Spencer Auerbach, BMC ’24

Representation Matters

Semester: Spring 2023

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork Seminar

Faculty Advisors: Matthew Feliz &  Monique Scott

Field Site: Bryn Mawr College Special Collections

Field Supervisors: Carrie Robbins & Marianne Weldon

Praxis Poster:

Final_SpencerOPraxis Poster Session

 

Further Context:

For this semester, I worked in the Bryn Mawr Special Collections. Specifically, I worked on creating new cataloging guidelines around artists’ demographic information. This includes such information as race, ethnicity, and gender. Before this semester, there were no consistent guidelines for how to put this information in the collection database. My final product for the semester is in fact a proposal for these new guidelines. I created these guidelines in collaboration with another intern, Graziella. The two of us spent a lot of time considering language. What language should be used to talk about race? Where should this language be used? These are difficult questions that do not have a good answer.

To start the semester off, we began by looking at how other institutions catalogue this data. We collected the information in order to try and understand the industry standard. Once we had finished this process, we began looking inward. This included looking at the efforts around cataloging diversity in the collections. We also did work to understand what was possible with Embarke, the college collection management software. Once this process was done, we could begin work on drafting our recommendations. Our recommendations include suggestions such as where to display the information about an artist’s demographics, how to determine the appropriate language for describing artist demographics, and how to determine an artist’s demographic information. When the recommendations were done, we began testing them on some of the artists in the collection. Based on that, we refined our suggestions.

 

Graziella Pierangeli, BMC ’24

Representation Matters

Semester: Spring 2023

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork Seminar

Faculty Advisors: Matthew Feliz &  Monique Scott

Field Site: Bryn Mawr College Special Collections

Field Supervisors: Carrie Robbins & Marianne Weldon

Praxis Poster:

Final_REVISEDGraziellaPierangeli Representation Matters (24 36 in)

 

Further Context:

Julie Knoepfler, BMC ’24

Special Collections Research: Locating Delaware Artifacts at External Institutions

Semester: Spring 2023

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork Seminar

Faculty Advisors: Matthew Feliz &  Monique Scott

Field Site: Bryn Mawr College Special Collections

Field Supervisors: Allison Mills & Carrie Robbins

Praxis Poster:

Final_Julie_KnoepflerPoster_HART420

 

Further Context:

For my Praxis project, the main goal was to learn if any artifacts from the Delaware Tribe, procured by donors whose collections have ended up at BMC Special Collections, are also being held at other institutions. Due to the great imposition this research would have taken on tribe members and the necessity of repatriation happening in as few rounds as possible, it is key that this research was conducted.

The first part of the research involved confirming the names that the Delaware tribe has gone by (or have been called) throughout their history and to also learn where tribe members have lived from about 1800 to 1920. This information was key for me, when looking through museum databases. I created a spreadsheet and listed every name that the tribe went under so that when I searched museums, I wouldn’t miss any results. Locations were also important so that if an object was tagged with one of the relevant states, I’d know to investigate it further or to narrow my searches to certain states.

The second part of my research was looking for the identities of donors. Many of the names on the scans my supervisors provided were only of initials and/or last names. We didn’t know who most of these people were or details about their lives. Therefore, I conducted research through census data, searching for full names and identities. Knowing the donors’ identities would allow me to learn which institutions they were associated with so I would know to search through their museum collections. Ultimately, I learned the identities of up to eight donors (for three, I am making an educated guess, but I was unable to fully confirm their identity) out of approximately 23 unknown donors on the scans.

The last part of my research involved my various trips to the archives of Swarthmore, Haverford, and The Academy of Natural Sciences. While my visits to Swarthmore and Haverford were useful, I found the most information at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Through my visit, I found letters and documents between donors and institutions (or curators), some of which confirmed the move of artifacts to these institutions. I also found letters between donors and archaeologists who purchased items or asked for the recipient’s expertise. Lastly, many of these letters confirmed sites where artifacts were excavated (and who excavated them).

Results: In total I was able to find artifacts at the Ohio History Connection and the Smithsonian that might be of Delaware origin. The next step involves working with the tribe to try and confirm whether these objects are in fact Delaware artifacts.

Eliana Silbert, BMC ‘25

Representation Matters: Religion

Semester: Spring 2023

Praxis Course: HART 420 Museum Studies Fieldwork Seminar

Faculty Advisors: Matthew Feliz &  Monique Scott

Field Site: Bryn Mawr College Special Collections

Field Supervisors: Carrie Robbins and Marianne Weldon

Praxis Poster:

Final_Eliana Silbert Praxis Poster (002)

 

Further Context:

For my praxis internship as part of the Museum Studies Praxis Fieldwork Seminar, I worked with Bryn Mawr’s Special Collections as part of a project called “Representation Matters.” Our goal was to improve how certain identity factors — religion, race, and gender — are represented in TriArte, Special Collections’ online database. Although I was working with two other people, the focus of our project differed as I was concentrating on religious art and artifacts and they were looking at the gender and race of the artists whose work is in TriArte.

I began my project by searching for various religious objects in online databases in a total of thirteen museums across the country. I kept track of what I liked and what I didn’t like, as well as where I felt that the search systems were lacking. I then did the same with TriArte. Using my notes for both sets of digital explorations, I created a list of ideas for how religious objects should be keyworded. I also included some information about what I thought would be useful to include in blurbs for certain objects, as the blurbs were really helpful in teaching me about what I was looking at when I was on the websites of other museums or digital collections.

I was able to start meeting with Marianne Weldon, the Head of Special Collections’ Arts and Artifacts Department, and begin implementing my ideas. As a religion major and museum studies minor, I also had learned a lot of information in my classes that was useful for this. One of the changes I made involved the Buddha statues owned by Bryn Mawr; I updated their keywords so they all used generic terms such as “Buddhism,” “Buddha,” “religion,” and “religious art,” but also added in terms relating to the mudras displayed by each piece. Mudras are hand gestures that appear a lot in Hindu and Buddhist art, and each mudra has its own name and meaning. It wasn’t always as straightforward as simply adding in mudras, however. I wrote a blurb for a piece titled Abraham Casting out Hagar and Ishmael, where I explained the story, as described in Genesis. However, this specific scene is important not only in Judaism and Christianity, but also in Islam. There are some differences, and I wanted to be respectful of that. However, I also had to be wary of any default assumptions I might make about that scene due to my own Jewish background.

The other lasting impact of my project — beyond the updated items in TriArte — was a section on how to keyword that will go in the Data Entry Standards document used by Special Collections. This is general as opposed to focusing on religion, but I used the specific things I updated in TriArte as examples.

I really enjoyed this project. It allowed me to learn about the importance of word choice and digital archiving, and the impact (positive or negative) that can be made from both of those. I had never given much thought to keywording prior to this project, so I really appreciated that it opened my eyes to such an important aspect of the world of museums.