Blogs

Museum Studies Intern at the Mattress Factory - Spring 2017

As a child, I spent my third Sundays of each month at the art gallery participating in educational art activities. Some of my fondest memories were attempting to create oil pastel versions of Emily Carr’s paintings and participating in scavenger hunts that helped me get acquainted with new exhibitions. Little did I know at the time I would eventually be learning how to create similar experiences for others.

Hard to believe that this semester is already coming to an end!

Museum Studies Intern at The Frick Pittsburgh - Spring 2017

During the past 2017 Spring semester, I worked as an intern under the supervision of Amanda Dunyak Gillen, Director of Learning & Visitor Experience, at the Education Department of the Frick Pittsburgh. My main job responsibility was facilitating the museum’s public programs, including program planning, gallery talks, adult and family programs, special events, etc.

For the past few weeks, I have worked on writing a reflection of my experiences thus far on the medart project. I did this partially as a way to wrap up my experiences this past semester and partially as a means to synthesize my work to make it more useful to the grant report.

Throughout the past month or two, Victoria and I have been translating the Minutes of the Royal Academy of Architecture and we have been having a great time with it! So far, we have realized that several of the architects went on tours together and while not all went at the same time, there seems to be a lot of overlap between the trips. I would say the most difficult part of this process is translating the text because it is 16th century French and many of the words do not match up.

It is early April, so the Sustaining MedArt team is once again preparing for the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The project, originating with an initial usability survey in the autumn of 2014, explores the relationship between perceptions of site usability and sustainability. In particular, we entered this project wondering how user experiences correlate to preservation worthiness. 

It's been a little more than a month since I joined the Itinera project, and I am happy to say that there has been much progress made. Supriya and I have finished reading through the Minutes of the Royal Academy of Architecture and have finished entering agents into Itinera. An example is pictured above.

A Catalyst for Nostalgia: Lion Attacking a Dromedary

Isabella Sigado