Category: Praxis Seminars

Hazany Palomino, HC ’26

Seminar: CITY420: Seeking Spatial Justice

Semester: Fall 2025

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Lauren Restrepo

Community Partner: HNTB

Praxis Site Supervisor: Danelle Hunter

Praxis Poster:

5 Hazany _Palomino_Hazany Palomino Praxis Poster Revised

 

Further Context:

This semester, I spent my time as a Transit Planning intern at HNTB. I sat with the Planning team in the Philadelphia location. I had the opportunity to intern at the company over the summer, and I had such a great experience that I wanted to continue my time there! 

In re-starting my internship through the Praxis program, I developed objectives and goals I wanted to guide my experience at HNTB this semester, specifically as it relates to the course theme of spatial justice. The three objectives I created are: 

1) Reflect on the ethical responsibilities of planners and practitioners by examining how decisions about space impact equity, inclusion, and community well being. 

2) Thoughtfully engage with community members to strengthen the connection between planning practice and community priorities. 

3) Gain the ability to translate theoretical ideas about spatial justice into accessible frameworks that can inform dialogue and action amongst practitioners and community members. 

These objectives not only serve as a framing reference for my experiences at HNTB, but these are also framing objectives I plan to carry with me into future endeavors. Specifically, as it relates to the role of planners and practitioners in thoughtfully engaging and delivering equitable projects—at any scale—is a consideration I have thought extensively on as I prepare myself for a career in planning. 

One project I worked on over the semester was a micromobility pitch for a potential client. This project consisted of conducting spatial analyses identifying gaps in Philadelphia’s bike and micromobility network and proposing solutions to bridge this gap to enhance connectivity across the city. 

The main project I worked on for much of my time at HNTB was an extension of my work over the summer. The project is a major roadway and transit redesign project for Roosevelt Boulevard, a 14-mile corridor in Northeast Philadelphia. This project is a planning study that will propose one roadway redesign: a Neighborhood Boulevard and Partially Capped Expressway and one new transit service: a Subway, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), or Light Rail Transit (LRT). The main objective of this project is to create a safer and more reliable Boulevard for all users, including pedestrians, bikers, transit riders, and drivers. Work on the project has included preparing materials for upcoming rounds of community engagement. This has included analyzing data to identify areas for improved engagement, creating educational and promotional materials, and attending community outreach events to inform the public about the project. This project has offered me thoughtful insight into the processes and impacts of infrastructure projects on local communities. Importantly, I have learned that transit solutions are not prescriptive. Effective mobility strategies must adapt to local context, priorities, and constraints rather than follow a one-size fits-all formula. This is accomplished by thoughtfully engaging the communities about the project impacts because when residents help shape decisions, solutions gain legitimacy and better reflect lived experience.



Judy Xie, HC ’27

Seeking Spatial Justice Through County and Community Planning

Seminar: CITY420 Seeking Spatial Justice 

Faculty Advisor: Lauren Restrepo

Community Partner: Montgomery County Planning Commission 

Praxis Site Supervisor: Stephen Zbyszinski

Praxis Poster:

6 Judy_Xie_Praxis Poster (1)

 

Further Context: 

 This semester, I had the amazing opportunity of interning at the Montgomery County Planning Commission (MCPC), based out of Norristown, PA. MCPC, a sub-division of Montgomery County, has over 40 full-time planning staff who work on county-wide and municipal-level planning projects. Examples of their work include writing comprehensive plans, creating future land use and inventory maps, and publishing resources on planning topics.  

MCPC’s planning staff work in a range of departments: community, county, design, environmental, GIS, open space and trails, transportation. During my internship, I mainly worked on county and community planning projects. For county planning, I prepared materials for future housing publications aimed at helping municipalities implement policies that address residents’ struggles with housing affordability. I wrote a series of white papers, each one focused on a less traditional housing typology that can helpexpand the county’s housing stock. I wrote about tiny homes, missing middle housing, and residential adaptive reuse conversions. These short papers provided definitions of each type, along with benefits, considerations for constructions, local examples, and additional sources. Initially, I knew very little about the housing types I wrote about. However, as I scoured the web and sifted through MCPC’s drive to do research for these papers, I learned about the ways these housing types can be incorporated into existing communities and the types of housing needs they can meet. For community planning, a major project I worked on was assisting with the Parks and Open Spaces section of an updated comprehensive plan for the Central Perkiomen Valley Region. My main task was updating a collection of charts showing the names, classifications, acreages, and amenities of all the publicly-owned open space facilities in each of the region’s municipalities. I did this by using county GIS data, reaching out to community planners assigned to each municipality, and looking through municipal websites and open space plans. 

My internship with MCPC was a wonderful experience for which I will forever be grateful. The staff I met were kind, passionate, and supportive, and the experience gave me insight into the daily work lives of planners, the kinds of issues they aim to address, and the constraints their work faces. It reaffirmed my desire to pursue a career in planning and left me with important questions to ponder as I continue my education and work in this field. I wonder how governments and developers can best balance their fiscal constraints with provision of high-quality affordable housing and other necessary resources. I also want to learn more about public participation processes and how they can be made more inclusive. 

Rachel Rosenstein, BMC ’27

Seminar:  CITY420: Seeking Spatial Justice 

Semester:  Fall 2025 

Faculty Advisor/Professor:  Lauren Restrepo 

Community Partner:  HIAS-PA   

Praxis Site Supervisor:  Rona Gershon   

Praxis Poster:

8 Rachel_Rosenstein_Immigration and spatial justice (24 x 36 in)

 

Further Context:

This summer, seeing the horrors being forced upon immigrants, I realized that I could not simply sit back and watch; I needed to get involved. I researched immigration nonprofits in Philadelphia until I found HIAS-PA, the incredible organization that became my praxis site. The organization first began as a nonprofit that was focused on aiding Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the late 1800s until 1979, when they opened their doors to immigrants of all backgrounds. The history of HIAS immediately appealed to me because of my own family’s immigration history. My grandparents came here from Eastern Europe, and they faced significant challenges upon arrival. HIAS helped immigrant families just like mine but in Philadelphia settle smoothly in America, and I felt called to give back in the same way that HIAS-PA is now open to all. My family has been living in the United States for three generations, and I am secure enough now to help those who need assistance now. When my grandparents came to the United States, they were fleeing persecution, and now, when people try to do the same, they are met with violence and hate. My goal in working at HIAS-PA was to counteract as much of that hate as I could by showing the people I spoke to that I cared about them, and that we would do our very best to help.  

I was on the intake team at HIAS. Once I began my work, I fell into a smooth rhythm: I would find out who was waiting for an intake call, call them, ask them the intake questions, enter it into the computer system, and let the attorneys know that the intake had been completed. This usually went smoothly. The more difficult part was hearing the immigration stories that these people experienced. Trauma and fear filled the questionnaire as I took notes on the answers to the questions I was supposed to ask. I learned quickly that no one came here simply for “a better life.” Everyone I had spoken to was escaping something, and it broke my heart that the country they chose to come to was treating them as though they were criminals. One question I had to ask was whether they had been arrested for a crime in the United States, and the answer was almost always “no”. And yet, our country continues to pretend that everyone who crosses the border is a criminal. I felt my anger expanding with every call I made as I understood more and more of the injustices these people had faced.  

I gained a lot from this experience, and I learned a lot about myself in the process. Firstly, I got the opportunity to put into perspective how lucky I am that I was born here, and therefore I do not have to live in fear every day. I learned that speaking to individuals carries so much more meaning than looking at statistics—I had seen all the numbers prior to the start of my work, but hearing individuals speak made me feel so much more connected to the issues immigrants face. I learned that I might want to consider immigration law as a career path because I have developed so much respect for the attorneys at HIAS and the work that they do, and I want to be a part of it one day. I learned that a little bit of kindness and patience goes a long way by seeing the gratitude I received after checking in with potential clients who did not know when they would hear back. I learned that everybody has a story to tell, and listening is often so helpful by itself, even if HIAS did not have the capacity to offer full services. Overall, I learned how important immigration work is, and I am forever appreciative of my experience at HIAS-PA.  

 

Natalie Schliekelman, BMC ’26

Environmental Justice Through a Legal Lens: A Praxis Experience

Seminar: CITY420: Seeking Spatial Justice

Semester: Fall 2025 

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Dr. Lauren Restrepo 

Community Partner: Public Interest Law Center 

Praxis Site Supervisor: Priscilla Ruilova 

Praxis Poster:

7 Natalie_Schliekelman_Schliekelman_Praxis Poster_Revised

 

Further Context: 

This semester, I interned with the Public Interest Law Center as an Undergraduate Environmental Justice Intern. My main focus was with community garden protection, which I did through data analysis (tracking garden parcels through Philadelphia’s legal docket) and outreach (visiting gardens and talking to people!). The internship aligned perfectly with my Environmental Studies and Growth & Structure of Cities majors. Community gardens are integral community green spaces in the urban fabric, especially in Philadelphia, which has a vibrant community garden scene.  

I was fascinated to learn more about the public interest legal world through my internship. I attended weekly staff meetings, through which I was able to hear about all of the incredible work that the attorneys at the Law Center were doing. I also attended, and helped at, the Law Center’s annual fundraising event, which was a window into what it takes to fund and maintain a non-profit, something I also learned about through conversations with the Law Center’s grant-writer. Overall, this internship gave me an amazing opportunity for a window into environmental justice work in Philadelphia, and what high-impact legal work looks like on the inside. 

Eli Cole, BMC 25′

Library Internship: Historical Society of Pennsylvania

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: Anthony DiGiovann

Praxis Poster:

HART_EliCole_REVISED

 

Further Context:

For my Museum Studies Fieldwork course, I had the opportunity to work at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in their library department, learning about several different aspects of the work involved in running a special collections library. I worked with Anthony DiGiovanni, the Director of Cataloging Services at the Historical Society, to catalog, page, and reshelve books, assist with front-facing work at the reference desk, and work on larger reorganizing and inventorying projects in the library stacks. 

Over the course of this experience, I learned how to use different library classification systems– the Historical Society uses several, including the Dewey Decimal System, Library of Congress classification system, and their own proprietary system–and navigate the library’s vaults to find resources. I also learned how to use MARC records to catalog a book and update it in the library’s holdings. This involved both adding it to the Historical Society’s system and exporting it to UPenn’s online catalog, which hosts HSP’s catalog data and makes it available to the public. While shadowing Anthony at the reference desk, I learned about the kinds of questions patrons often ask when they come in to do research, and what resources– online databases, research guides, HSP’s catalog– I could point them towards to help them find what they were looking for. 

One of the bigger projects I was involved with during this experience was moving a collection of books back into the Historical Society’s stacks. These books were some of HSP’s oldest collections, with books dating back to the 1500s, and had previously been held at the special collections library next door, the Library Company of Philadelphia, as part of a longstanding agreement. Because the terms of the agreement had recently changed, this collection is now being brought back into the Historical Society’s stacks. I helped with the move, and with shifting and reorganizing books on some of the library shelves to make space for the returning collection. As we brought the books back, I helped inventory them, checking them against both the Library Company and the Historical Society’s catalogs to make sure they were properly classified and accounted for. There were frequent complications, so this project required a lot of time and attention to detail. 

This experience has given me a greater understanding and appreciation of all the different kinds of library work and the ways they connect to each other. I feel like I have learned a lot about all the work that goes into running a special collections library, and this experience has made me excited to learn more about library and archival work in the future. 

Ella Evans, BMC 25′

Archival Inventorying at the Fabric Workshop and Museum

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling

Field Site: Fabric Workshop and Museum

Field Supervisor: Justin Hall

Praxis Poster:

HART_EllaEvans_FWMPoster

 

Further Context:

This past semester, I had the wonderful opportunity to intern with the Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) in their museum archives. Marion ‘Kippy’ Boulton Stroud founded the workshop in 1977, and the institution has collaborated with artists to create contemporary art in a variety of media ever since. The workshop pushes artists to move outside of their comfort zones or preferred media and embrace innovation and possibility. From its onset, the FWM has collected the contemporary art produced during its artist-in-residence collaborations, which means that they have a robust and multifaceted collection. I focused on several different projects during my internship which were geared towards inventorying and cataloguing parts of the collection in order to increase public accessibility. 

My main project examined the accessioned object records in CollectionSpace, FWM’s online records management software. My role was to evaluate the presence and quality of the images in the over 1100 objects accessioned into the FWM’s permanent collection and create an inventory spreadsheet. This spreadsheet will be used in the future to ensure that all of the accessioned objects in the collection have high-quality photographs, so that each object’s information can be uploaded to FWM’s public browser site. This future site will assist researchers and the public in learning about the diverse collection of art at the museum. During my internship, my supervisor used the spreadsheet to locate items of clothing in the collection that had low-quality or absent photos and then scheduled photography sessions with the staff photographer to begin the process of building the index of website-worthy photos. I assisted with arranging t-shirts, robes, and dresses during these photography sessions, and it was so cool to be hands-on with the artwork. 

Besides the photo inventory project, I worked to catalogue the materials in several different Artist Boxes in the FWM’s collection. These Artist Boxes contained process materials from the stay of contemporary artists during their Artist-in-Residences at the FWM. Through my cataloguing, I created a visual guide of the materials in the Artist Boxes for future use by researchers. This project let me hone my cataloguing skills and I gained practice describing collection objects and formatting museum documents. 

Additionally, the FWM attended the IFPDA print fair in New York City in March. Prior to the fair, I assisted my supervisor with conducting condition reports of objects, small conservation measures for objects, and packing objects for shipment to New York. I learned important art handling skills from my supervisor during this experience, understanding the intricacies of bubble wrap and frame tape. 

Reflecting on my diverse experiences at the FWM, I learned so much about the role of archives and registrars within small museum institutions. This experience solidified my desire to pursue a role in museum archives upon graduation. Ultimately, I am so grateful to all the FWM staff to being so supportive through my internship. I’m excited to see the new projects that the FWM decides to embark on! 

Olivia Herman, BMC 26′

Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling

Field Site: Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History

Field Supervisor: Claire Pingel

Praxis Poster:

HART_OliviaHerman_REVISED

 

Further Context:

For my museum studies praxis, I worked at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History which is located in Independence Mall in downtown Philadelphia. The museum celebrates the history of Jews in America dating back to the 17th century. The museum’s goal is to provide a place where American Jews and people of all backgrounds can learn about the diversity of the American Jewish experience and Jews’s role in American history. The museum has three main exhibition floors each focusing on a different chunk of time: 1654-1880, 1880-1945, and 1945- today (or 2006), and one more floor with a focus on prominent Jews in American history.  

I worked specifically in the collections and registration department where I completed a variety of different tasks. I learned how and did exhibit walkthroughs, where I made sure everything in the exhibit was clean, where it was supposed to be, and that all the humidity and temperature-controlled cases were at the correct level. I also did a lot of work for their special exhibition “The First Salute” which is opening in April of next year for the 250th anniversary of America. I helped out with artifact research, finding loan information, organization of potential artifacts, and adding loans to the museum’s online database. I also helped out with the museum’s collaboration with a local high school which are doing a small temporary exhibit at the museum as well as an online exhibit. I’ve also helped with processing loan returns and final condition checks. I’ve conducted research also on a potential future exhibit based on something in the museum’s collection.  

During my time at the Weitzman, I have learned also about the behind the scenes of a museum and all that goes into museum work. I’ve gained a variety of new skills such as working with a museum database and gaining proficiency with Excel. I also understand more about how museum loans work and how much planning needs to go into them months before an exhibit will open. I also better understand the process behind creating a new exhibit and how many people both internal and external are involved as well as what each role in the process entails. 

Delaney Kenney, HC 25′

The Franklin Institute: Youth Programs

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling

Field Site: The Franklin Institute

Field Supervisor: Carly Netting

Praxis Poster:

HART_DELANEYKENNEY_REVISED

 

Further Context:

This spring, I had the pleasure of working at The Franklin Institute (TFI), Philadelphia’s science and technology museum. TFI was founded in 1824 by Samuel Vaughan Merrick and William H. Keating in order to promote the love of science and technology through experiential, hands-on learning. During my time, I worked primarily with the Youth Programs team, but I also had the amazing opportunity to speak with a wide range of TFI professionals. I learned more about how science museums function as a collaborative space dedicated to inspiring the scientist in us all. 

The Franklin Institute has three main youth programs that I engaged with: PACTS (Partnership for Achieving Careers in Technology and Science), STEM Scholars, and Franklin Ambassadors. PACTS is a program that serves 60 middle school students by organizing biweekly scientific workshops. I assisted with the Science Investigators sector of this program in which the students get to learn about different areas of science in every workshop. The coolest workshop I assisted with was helping students to build a robotic arm!  

STEM Scholars serves high school students in weekly workshops conducted by partner organizations, such as the University of Pennsylvania and Saint Joseph’s University. Students are split by grade and each grade comes into the Museum once a week for their designated workshop. I engaged with the sophomore class and got the opportunity to both mentor students and assist professional researchers with the implementation of their programming. My favorite workshop was measuring the neuronal response of venus fly traps!  

I spent the majority of my time with the Franklin Ambassadors. The Ambassadors are a high school leadership cohort who do everything from mentoring younger students to being extra hands for museum events to attending weekly career and college readiness seminars. I loved getting to forge close relationships with a number of Ambassadors and see them grow throughout the semester both personally as well as in their leadership roles! My main projects with the Ambassadors were to create a seminar for their weekly series and to organize a laboratory field trip for them. My seminar was part of their career and college readiness series and focused on tips and tricks for resume-building. The lab visit I arranged was to my own thesis laboratory at Bryn Mawr! I brought the Ambassadors into my lab and exposed them to both electroencephalography (EEG) technology and virtual reality. I ran them as mock-participants for my thesis study, which revolves around investigating the neural correlates of deception utilizing virtual reality, and also taught them how to be study administrators themselves. It was such a fun experience to see them become neuroscience researchers for the day!  

My main project as an intern was to develop an original community outreach project. I was given the task of designing a set of activities related to a scientific topic of my choice that had to engage all ages for anywhere from 15 seconds to 15 minutes. I chose to create a project based around the neuroscience behind illusions, to function as an extension of TFI’s optical illusions exhibit. I collaborated with both the Design and Curriculum Development teams to produce a set of 8 activities with corresponding scientific explanation cards. It was such an interesting experience to see the process through which multiple different departments work together to create a project. I presented my activities alongside Ambassadors at Smith Playground’s Play-a-Palooza, and it was such a rewarding experience to see community members enjoy them so much! My project will serve as TFI’s outreach program for the next year.  

Reflecting on my time at TFI, I learned so much about how science museums function as well as the ways in which museums leverage their resources to best serve their communities. This experience has greatly prepared me for my post-graduation position as a social impact fellow at the Museum of Science in Boston. I am so grateful for my mentors as well as my students for welcoming me into TFI and helping me develop my skills as a science museum educator! 

Carey Klopfenstein, BMC ’26

Work with the P.A. Browne Collection at The Academy of Natural Sciences

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork

Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott and Sylvia Houghteling

Field Site: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

Field Supervisor: Jessica Lydon

Praxis Poster:

HART_Carey_Klopfenstein_Final

 

Further Context:

My dad snatched away the lollipop two-year-old me was licking gleefully when he realized it contained a scorpion at its center. He’d bought me the lollipop at the gift shop on the way out of one of our many visits to the Academy of Natural Science during my childhood. My earliest memories of learning to love museums take place at the Academy, like learning about Prehistory and doing mock Paleontological digs.  

I never expected I would be returning to the Academy as an intern after all these years. In high school, I became passionate about social justice issues related to museums, in particular the repatriation of the remains of Indigenous Peoples and the representation of Indigenous peoples in museums. I chose Bryn Mawr College in part because of its Museum Studies program, and I declared an Anthropology major to fit with my career goal of working in a museum. Because of my childhood experience, I associated the Academy with dinosaurs and bugs rather than Anthropology. When Tiffany Stahl, the associate director for Praxis, suggested that I look into interning at the Academy for my Praxis internship, I didn’t expect to find any positions related to the treatment of Indigenous Peoples in museums. 

To my surprise, the Academy had the perfect position for me. Despite no longer having any exhibits related to Anthropology, the Academy still has a collection from the nineteenth century that contains specimens of human hair collected by the scientist Peter Arrell Browne. The Bureau of Indian Affairs had requested a list of the groups of people whose hair was included in Browne’s collection to whom the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) apply. I compiled a list of all the terms that Browne used for Indigenous peoples in the United States. I also researched the terms that Browne used to find out what terms the descendants of the people whom these specimens were taken from prefer to be referred to in the modern day.  

From this updated information, I created a data dictionary for the Academy. At the BIA’s request, I also calculated the number of hair samples and people that corresponded with each legacy term. I identified the date when each specimen was collected, as well as the contact information for the relevant federally recognized tribes and entities for each specimen, to enable the Academy to contact the descendants of the people the samples were taken from. 

I also did research in the Academy’s archives to collect information about the life of Peter Arrell Browne, and also to find further information for other projects I have been working on. Peter Arrell Browne was a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences. He was a geologist who also studied animal and human hair. He was deeply racist, and he used his studies of human hair to support his argument that humans fall into three separate species. While views like this are frequently excused as products of their time, I’d like to note that this view was not universal in Browne’s day, and many of the academics that Browne argued against did not share it. Browne also worked with other prominent scientific racists of the time, such as Samuel G. Morton. Browne’s correspondence also revealed racism and cruelty on a personal level. 

I found my experience interning at the Academy to be extremely valuable.  It gave me crucial additional experience with archival research. I also found it fulfilling to be doing work that makes a positive change in an area I care deeply about. My motivation for working in museums in my career is to try to remedy the racial injustices that museums have perpetuated.I’m grateful for the opportunity to have learned through my experience and, through one small step in what will be a long process, make a positive impact.

Pascale Lowell, BMC 26′

Museum Studies Fieldwork: 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_PascaleLowell_Revised

 

Further Context:

I’ve had such an incredible experience at the Woodmere Art Museum this semester. During my time at Bryn Mawr, I’ve really come to love Philadelphia, and as a center for display of local Philadelphia artists I learned so much about the scene during my time working with Woodmere. I was supervised by their curator, Amy Gillette, with two other students from Bryn Mawr. Woodmere is opening a new building in October of 2025 (Maguire Hall), and as such needed to catalogue the labels that were usable, and where pieces would need more information. I spent the first month or two going through the catalogue and marking off what was complete and what was not. I enjoyed the low-pressure achievement aspect of this, where accomplishments were being made without my having to take very many risks or challenge myself, which was a comfortable place to start, and helped me to get familiar with the format and expectations for museum labels. I did struggle, however, with the repetitive nature of the task, and by the time we finished I was certainly ready to work on something new. 

From there I moved on to writing. My first project was a biography, which intimidated me less than the labels. For that, what was required was to find out the facts about the artist available online. To provide art interpretation seemed much easier to mess up. I was concerned by the fact that a label possesses a kind of appeal to authority and therefore could be taken by the public as the ‘be all end all’ of analyzing a specific piece. To avoid worrying about this for a bit I started with a bio instead. What I had hoped would be a simpler task turned out to be much more difficult, as I was faced with the need to cram the entirety of a person’s life into only one or two short paragraphs. I completed it, relying heavily on the artist’s own biography found on their website. From there I wanted to try something new, so I delved into label writing. 

Woodmere holds quite the collection of works from talented muralist Violet Oakley, whose pieces I had really loved viewing when I visited Woodmere. I opted to start with her works, not only because I enjoyed her style but because I identified with her. She was a Bryn Mawr graduate, and very likely a queer woman who spent her life living with Edith Emerson, an artist who dedicated her life after Oakley’s death to preserving her memory. She served as Woodmere’s director, contributing greatly to their extensive collection of both her and Oakley’s works, spurring the museum to focus not only on Philadelphia artists but women as well. Part of what is going to be displayed in the new building are several drafts created by Oakley for a boy’s school of various religious scenes. I loved the colors of her study for Young David in his fight against goliath and found it much simpler to provide interpretation when I could compare between the study and the final mural. As my first attempt I struggled to condense what I wanted to accomplish into something as short as it needed to be. I continued on from there with several more of Oakley’s studies, which served as such a great introduction to label writing. 

When I moved on from that group my largest problem became decision paralysis. I spent way too much of my time scrolling through the endless document attempting to select pieces to write about I felt confident enough in, with enough material on the internet that I could base my interpretation on something solid. I completed a few labels this way but struggled with how long each one took me. In a meeting with the publicity team Amy mentioned offhandedly that “labels aren’t kidneys” which I tried to keep in mind when writing from that point on. I got less precious about my interpretation and tried to have faith that art was powerful enough to convey what it needed to. My labels served as a guide, but I also needed to trust the visitor to know that art is so deeply subjective. 

With this in mind I began to be drawn to the more abstract pieces of the collection. I loved learning about how interconnected the art scene in Philadelphia was and is, especially in the abstract art movement. So many of Woodmere’s artists learned from Arthur B. Carles, a talented portraitist who turned towards abstraction as he moved through his career. It was fascinating to look at all these pieces made by a host of different artists, each so wildly different but all citing Carles as an incredible teacher of theirs. His focus on color as a basis for composition serves as such a strong foundation for abstract art, and I loved being able to look at so many pieces through that lens.  

I’m so grateful to have gotten to learn so much at Woodmere this semester. Amy worked so hard to make sure we all got the most out of the experience, arranging meetings with different teams to talk about varying career paths, and meeting with us in person frequently. I plan to continue working with them on labels this summer, and I’m so glad to get to keep interacting with such amazing art. My writing skills have developed, and I’m proud of my ability to say what I want efficiently. It’s also been such an incredible experience as a fine arts major, as nothing is better for making art than looking at lots and lots and lots of art. I’ve gained so much knowledge about art structures and gotten to hear about the lives of so many artists, each with their own paths. As someone who found their way to making art towards the end of high school it was so comforting to see how many talented people found a love for creating late in life. Thank you so much to Bryn Mawr and to Woodmere for an absolutely amazing semester!