Woodmere Art Museum – Bryn Mawr College

Ella Horvath, BMC ’27

Praxis Course: Museum Studies Fieldwork Seminar

Semester: Spring 2026

Faculty Advisor/Professor: Monique Scott

Community Partner: Woodmere Art Museum

Praxis Site Supervisor: Amy Gillette

Praxis Poster:

Further Context:
This semester I was a curatorial intern at the Woodmere Art Museum in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. I had never been to the Woodmere prior to this semester, but had heard of and briefly met my site supervisor, Amy Gillette, from her collections research at the Barnes and background in medieval art history. Initially, I was excited to work with her and learn more about a local institution with which I was not previously familiar. My major goals were to gain collections research experience and get a better sense of the comprehensive history of Philadelphia arts movements and institutions from the nineteenth century to present day. Woodmere features art and artists of Philadelphia across two nineteenth-century mansions and outdoor wonders, including larger-than-life installations, masterful sculptures, and thoroughly tended gardens. Charles Knox Smith Hall houses the original nineteenth century collection of the Woodmere’s founder, a massive two-level gallery and events space with a balcony, studios for classes and workshops, and rotating exhibitions like the current retrospective Syd Carpenter: Planting in Time, Place, Memory. I met Amy here every two weeks in her office, but got to conduct most of my work on art in the newly opened Maguire Hall, which features twentieth and twenty-first century collections, and an extensive downstairs jewelry vault.

One of my most exciting curatorial projects was helping Amy and catalogue contributors prepare for a retrospective on the late Philadelphia artist Moe Brooker, to open in September 2026. I helped flesh out the existing
bibliography by contacting galleries from around the country inquiring into details and documents for their solo exhibitions of Brooker’s work from 1977 to as recent as 2019 (and, in cases when exhibition catalogues seemed less likely, I was able to verify their nonexistence). I organized these findings into a spreadsheet to assist current catalogue contributors, including Professor Scott and Bryn Mawr Presidential Fellow Annalise Ashman. As part of this work on the “Moe Brooker Team,” I got to attend an oral history of about ten people facilitated by Leslie King-Hammond. This included Amy, people in Education, the director of the museum, and many people who knew Brooker personally, like Peter Paone, an artist in his 90s who made the fabulous Snow People series on display in the Woodmere, and Katherine Stanek, a Philly galerist with whom I had gotten in touch regarding solo exhibition catalogues. This was one of the most incredible experiences of my semester, and got me thinking about the potential
of “oral art histories” to shape museum displays, inform curatorial and catalogue-writing decisions, and inspire conversation that keeps artists alive in work and memory. Because many curators and art historians are friends, classmates, colleagues, teachers, and collaborators with artists, their ability to animate and emotionally revive the distinct zeitgeist of the Philadelphia art scene in the 1950 to the present is so valuable. It is also such a rare experience for me, since most of the work I study is medieval or antique, and has no artist biography or cohort or movement attached.

Amy put a lot of trust in me to do this work, and I am so grateful for it! This internship made me feel so connected to Philadelphia art and artists, through my literal contact with the art, research in Center City, work
uploading pieces to the new website, and on-site museum events. Often, ethical discourse during Museum Studies leaves me discouraged about entering the field. The Woodmere is a great example of how a museum can represent, involve, and serve the community. I look forward to seeing the Moe Brooker retrospective next semester as an example of this work, which I am so grateful to have been a part of!

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!

Deora Starobin, BMC 26′

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 19^th-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.