House
Praxis Site Supervisor: Jennifer Gray
Praxis Poster:
HART_SinclairBrown-compressed
Further Context:
When I began my search for a Praxis internship site, as an art history major, I started with art museums and art related organizations—but none of them felt like quite the right fit for me. However, I met Jenn (my eventual supervisor) at a museum career fair and almost immediately felt that Arch Street Meeting House could be the right fit for me. Religion has always interested me, but I knew little to nothing about Quakerism. Further, ASMH was in the process of renovating their exhibition space ahead of the United States semiquincentennial, and I was excited by the opportunity to be involved in the process of exhibition design.
Arch Street Meeting House is a historic Quaker meeting house and burial ground that hosts both a local weekly Friends meeting and the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, an annual gathering of all of the Quakers in the region. As well as serving as an active site of worship, ASMH has converted the East meeting room and a smaller reception room into a museum space. In my opinion, the character of this space as simultaneously holding a significant historical legacy aswell as still being an active site of worship and community renders the museum even more relevant and impactful.
Upon starting my time with ASMH, I had the wonderful surprise of discovering that I would be working alongside two Bryn Mawr alums: Beth Tinker ‘97 and Isabella Dorfman ‘17. It was incredibly special to have the opportunity to learn from two alumnae with careers in my desired field of study! My primary responsibility at ASMH was assisting Beth, who is an independent museum consultant (meaning that she creates and coordinates exhibitions and surveys) in the final months of preparations before the April 30th grand opening. I had a wide variety of tasks, large and small, and each workday was a fun surprise!
My most significant project was the development and prototyping of a choose-your-own-adventure-inspired interactive exhibit that would educate visitors about evolving Quaker values in the 1700s. Visitors will imagine themselves to be Quakers in this time period, follow a path, and make decisions that will either allow them to continue or cause them to be “read out of meeting” (disowned) and therefore be ‘out’ of the game. Each ‘out’ point is accompanied by a real historical example of a Quaker being disciplined for the same offense. When I received the project, Beth had already conceptualized it and came up with a list of possible decision points. I researched the historical context surrounding the three topics/paths—for example, one of the paths deals with Quaker practices and beliefs surrounding enslavement, which shifted drastically within this time period—and shaped the decision points into a chronologically-driven flow chart that visitors could actually progress through. I also supplemented these decision points with many more based upon significant historical events or interesting instances of Quaker disownment that I came across. I then worked with Beth to prototype this exhibit by printing a mockup and encouraging museum visitors to try the paths. I collected observations of visitors’ behavior, as well as surveying them after they felt they had completed the activity. After implementing the feedback gathered here, the flow charts I designed have been sent to a graphic designer, who will adapt them to be printed on a large mat that visitors can walk across in the center of the exhibition space!
Some of my other favorite tasks were assembling a kids’ scavenger hunt (in which they follow fox-shaped signs, in honor of Quakerism’s founder George Fox), voicing suffragist Alice Paul for an interactive exhibit, transcribing a cursive note affixed to an artifact, and writing image
captions for the displays. I had plenty of less glamorous tasks as well, such as cleaning the 200-year old (and extremely dusty) benches and installing UV film on the object cases. As a whole, I feel that it’s incredibly fulfilling to know that I have left a lasting impact upon the exhibition space as well as the experiences of every visitor who explores Arch Street Meeting
House. More personally, I’ve truly loved my time at ASMH and all of the people I worked with, and found it extremely impactful in shaping my goals for my future museum career.