Author: Cassidy Hench
Looking over 600 rows of names, starting in 1931, it was easy to get lost in the data and lose sight of the human stories. This was a task I progressed in my internship with the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh to help reconstruct the department’s history for an upcoming centennial.
After all my work, it was actually the first name on the spreadsheet that would come to mean the most. And that name was not James Van Trump. But it almost was. Van Trump had been listed in existing sources as the first graduate of the Department of Fine Arts n 1932. Writing his thesis on the “Architectural element in the town planning of the baroque period in Rome,” he continued to be very prolific in the local scene, eventually helping to found Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation in 1964. Van Trump had a storied career – a worthy first graduate from the program.
The only problem was that he was not the first graduate from the program. Sarah Krebs Fulton, in fact, graduated with a Master of Fine Arts with a thesis titled “The importance of Venice in the development of French silk fabrics under the Louis” a year earlier, in 1931. Little is known about Krebs nor why previous celebrations of the department’s history chose to exclude her name. But as a woman looking to pursue my own graduate degree, looking at the first graduate of the Department of Fine Arts being ignored for unknown but predictable reasons is hard. It was this understanding that each line of data is not just data, but a person whom I am connected to through the University of Pittsburgh name was exciting to try and find their stories. Being able to tell the story of the students who pass through the same doors I do every day is a privilege.
Collaborating with Alex Taylor and Yingxuan Zhao this semester has made it possible to do just this. Taking graduate information from numerous sources and departments not just at Pitt, but through the Carnegie Library system, historical newspapers, and even word of mouth has begun to unfold the storied history of those who have left a mark on Pitt. While this is in preparation for the department’s centennial in 2027 and there is still much work to do, knowing I was able to make an impact and tell the stories of those previously lost has been extremely rewarding and I am grateful for the experience.