Museums Studies in Motion University of Delaware Museum Studies Program V O L U M E
INSIDE THIS ISSUE: Museums Studies in Motion
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New Director 2
AAM
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Internships
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MSST Office
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Photo Shoot
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See the whole story on the back page!
“Mark your calendars now for the Spring 2009 AAM Conference in Philadelphia!”
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Delaware’s Museum Studies Program is Thriving Subscribe and Keep Up with What’s New Welcome to the first edition of our newsletter. The name we have chosen, Museum Studies in Motion, is a tribute to the energy, enthusiasm, and groundbreaking scholarship of Edward P. Alexander, the first director of the Museum Studies Program here at the University of Delaware. Alexander’s book Museums in Motion, published in 1979, became a foundational text for museum studies courses throughout the United States. It is still in print, in a new edition revised and expanded by his daughter, Mary Alexander, who carries on the family tradition in her work and who is a regular guest speaker in our graduate courses. Museum Studies in Motion will appear three times a year (April, September, and December). Its content will keep you up-to-date with news about the program. We also want the newsletter to be a site where current students, program alumni, current and past faculty, and other friends of Museum Studies at Delaware can share their own news. Please keep us in mind, and don’t be hesitant to share your achievements with us. In this issue, we are putting out a call for alumni to share memories of their experiences in the Museum Studies Program. The first several issues of MSM will be printed and distributed by good old “snail mail,” but our newsletter will be completely digital by the end of 2009, sent to subscribers via email and also available for downloading through our new website, www.udel.edu/museumstudies. We are doing this not only because of our concern with the global environment and our commitment to environmentally sound practices, but also to reduce the continually increasing cost of the direct mail process. We are building our list of email addresses. For directions on how to subscribe to Museum Studies in Motion, please see the box on this page. Three ways to help us find YOU 1. You can send your updated information to us, including your email address, to: jentzsch@udel.edu (Tracy Jentzsch, MSST Staff Assistant) 2. You can log on to the Museum Studies Webpage, and join our listserv—the link is www.udel.edu/museumstudies. Click on resources and sign up for the email newsletter. You will receive our listserv news once a week, and our full newsletter 3 times a year. 3. Call us! The Museum Studies office is open 8 am to 4:30 pm, Monday through Friday. Our number is 302-831-1251.
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Welcome Kasey Grier, New Director Katherine C. (Kasey) Grier, was appointed director of UD’s Museum Studies Program and professor of history, effective fall 2008. She brings to her new post a wealth of experience as a historian, scholar, teacher, curator and consultant.
“Delaware is a perfect location for such a program as there are an extraordinary number of museums in the region”
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Kasey is an alumna of the Department of History’s American Civilization Program (1988) and received her Master of Arts degree in Historical Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program in 1980. (Kasey’s current vita is posted on the Museum Studies Program web page.) She teaches courses on material culture studies and American social and cultural history; her current graduate seminar, “Food, Drink, and Social Life in America 1750-1950,” introduces students to a developing field of research and a body of material culture that is a large part of many museum collections and a popular focus of interpretive programming. Kasey’s most recent research project resulted in a book on the history of pet keeping in the United States (Pets in America: A History, University of North Carolina Press, 2006, and Harvest Books, 2007). She also curated a traveling exhibition based on the book for McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina. The 2000-square-foot show went to seven venues over three years. Kasey and her colleagues at McKissick Museum are now at work “shrinking” the show to 750 square feet, with reduced security requirements, so that it can serve the needs of smaller museums.
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Regarding her new appointment, Kasey notes, “The Delaware program has the advantage of an extraordinary number of museums and historic sites in the region, from small sites run by volunteers to those run by the National Park Service. To my mind, it’s a better learning environment than even Washington, D.C., because the array of institutions here is more representative of the rest of the nation. One of my goals for the program is to build new community partnerships where museums and the Museum Studies Program work together both to train students and to direct new resources to these institutions. I think that cultural institutions need to be better collaborators with one another. No one has enough time and resources to get to everything on the “to-do” list.” Th e Mu seu m Studi es Program continues to serve graduate students from a number of departments including Art History and the Longwood Graduate Program. In 2007, the administrative functions of the program were moved to the Department of History, which has offered greatly enhanced administrative support and office space in the History Media Center. Strategic planning for the future of the program, a process that will take place over the academic year 2009-2010, will include discussions of expanded and revised curriculum and professional development opportunities for students. Kasey notes, “An enhanced curriculum and community partnerships together will allow us to serve the traditional constituencies for Museum Studies and the needs of additional departments and programs on campus.”
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Meet our Faculty The Museum Studies Program is fortunate to have Pauline Eversmann on its faculty as the Internship Coordinator. Recently retired from the Winterthur Museum, where she directed both public and academic programs, Pauline taught our course in Museum Education for a number of years. Pauline’s retirement “un-schedule” is full of travel and grand-parenting, and we
are grateful that she has been willing to take on this role for Museum Studies. We benefit from Pauline’s deep professional connections and her superb skills as a mentor. Internships have always been at the heart of the Museum Studies Program curriculum. Pauline works with internship supervisors at museums across the United States, but
particularly in the midAtlantic, to help shape experiences appropriate to each student’s needs, skills, and interests. Museum Studies maintains a list of internship opportunities, which we announce through our weekly listserv postings to students. Our students also propose their own internships. In that case, Pauline helps them define their projects and arrange the terms of their work.
Catch up with us at AAM
New Internships?
The Museum Studies Program will debut its new exhibition booth at the Marketplace of Ideas during the 2009 annual meeting of the American Association of Museums in Philadelphia. Catch up with us and register for a fabulous door prize! The Marketplace will take place Friday, May 1 from 3:30 to 5:30. Tracy Jentzsch, our crackerjack administrative assistant; Tabitha Pryor, our enterprising graduate assistant (who is working on our new booth as I write this); Rosemary Krill, whose talents and value as a member of our faculty are more apparent every day; and I will be there. So will many of our alumni, as well as our students, who are taking advantage of opportunities to volunteer. I look forward to seeing you there!
The Museum Studies Program is always interested in new internship opportunities particularly those with stipends or housing provided! Please contact Tracy Jentzsch (jentzsch@udel.edu) if your organization is interested in sponsoring one of our students.
MSST Staff - Here to announcements board, and computers for Support YOU! The Museum Studies Program maintains an office in 201 Kirkbride Hall, coexisting with UD’s History Media Center. The office is manned by two staffers, Tracy Jentzsch, Staff Assistant and Tabitha Pryor, Graduate Assistant. Within the office there is a library, an internship &
use by MSST students and alumni. Please stop in to see us! Here is the office info: Museum Studies Program 302-831-1251 Open 8-4:30, M-F Tracy Jentzsch jentzsch@udel.edu Tabitha Pryor graduate assistant, 08-09
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Breakfast at AAM!
Alums, friends, and prospective students! You are all welcome to attend the University of Delaware Museum Studies Program breakfast. at AAM. Meet friends, network, and learn about UD's museums and programs. Sunday, May 3rd, from 7:30 to 8:30, please join us for a business breakfast, sponsored by the Museum Studies Program. Cost is $5. RSVP to tpryor@udel.edu
When I started work last September, I learned that Museum Studies no longer had a publicity brochure and that our website was out of date. This presented the staff with an opportunity to frame a new graphic identity for the program, one By Tabitha Pryor that emphasized the diversity (and total coolness) of our students and the strengths of both UDel and our program in the study of material culture. Take it away, Tabitha....Kasey When Kasey told us that she wanted a photo shoot of museum studies students surrounded by “museumy” objects that represented our program, it made me more than a little nervous. I wasn’t sure who I was going to have to bug to borrow their antiques and was pretty sure that when I did bug them, they weren’t going to be thrilled with lending their priceless heirlooms for a promotional photograph. It was Tracy’s brilliant suggestion that we contact the theatre department and ask to borrow some of their props that fixed our problem. Much to our surprise (and delight), they were more than willing to open their doors to us and let us poke around their collection.
Don’t Shoot!
We took one afternoon, briefly kidnapped Kevin Brown, and headed for the warehouse district of campus to see what we could find. The collection was amazing. They had everything from typewriters to telescopes to stuffed (taxidermically stuffed, that is) animals to a very impressive sword collection (which, for the record, we were not allowed to play with). We also contacted the costume department and were given a tour of the storage unit, which held every costume the theatre department has ever made for a production. We selected a beautiful purple Victorian dress, which I affectionately named Beatrice, that can be seen in the photo shoot. The result was a morning-long shoot that produced over 60 frames of photos of six of our students. Joe Nagoski, a returning student in the Master of Arts of Liberal Studies program (MALS), was the first to agree to be in the shoot. He was willing to do pretty much whatever we asked, including hold a guitar with no strings. Also in the shoot was La Tanya Autry, a second year MA student in Art History standing with the beloved Beatrice dress; Kevin Brown, a second year MA student in history holding the weird red electrical conducting device; Keith Minsinger, also a second year in History, who is holding the giant silver bowl (notice the protective gloves); and Hillary Mohaupt, a first year MA student in History, holding a lantern while wrapped in its electrical chord. I am also in the photo, not knowing that I was going to be in this shoot (I thought I was just organizing it!). I’m a second year MA in History, holding a skull whom we named Herbert after spending so much time with him.
Help us go GREEN! Please send us your current email address. Join us on Facebook! To join our MSST group, go to http://udconnection.com/Facebook, and select Museum Studies. If you don’t already have a Facebook account, it’s free and easy! It’s another great networking tool.
The Museum Studies Program at The University of Delaware 201 Kirkbride Hall 114 S. College Avenue Newark, DE 19716 302-831-1251