Author: Ruth Tilahun

Ella Sokulski, BMC 27′

Museum Studies Fieldwork: Wexler Gallery

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling

Field Site: Wexler Gallery

Field Supervisor: Maeve Daly

Praxis Poster:

HART_EllaSokulski_Revised

 

Further Context:

Over the course of the spring semester, I had the pleasure of interning at Wexler Gallery, an art gallery in Philadelphia’s Fishtown. Wexler Gallery focuses on exhibiting collectible design and artwork; these categories span fine arts, such as paintings to glass, and light design. As an intern, I became aware of the daily workings of an art gallery and explored each facet of gallery life.

Through my internship, I explored numerous online platforms used by the gallery, including FileMaker Pro, ArtBase, Squarespace, 1st Dibs, Incollect, and Constant Contact. Part of my responsibilities as an intern were to make sure these online platforms were up-to-date. This included adding contacts and art to ArtBase, adding people to the mailing list, updating pieces on 1st Dibs and Incollect to be sold, updating information on the website, and contacting museums and designers to promote our artists.

Along with the digital aspect of my internship, I was also a part of putting together the Henry Bermudez exhibition. I accompanied Maeve, my field supervisor, to Bermudez’s studio to take photos and dimensions of his art for the show, and organized them online so that they were easy to reference. I was able to help with the curatorial process and assisted in the arrangement of the art. Along with the technical side of the exhibition, I also helped with facilitating the opening.

Interning at Wexler Galler was an amazing experience where I got to experience the daily activities of an art gallery. I gained valuable skills for online databases and for working with other websites, such as Incollect. The staff at Wexler Gallery was extremely welcoming and eager to help me figure things out, I am so thankful for all that I learned.

Maia Roark, HC 25′

Curating the Past: Preserving the Future

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling

Field Site:  Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Field Supervisor: Brianna Quade

Praxis Poster:

HART_Maia Praxis Poster (24 x 36 in)_Revised

 

Further Context:

This semester, I interned at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP). I was lucky enough to work in the Learning and Engagement Department under Brianna Quade, the Community Engagement Coordinator.

For a little introduction, HSP opened in 1824 as a way to preserve valuable documents of the American Revolution. Today, HSP’s collection includes over 21 million items, most of which are books, manuscripts, photographs, and newspapers. The archive rests in the heart of Center City, several blocks away from City Hall. One of my favorite things about HSP is that all of the objects are in one building. If you sit down in the Hogwarts-esque reading room and request something — say, an 18th-century ornithology book, a 10-foot SEPTA map, or a David Kennedy watercolor — it will be brought to you. There are so many items that even HSP’s staff regularly find materials they never knew we had. (One of the most recent ones was the diaries and briefcase of a traveling salesman who traveled with his pet raccoon, Dimples).

My work mainly involved working on an upcoming exhibit entitled Voices of the Community: Local Black Preservation. I spent the beginning months of the internship sifting through different collections, trying to find materials that resonated with me. I finally settled on the Nellie Rathbone Bright collection. Over the next few weeks, I researched Ms. Bright and put together a wall case that highlighted significant moments in her life. Ms. Bright worked as the principal for three different Philadelphia schools in the mid-20th century. She constantly strove to make her community a better place, planting gardens, building playgrounds, and generally improving the areas around her schools. In a particularly touching photograph, Ms. Bright poses with several teachers and schoolchildren next to a TV: the first of its kind at her school.

Overall, one of the most memorable experiences of this internship was the feeling of tapping into the great Philadelphia community. As a Haverford student, I sometimes forget how isolated the campus is. My internship at HSP not only made me feel like I was in the know, but also made me feel like I was doing something about it. When Macy’s announced that they were closing the historic Wanamaker Building, America’s first department store, HSP invited the public to come view its Wanamaker Collection which included drawings, photographs, and letters about the building. I got to help set up documents for a WHYY segment on Wanamaker.

Finally, I am so grateful for my experience at HSP. This is my second time interning in its Learning & Engagement Department, and I have learned so much about working in the museum field. Above all, I have learned the importance of a positive work environment. Thank you to Brianna, Justina, Selena, and Katie for such a great spring semester.

Eleanor Toyama, BMC 26′

Penn Museum: Into the Collections

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling

Field Site: The Penn Museum

Field Supervisor: The Penn Museum

Praxis Poster:

HART_EleanorToyama_REVISED

 

Further Context:

For my Museum Studies Fieldwork experience, I got the opportunity to work with Katy Blanchard, a Bryn Mawr alum, in the Near East collections of the Penn Museum. I worked alongside another Bryn Mawr intern, Sally Jamrog, in completing the photographic inventory of material excavated from the site of Beth Shemesh on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The site was occupied from about 2000 BCE by the Canaanites, and is mentioned in the Old Testament as an important biblical city. This means we were working with objects over 4000 years old, such as ceramic lamps, dishes, jugs, stoneware, and even some semiprecious stones used as jewelry. Being in contact with these objects twice a week for so many hours at a time was an incredible opportunity, and drew me even closer to the ancient world.

Sally and I proceeded methodically through shelves of objects, checking that each item was in its place, and then bringing them to the next stage. We photographed the objects against a gray backdrop and made decisions about how to best position each piece to highlight the most diagnostic elements. We then put the items in new containers, either plastic bags or boxes, writing the identifying museum numbers in fresh Sharpie. After that, the objects got placed back on the shelves, and we organized them in the most efficient way to maximize visibility and ease of access. This was the flow of most of our work days—some other times, we went on visits upstairs (out of the collections basement!) to the galleries, to look at item examples, or to archives, to check out the field notes of the items we were handling.

Throughout this experience, I’ve gotten a very hands-on perspective of the everyday work that goes into managing the collections at a museum, and specifically an archaeological one. This is especially pertinent as I am a Classics major, so I am glad that I was able to bring that viewpoint to work that deals with the kind of things that I am studying directly in my other courses. I’ve gained a new appreciation for the little objects, with lots of credit to my supervisor Katy’s enthusiasm and pure love for her job and all it entails. I went into this course with the hope of learning a bit more about the behind-the-scenes of a museum, and I am emerging with the knowledge that collections management is a fulfilling experience that presents new discoveries every day.

Lucy Cambefort (BMC 25′), Angie Quiroz (BMC 26′), Fiona Shen (BMC 27′)

Data Visualization for Reservoir Concentration

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: DSCI 310: Data in Action

Faculty Advisor: Jennifer Spohrer

Field Site: Discovery Center

Field Supervisor: Bria Wimberly

Praxis Poster: 

DSCI_WaterProject_Revised_PraxisPoster-compressed

 

Further Context:

This semester, our team collaborated with The Discovery Center to create a visualization model demonstrating the evolution of abiotic factors over time, using data collected from Lake Vickers on the Bryn Mawr campus, provided by Professor Tom Mozdzer. The reservoir at The Discovery Center spans 38 acres and is just under 8 feet deep. Structurally, it resembles a bathtub, with steep walls leading down to a flat bottom composed of concrete and brick. Originally, water was pumped in from the Schuylkill River, but it is now primarily replenished through precipitation. It is currently the largest body of freshwater in Philadelphia.

By collecting and publishing data on the water chemistry of the reservoir, the community can learn more about the biodiversity and in turn improve the environmental conditions of the center. This will also make Professor Mozdzer’s data available for the college to further research on the sustainability of the campus. To make this work, we reproduced the graphs from Zentra Cloud in R, and created a StoryMap using KnightLab to make the data accessible and informational to the public.

We were able to use the data continuously uploaded in real time to the ZentraCloud platform through the sensors installed in Lake Vickers by Tom Mozdzer. Months worth of information on the environment and chemistry of the water stored on Zentra proved to be an invaluable source we could work with to create our model. However, Zentra is only accessible through obtaining the credentials of an account, which is expensive and in turn creates difficulties for allowing more people to use the data.

We took on the added challenge of recreating a graph from Zentra using R Studio, which is public and free, that would serve as a model for making this data accessible to Bryn Mawr. This would also allow for the data to be used in other classes and further the research started by Professor Mozdzer. We were able to write out the code for plotting graphs using csv files, which would be the outline for the Discovery Center to use once they collect their own data from the reservoir using sensors they intend on installing. This process pushed our coding skills and our ability to make use of the resources provided by the college, such as the office hours held by the Digital Humanities department.

In order to display the graphs created with R Studio, we searched for a platform that allowed The Discovery Center to present monthly water chemistry data from different locations in the reservoir and ultimately embed it onto their website. We found StoryMap, a user-friendly tool from KnightLab that allows users to add descriptions and graphs to various locations using coordinates which are important to graph points in the reservoir. This would be a great way to incorporate advanced graphs using R to customize visualizations. While StoryMap focuses on spatial data, StoryLine is another tool used to display information uploaded from spreadsheets to create interactive graphs. This tool also has the option of including descriptions for specific data points, allowing the public to understand changes in levels of dissolved oxygen, pH and temperatures over time, as well as other chemistry data.

Our next steps for the Discovery Center is to present the code we have been working on and our data visualizations to the staff in a virtual presentation in May. We hope for them to use our visualization model as an example and apply it to their own water data. In the long road, they would produce code that updates their visualizations regularly with real time data and embed the StoryMap onto their website. This would allow for communities and the public to view their water data and gain insights on water chemistry like temperature, DO, pH, etc at the center, while also including biotic factors as well like aquatic insects. This will help their goals in measuring how those populations vary over time in different locations, seeing what is affecting them.