Internship – Page 5 – Public History at UMass Boston

February 26, 2018Heidi Gengenbach No Comments

Branding Lowell: Collaboration, Material Culture, and Community Identity at the Lowell National Historical Park

By: Sarah K. Black

Streetcar, Lowell National Historical Park (photo by David Wilson, Oak Park, IL)

I spent my fall 2018 semester working as a curatorial intern directly under Laurel Racine, Chief of Cultural Resources at Lowell National Historical Park (LNHP). Maintained and operated by the National Park Service and spanning a full 142-acres, the park “interprets and preserves significant historical and cultural resources from the 19th-century American Industrial Revolution.” More than just a conglomerate of former mill buildings, and a locks and canal system, the Park is a hub for education and a major player in Lowell’s evolving cultural landscape and economic revitalization.

I came to LNHP in search of experience in exhibit planning and execution. I also wanted to gain a general understanding of daily museum operations since I had never worked in a cultural institution. Knowing this, Laurel brought me in to assist two volunteers who were in the beginning stages of developing a temporary exhibit. Branding Lowell: A History of Local Design was the brainchild of Mark Van Der Hyde, a graphic designer by trade and an extremely enthusiastic and dedicated volunteer. Combining his love for both logos and Lowell, he envisioned an exhibit that centered on how the city, as well as its local businesses and organizations, have designed their own symbols and how this imagery has reflected Lowell’s collective and evolving identity since its founding.

I knew that I would walk away with more experience than I had going in, but I never expected my internship to be as valuable as it was. Not only did I grow and improve my skillset in several areas including exhibitions, collections management, and museum operations, but the opportunity also offered me a chance to prove to myself that I can step outside academia and into the public sphere of the historical discipline.

Mark had conceived of a panel exhibit with the help of Tony Sampas, Senior Digital Documentation and Records Management Specialist for UMass Lowell’s O’Leary Library— and a fellow logo enthusiast. My task—shifting the two-dimensional exhibit into a three-dimensional one—required me to research, select, and interpret artifacts to create a storyline. I spent many long hours searching through the park’s databases and experimenting with storyboards, all the while trying to find objects that both fit Mark’s narrative and illumniated stories that did not appear in the panel text. But the artifacts themselves are undeniably crucial in this history. Early sketches of the logos reveal the process of branding. Branded goods and memorabilia evidenced how these symbols were disseminated to and absorbed by consumers. Taken together, these themes demonstrate just how pervasive symbolism and branding is throughout our culture.

Early mock-up of UMass Lowell’s hockey team logo. Including sketches from the artists offers audiences a glimpse into the process behind forming a logo. Circa 1994. (On loan to LNHP from artist Brian Trainor; photograph by author)

After just a few weeks on the job, I realized just how dynamic and unpredictable building an exhibit can be. With each team meeting, Branding Lowell grew in both content and thematic scope, and with it, so did my responsibilities. Hoping to put my training in public history theory and practice to good use, I volunteered to explore new content, draft panels, and introduce interactive components. Although these additional tasks certainly opened the door to practical experience in interpretation and exhibit planning, I found the collaborative component of the project to be the most valuable. Each member of our four-person team brought something unique to the table, be it curatorial experience, graphic design skills, or an extensive knowledge of the history of Lowell. Our exhibit team meetings were opportunities to share progress and problems; they were honest and productive sessions where we brainstormed, proposed solutions, and compromised. Collaborations, especially when they involve community members, are never a guaranteed success, so I am tremendously grateful to have worked alongside professionals who were both eager to share ideas and open to constructive criticism. In the end, our unique perspectives and expertise combined to ensure Branding Lowell is as content-rich, aesthetically pleasing, and engaging as possible.

Branding Lowell will open on March 24, 2018 and although my formal internship has concluded, I intend to see the project through to its completion. We still have a great deal to do, including case layouts and object mounts, text editing, and installation. I look forward to increasing my skillset even further.

Ferrin & Parker "Boots and Shoes" nineteenth century business card — The Branding Lowell exhibit will feature an array of nineteenth-century business cards. This one is from 1890. (LNHP collection; photograph by author)

The internship requirement for the public history program had haunted me since the evening I received my acceptance letter. I came into the program with no experience in a museum (or even a comparable institution), and feared that my lack of experience in the field would ultimately cast me as the inexperienced underdog in both academic and professional networks. But this is exactly why our time as interns is so essential. No matter how little or how much experience a student has, there are always new skills to learn, most of which have to develop outside of the classroom. I was fortunate to be mentored by a museum professional with tremendous experience in the field and a desire to create a positive and productive environment. Laurel not only took me under her wing to teach me about collections management and museum operations, but she also granted me a great deal of freedom with the exhibit content and development. At the end of the day, I will leave my internship with something even more valuable than an improved skill set: the knowledge that I left my mark on a truly dynamic and collaborative project, one that tells the story of a city’s identity in a unique and interesting way. As an aspiring public historian, I can think of no place better suited for professional and personal growth than the Lowell National Historical Park.

February 18, 2018Heidi Gengenbach 1 Comment

Transparent Faces & Hidden Mothers: Processing Tintypes at Historic New England

By: Caroline Littlewood

This portrait of a woman and child contains white lines. Note the oval mark where a frame or mount used to be. Historic New England, Library and Archives.

She found them at flea markets. Hundreds of painted tintype photographs—colorful portraits of anonymous Americans—caught Dr. Diana Korzenik’s eye, and, over the years, she amassed an impressive collection. The tintypes range in size and vary in appearance. Some are so thickly coated in color that the original photographic image is obscured. Others have one or two pigments to make a face blush or a necklace sparkle. But each tintype is evidence of another time, when photography was young. Invented in the 1850s, tintypes preserved likenesses of working class Americans who could not afford daguerreotypes. Whether once hung on a wall for all to see, or sent through the post as a token of affection, these historical artifacts are important records of a time past.

Only within the last couple decades have collectors come to value painted tintypes. For years, they were more interested in the antique frames that encased them. But Dr. Korzenik saw value where others hadn’t and sought to preserve them, along with smaller, unpainted tintypes of working-class women and children. To promote the continued study and appreciation of tintypes, Dr. Korzenik recently donated her substantial collection to Historic New England.

I began by surveying the collection. At first, the tintypes looked very similar. — Historic New England, Library and Archives

As the Historic New England intern responsible for processing Dr. Korzenik’s donation, I sought to convert this personal collection into an archival collection that would be accessible to researchers. I began by surveying and researching my materials. I dove into classic works like Taft’s Photography and the American Scene: A Social History which helped me to understand what I had before me and formulate a processing plan. I researched rehousing and preservation recommendations then tallied the contents of the collection to order the appropriate sleeves and boxes. When I had these archival materials in hand, I set to rehousing and describing each item. By the end of my internship, I had processed over 520 individual tintypes at the item level, produced a finding aid and helped digitize a portion of the collection.

The experience was thrilling and rewarding, but it was not without its challenges. I hit my first obstacle early on as I surveyed the collection. Dr. Korzenik had numbered and grouped her tintypes, but I had no understanding of her organizational schema. The collection was an indecipherable mix of subjects, painting techniques, and plate size. Some categories described the physical manipulation of the tintype: “thick paint, white lines, black lines,” “hand-painted tintypes powder/gold jewelry/white lines/black lines,” and—my favorite—“transparent faces”.

This portrait of a young woman was categorized as a “Transparent Face.” Historic New England, Library and Archives

Tintype close-up — Some tintype portraits are more intricately painted than others. Historic New England, Library and Archives

Others described the portrait subjects or size: “children and couples,” “hidden mothers,” and “carte de visite-sized”. Why did she make these distinctions? What did they mean? When I spoke to Dr. Korzenik, she explained that the labels are meant to draw one’s eye to the compositional aspects of each photograph. The average person sees a photograph as an image meant to reflect reality.

But as a professional artist and educator, she also saw tintypes as artifacts that had been painted, tinted, highlighted, outlined, scratched, and solarized. Categories based on subject or size also shared composition traits. Her “hidden mothers”—portraits of young children with the adult presence concealed—are small and unpainted; “children and couples” are large and painted. Once I saw these layers and distinctions, I could better describe Dr. Korzenik’s materials and preserve the expertise that shaped her collecting activities.

This is one of roughly 200 “hidden mothers.” Historic New England Library and Archives

The collection also challenged me to manage my time carefully. Early on, I realized that I was dealing with a miraculously growing collection, which had somehow ballooned from my estimated three hundred tintypes to over five hundred, plus a few non-tintype materials. I was eager to get started, but I had to wait for supplies to arrive. Once they arrived and I began rehousing, I struggled to standardize my descriptive language. But I used my time waiting for archival materials to work on my finding aid and produce a detailed spreadsheet. I asked my supervisors for help and examined finding aids from similar collections when I struggled with description. When I travelled to Historic New England’s Haverhill facility to work on framed tintypes, I documented my work carefully so that I could continue it offsite. And when I came to a tintype that warranted further investigation, I set it aside and continued with my work, assembly-line style.

Smaller tintypes often came in paper sleeves or mounts. Historic New England, Library and Archives

Before I knew it, my time was up. I no longer think about tintypes most of my waking (and some of my sleeping) hours. But I know that my work will facilitate access to a historically rich and unique collection. Each tintype can be so many things. It can be a fashion plate, a genealogical record, and evidence of early photographic props, poses, and conventions. Furthermore, each painted tintype illustrates the relationship between young photographic technology and a traditional painted portraiture. Despite the challenges, I’ve helped to make these materials visible and accessible to the general public, and I don’t know if there is anything more rewarding than that.

November 3, 2017Heidi Gengenbach No Comments

Alumni Spotlight: Judith Marshall

By Violet Caswell

In the spring of her senior year at McGill University in Montreal, Judith Marshall opened her computer and searched that question that is nearly ubiquitous among history majors:

For students of history who do not want to teach or work in academia, this wearisome question is ever-present, made worse when relatives exclaim “History! What are you going to do with that?” at every holiday dinner. Yet, as she browsed the internet, Marshall found occasion for hope, not despair. History majors, she realized, could pursue careers in all kinds of organizations and institutions. As the possibilities stretched out in front of her, one path seemed particularly enticing: public history.

Judith with peer, Jacob Lusk, working with archival materials in a graduate history class.

After graduating from McGill, Marshall moved to the United States and enrolled in the public history program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Over the course of two years at UMass, she broadened her horizons and discovered that her interests were more diverse than she could ever have imagined.

“One of my responsibilities was to research the craftsmen and laborers . . . I didn’t think I would be interested in these men . . . but as I learned more about them and immersed myself in their lives, I became absolutely fascinated.”

“I had an internship with Historic New England,” she recalled, “and one of my responsibilities was to research the craftsmen and laborers who built a historic house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I didn’t think I would be interested in these men—and they were all men—but as I learned more about them and immersed myself in their lives, I became absolutely fascinated.” Marshall’s intensive research allowed her to understand the craftsmen as dynamic individuals with robust political and social lives. Her capstone project, a walking tour of Portsmouth, showcased those lives and brought them to life.

After graduating from UMB, Marshall returned to informally advise incoming students at the History Department’s Graduate Student Symposium in September 2017.

With plenty of skills and experience under her belt, Marshall graduated from UMass in 2105 and entered the job market. She soon learned that a position was opening up at the Lynn Museum and Historical Society in Lynn, Massachusetts. After shadowing the Museum’s outgoing education and research specialist, she took over the position. There was only one problem: “I didn’t know anything at all about Lynn. Here I was training docents and working with our visitors, and I was just learning all of the history myself.” Marshall wasn’t intimidated by her task. With little determination and a lot of research, she eventually became well versed in Lynn’s history.

1911 postcard of Market Street in Lynn, Massachusetts, with a car of the Bay State Street Railway. Wikimedia Commons.

“It’s a little like being a teacher,” she explains, “Where at first, when you’re doing lesson plans and you’re teaching yourself along the way. But then it gets easier and easier.”

Now, Marshall serves as an excellent resource to her institution’s patrons. She works with any researchers who come to the Museum to look at its remarkable photograph collection, which spans from the nineteenth century to the present day. Although the Museum has transferred its archival holdings to the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum, she routinely directs research requests and assists the public in any way she can.

Judith Marshall (center), Education & Research Specialist at the Lynn Museum, leading a tour.

There is no such thing as an average day for Marshall, whose duties at the Lynn Museum are broad in a way that is common for professionals working at smaller institutions. On any given day, she might be training docents, developing new exhibits, leading fleets of elementary school groups through the Museum or even trying to figure out why that fountain in the courtyard keeps leaking. “Small institutions can be like that,” she laughs.

Marshall says that juggling so many responsibilities can be a challenge, and that time management skills are essential to her success. Flexibility, too, is crucial– as is the ability to remain calm under pressure. When busloads of students arrive early for a field trip, or when buses are late to pick them up, Marshall has to improvise and find ways to entertain them for longer than anticipated.

Despite the occasional hiccups that arise, Marshall finds planning field trip programming to be one of her most exciting responsibilities. While she works with students of all ages, her most extensive initiative is with third grade groups. Because of Marshall’s planning, these Lynn public school students have the opportunity to participate in a field trip that much more dynamic than your average, forgettable one-day field trip.

When she first started the program, Marshall says, “I didn’t have any idea how to communicate with third graders. I didn’t know what they looked like or what they could know.” After careful research, she developed an age-appropriate program to teach Lynn students about their city’s history. She and her colleagues go into the classroom twice—one before and once after students visit the Lynn Museum—to reinforce the lessons that students learn. She also invites the students and parents to the Museum’s end of the year Open House to reinforce the students’ knowledge of the institution and to create new bonds with parents.

Judith, relaxing outside of her work at the Lynn Museum.

Through her work with the Lynn Museum, Judith Marshall has put her background in public history to good use, developed new skills, and brought history to life in Lynn, Massachusetts. Yet, her career trajectory was one that she never could have predicted, even as she graduated from UMass Boston.

Her advice to current students?

“Apply for jobs- lots of jobs. You never know what you’ll end up being interested in.”

March 27, 2017Heidi Gengenbach No Comments

Women of the Past & Present Shaping the Future

by Monica Haberny

In January 2017, half a million people showed up for the Women’s March in Washington DC and over four million people participated in their own marches throughout the country to raise awareness for women’s rights. During my internship at the Boston City Archives in Fall 2016, I came across many female activists who worked tirelessly for change in the past two centuries. The following three women represent just a fraction of the inspiring women whose successes and failures can motivate activists fighting for similar issues today.

Florida Ruffin. ca.1890. Wikimedia Commons.

Suffragist, journalist, and anti-lynching activist, Florida Ruffin Ridley (1861-1943) became one of the first black teachers in Boston. She came from an educated background. Her father, George Lewis Ruffin, was the first African American to graduate from Harvard Law School and the first African American to be a judge in the country. Her mother, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, a suffragist and civil rights activist, published the first newspaper for African American women. Ruffin, following in her mother’s footsteps, also worked as a pioneering journalist and activist.

Florida Ruffin's Teacher Qualification Record, 1888, Teacher Qualification registers and index. Courtesy of Boston City Archives. — Florida Ruffin’s Teacher Qualification Record, 1888, Teacher Qualification registers and index. Courtesy of Boston City Archives.

Journalists provide an invaluable service, especially in a digital age where news comes from various sources and is often contested or falsely reported. Florida edited the Women’s Era, her mother’s newspaper. She wrote articles about black history and issues affecting blacks for multiple publications, including the Journal of Negro History and The Boston Globe. She, Pauline Hopkins and Dorothy West all belonged to the Saturday Evening Quill Club, an African American literary group founded in 1925. In addition to her writing career, Florida was involved in co-founding several nonprofits for African American women and was a lifelong political activist.

Application from the Housekeeper's League, January 1913. Courtesy of Boston City Archives. — Application from the Housekeeper’s League, January 1913. Courtesy of Boston City Archives.

Ridley raised awareness about race relations; her contemporary Ida Hebbard pioneered the issue of food safety in Boston. Recent documentaries like Food, Inc. and Cowspiracy have challenged people to think about where their food comes from. Hebbard became a food safety activist over a hundred years ago.

She served as president of the Housekeepers League, an all-female group. During the 1910s, the League lobbied for consumer rights, protesting the increasing prices of household foods. Hebbard led the group in protesting the price of eggs in 1912, as well as the price of potatoes and coal in 1917. Potato prices for consumers dropped from 70 cents to 35 cents a peck because of their efforts. More importantly, she advocated for the Bob Veal Bill. This bill banned the sale of calves weighing less than sixty pounds, preventing them from being slaughtered and shipped to Boston the day they were born.

In November 2016, activists like Ida Hebbard succeeded in passing Question 3 on the ballot, which banned the confinement of farm animals in small cages in Massachusetts. Like the Bob Veal Bill, Question 3 will go on to improve the health of people because it improves the lives farm animals.

Grace Lonergan with fiancee Lee Lorch in 1943.

Grace Lonergan Lorch, the third Boston woman featured today, championed civil rights and women’s rights in education. Before 1953, Boston Public School teachers were forced to resign before they married. Thus, in the 1880s, Florida Ruffin left her job to marry. Grace Lonergan Lorch changed that for future female teachers. In 1943, she brought a case against the Boston School Committee (BSC) in an attempt to keep her job after she married Lee Lorch. Although the BSC upheld the rule and Lorch was forced to resign when she married, the publicity surrounding the case forced the BSC to end the ban of married women public school teachers ten years later.

During his service in the military during World War II, Lee became aware of racism. During troop transports, he noted, often the black company had to clean the ship. Discrimination made Lee Lorch, a professor and mathematician, very uncomfortable and his wife shared his views. When the couple moved to New York City following the war, they worked to desegregate their home community, Stuyvesant Town apartments, which had banned black families from living in their complex.

The Lorch family being interviewed in 1949 by New York Times reporters about their work in Stuyvestant Town. New York Times, 2010.

Lee led the Town and Village Committee to End Discrimination in Stuyvesant Town to try to end the ban. In 1949, the Lorch family attempted to find a loophole in the ban and invited a black family to live in their apartment as their “guests.” When their plan backfired, the couple and their daughter, Alice, moved to Pennsylvania, then Tennessee before they moved to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1955.

The couple became very active in civil rights in their new community. Their neighbors were Daisy and L.C. Bates, founders of the Arkansas State Press and active members of the NAACP during the Little Rock Crisis. Alice Lorch became friends with many of the children in their new neighborhood. So, in September 1955, Grace wrote to the local superintendent requesting that her daughter be able to attend the local school. She hoped that Alice would not only be able to attend school with friends, but also promote integration as their neighborhood was predominately black. Although the school board denied her request, Grace continued to be involved in Little Rock’s branch of the NAACP.

The now famous image of Grace Lorch (left) comforting Elizabeth Eckford (right).

On September 4, 1957, Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, found herself alone and surrounded by a mob when she attempted to enter Little Rock Central High School.

All nine teenagers had planned to arrive at the school together with their parents, but the meeting place changed. The Eckford’s lack of a phone left Elizabeth uninformed and alone. Grace Lorch, after dropping Alice off at school, passed the high school and saw Elizabeth’s predicament. The civil rights activist fought her way through the angry crowd and helped escort the girl home. The rescue of Elizabeth placed a target on the Lorch family. Alice Lorch found herself bullied at school. Someone placed dynamite in their garage, and they were harassed by both press and the people around them. In 1959, Lee accepted a job from the University of Alberta and moved his family to Canada.

By fighting for causes that were important to them, Florida Ruffin, Ida Hebbard, and Grace Lorch shaped the future and women now continue to do so. Originally from Little Rock, journalist, activist, and speaker Liz Walker became the first African American woman to co-anchor a newscast in Boston in the 1980s. Lauren Singer challenges us to think about where our household goods come from and the environmental impact they may have. In India, Rashmi Misra fights for education in rural communities and giving young women entrepreneurial skills, and Maya Wiley works for civil rights in New York. Like Ruffin, Hebbard, and Lorch before them, these women will go on to influence the next generation of women.

Monica Haberny is currently working on her Master’s degree, specializing in Archives. She received her Bachelor’s in History from Montclair State University (2013). Currently, she is working on a digital exhibit on Kathleen Sullivan, the only woman on the Boston School Committee during the start of Boston’s public school integration, for Stark & Subtle Divisions. She has a strong interest in the history of nutrition, activism, and animal rights, and hopes to use these interests in her final capstone project.

February 16, 2017Heidi Gengenbach 1 Comment

Learning from the Clothes that Haverhill Wore: A Semester at the Haverhill Historical Society

By Rachel Sherman

During the Fall 2016 semester, I worked as an intern in both curatorship and collections management at the Haverhill Historical Society under Janice Williams. The Haverhill Historical Society serves as the historical center for the area of Greater Haverhill and the Merrimack Valley (Massachusetts). Occupying “The Buttonwoods” mansion originally bequeathed to the historical society in 1903, the Haverhill Historical Society collects and exhibits items relating to the area’s culture and history. These items once belonged to Haverhill residents and include numerous textiles ranging from quilts to costumes.

Figure 1: The John Ward House, owned by the Haverhill Historical Society. This house currently resides on the Buttonwoods Property. Picture taken by Rachel Sherman (2016).

From the beginning of my graduate career, I knew that I wanted to gain experience in a small historical institution like the Haverhill Historical Society. They needed the help. Now more than ever, historical societies need to be more organized, user friendly, and publicly accessible in order to stay relevant. Unfortunately, many of these organizations are run by small staff, infrequent volunteers, and the occasional intern. Despite this reality, the Haverhill Historical Society strives towards making themselves more accessible. This determination and dedication attracted me to intern at the Haverhill Historical Society.

My internship contributed the Haverhill Historical Society and their mission to modernize. They have been working on a ten-year long project to digitally catalog their collections, working to connect the items to Haverhill history. My job was to use their cataloging system, PastPerfect, to assess the condition of and digitally catalog a certain number of hanging costumes. I was also tasked with creating an informational “Intern’s Pick List.” The list includes costumes I felt were important to understanding Haverhill’s history and will be added to the Haverhill Historical Society’s website alongside the Curator’s Pick List.

Every historical institution, whether they are a small historical society or a large museum, has its own process for cataloging items; however, almost all institutions require the same general skills in approaching their items. From my experience, I present a small list of what I learned while interning at the Haverhill Historical Society.

Figure 3: Ninteenth century men’s robe, donated by the F.O. Raymond Estate. Fred O. Raymond Sr. lived and raised his family in Haverhill, serving as the Deputy Sheriff of Essex County from 1870 until his death in 1901. Object owned by the Haverhill Historical Society. Picture taken by Rachel Sherman (2016).

Always check the pockets: This is meant both figuratively and literally. During my investigation into a nineteenth century robe, I conducted my usual condition assessment, placed a new accession number tag, and proceeded to bring the costume back to its home. As I held the costume, I felt something in the left pocket I did not notice before. I carefully looked to see what was inside the pocket, and found a little envelope from the Haverhill Historical Society in the early twentieth century that also included written names. This fun little discovery helped me identify the history and the provenance of the robe. From

then on I checked every pocket I encountered. Look at every angle of what you are working on; you never know what you are going to find in the most obscure places.

Dig a little deeper: Researching can lead someone down a rabbit hole, and through this internship I went down several! One such rabbit hole involved genealogical work. My first day of working with the collection, I cataloged a wedding dress belonging to an Augusta Merryman of Maine donated by a Mrs. Daniel Hunt of Haverhill. Curious about the relation between the two women, I turned to census records to see if the women shared a family. After working backwards through fifty years of census records, I connected the dots and found that Augusta Merryman (whose first name was actually Lydia) was Mrs. Daniel Hunt’s aunt. Therefore it helps to dig a little deeper into the records to find connections to the past.

Use every available resource: See everyone and everything as a resource. While cataloging a men’s suit, I came across the name William C. Glines. Upon researching the name, I quickly learned that Haverhill housed more than one William C. Glines. After a period of frustration, I decided to ask the curator for assistance. Meanwhile, Mary Ann, a fellow volunteer on the textile collection, overheard our conversation and chimed in about her own object. It turned out that not only did she know the Glines family, but that she finished working on an object donated by a William Cheney Glines, aka William C. Glines. From then on, Mary Ann continued to be a valuable resource for both understanding some of the Haverhill families I encountered in my research and in understanding fashion jargon.

Step outside of your comfort zone: Try something new. This internship allowed me to work hands-on with a collection that needed some TLC. From taking on a subject I knew little about, I learned not only collections management techniques, but also skills uncommon with a history-based internship. Through this internship, I learned basic sewing. Before, I could barely thread a needle, and now I can at least sew a label onto a costume. I advise anyone to step out of her comfort zone; you never know what you will learn.

Apply what you already know: This item should come to no surprise. While examining an early nineteenth century dress coat, the gilded brass buttons stood out among the navy blue wool exterior. Upon looking at the buttons, I noticed that each one featured a peculiar bald eagle. Although I do not know the history of buttons, I did know from previous undergraduate research that the eagle shared a similar motif to the furniture of the American Classical Style (1820s-1840s). This similarity aided in narrowing down the age of the buttons—the mid to late 1830s. It may seem silly, but I used my knowledge of aesthetics, compared buttons to furniture, and it paid off.

No matter your internship, whether it is working with a collection or other, the skills you learn from an internship apply to more than just the task at hand. From reading about my own experience, you, the reader, will hopefully gain a better understanding of what you may encounter on your own internship journey.