Category: Student Work

Curating America’s Painful Past, by Tim Gruenewald. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2020. REVIEWED BY MADELINE GRIEM The United States is a place of deeply painful pasts. However, there are few prominent spaces in which these subjects are explored where they will contribute to national memory. In his 2020 book, Curating America’s Painful Past: Memory, …

Museum Diplomacy: Transnational Public History and the U.S. Department of State. written by Richard K. Harker. Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press. 2020 REVIEWED BY JOHN TERWILLIGER Richard Harker’s Museum Diplomacy: Transnational Public History and the U.S. Department of State gives a detailed critical analysis of the Museums Connect program. Museums Connect, founded in 2008, was …

Museum Objects, Health and Healing, edited by Brenda Cowan, Ross Laird, and Jason McKeown. New York: Routledge, 2020. REVIEWED BY ELISE DAUGHERTY   Humans interact with and value objects in every aspect of our lives. In many interactions, objects hold meaning and power, impacting our health and wellbeing. Brenda Cowan, Ross Laird, and Jason McKeown …

By Karen Breece, IUPUI Museum Studies MA student Halfway through the first semester of my internship, the Indianapolis Zoo’s Director of Education, who had been my acting mentor since I started, told me that my actual mentor who had been on maternity leave all this time was not coming back. She had been laid off. …

By Ross Edelstein, IUPUI Museum Studies MA student Sometimes, you wonder why something hasn’t been done before.  Sometimes, your realize things haven’t been done for a good reason. Sometimes that good reason isn’t good enough. Many museums like to offer sensory kits – usually with fidgets and tools.  But the Eiteljorg, where I have been doing …

By Michael Rice, IUPUI Museum Studies MA student  Interning at the Indiana Medical History Museum has been an incredibly rewarding experience. Being transported back to a different era every time I crossed the threshold was humbling. One of the tasks that comes with the internship is the opportunity to lead tours. This did not come …

By Olivia Underwood, IUPUI Museum Studies MA student In a crowded tray lies hundreds of loosely piled baggies, their contents shining out to any researcher or volunteer visiting the storage space of the Masonic Library and Museum of Indiana. Lapel pins, badges, awards, and other pin fastened objects clink against each other and their own …

By Emily McAvoy, IUPUI Museum Studies MA student Recently I was speaking with a colleague of mine about the selfish nature of artists. This may sound harsh, or overly critical, but it is true. All artists are incredibly selfish.  But from the perspective of a curator, I am envious of the ways in which some …

By Molly Reynowsky, IUPUI Museum Studies MA student Before I took the position of Curatorial Exhibition Intern at the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library (KVML), I was like most other Indiana high school graduates: I had been assigned to read Slaughterhouse-Five in my junior-year English class. And that’s it, that was my only connection to …