Category: Reading Responses (Page 2 of 8)

This past summer (2018), APH student Erika Bentsen interned at the Tenement Museum in New York City. Below you’ll find Erika’s blog post about his experience.

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This past summer, I worked as a research and exhibit development fellow in the Tenement Museum’s Curatorial Department. The Tenement Museum, located in an original mid-nineteenth century tenement building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, expertly narrates the stories of real people who lived there by using primary resources such as census records, newspaper articles, artifacts, and oral histories. Their mission is to make connections between immigrants, migrants, and refugees from the past to the present and to acknowledge how American society has been positively shaped by immigration.

Magistrate Court Record circa 1891 (Photo Courtesy: Erika Bentsen)

As part of the museum’s strategic plan, they aim to expand the stories that the museum tells about residents from the past. My research task was to comb through Magistrate Court Records, located at the New York City Municipal Archives, to find crimes committed by residents of 97 and 103 Orchard that could lead to further investigation. Once I identified residents, I used New York State Penal Codes as well as secondary sources about immigrant life at this time in order to contextualize their crimes. Additionally, I referenced the museum’s archives as well as census records to learn more about personal stories and familial connections.

Overall, the crimes committed by residents were byproducts of the cramped and oppressive living conditions they faced in the tenements. One common crime was “disorderly conduct,” a nebulous charge that was often used to target seemingly “unruly” immigrants, mostly men, who were apprehended on the streets. Other crimes included spousal abandonment, intoxication, sanitation violations, larceny, and fire code violations. Sanitation violations often occurred when tenants ran businesses, like groceries, from the ground floor apartments of 97 Orchard, or when tenants operated push carts on the crowded streets. Fire code violations occurred when residents used their fire escapes as exterior spaces to make their crowded and hot tenement apartments more livable.

The Levine family’s tenement apartment, which served as a garment factory in the early twentieth century. (Photo Courtesy: Erika Bentsen)

In addition to my research, I attended education department meetings and helped the collections department inventory two different period rooms and organize and catalog the artifacts. I learned about conservation techniques through this work and was able to handle nineteenth and early twentieth century collection pieces and used furnishing plans to “set the scene” of what a tenement apartment would have looked like at the time of its historical interpretation. I also did some sewing and maintenance projects on artifacts like clothing for preservation purposes. The museum was undergoing essential conservation work at the time and staff found hidden objects under the floorboards, including petrified mice, corn cobs, a medicine bottle, and a compact mirror, which I photographed to use in promotional materials.

This internship showed me the inner workings of a successful museum and how all departments collaborate to help visitors genuinely engage with the stories of the past and make meaningful connections to their personal lives and to modern American society.

This past spring semester (2019), APH student Conor Snow interned with New York Philharmonic Archives in New York City. Below you’ll find Conor’s blog post about his experience.

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This past semester I interned at the New York Philharmonic Archives. Founded in 1984 by Barbara Hawes, the archive’s main function is to serve the larger Philharmonic institution by providing reference services and materials for event promotion. With a small staff, the archive relies heavily on help from interns and volunteers. During my time there, I worked under the direct supervision of archivist Gabryel Smith, and my main project, along with smaller ones, was to process the collection of Lillian Libman’s papers on the conductor Igor Stravinsky. Cool, right?

My office at the New York Philharmonic Archives (Photograph courtesy Conor Snow)

Libman was Stravinsky’s manager and press agent, and the collection was donated to the Philharmonic by her niece. The materials were partially organized into five boxes, comprised of various items including professional and personal correspondence, concert itineraries, tour expenditures, press lists, and photographs of the composer. Luckily for me, the papers were already separated into labeled folders. My job was to go through the folders in detail and describe the papers at the folder level.

The stacks at the Philharmonic Archives (Photograph courtesy Conor Snow)

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the collection is a series of very rare photographs of Stravinsky traveling around Europe with other famous artists of his day, including Pablo Picasso. Familiar with The Rite of Spring? There is actually a photograph of Stravinsky composing it while he was in Switzerland! I was absolutely blown away and so grateful that my internship provided me with this fantastic opportunity.

After describing the collection, I determined that the Libman papers, although fascinating, did not belong at the Philharmonic. Collecting policy at an institutional archive is so important, and this collection had very little to do with the New York Philharmonic. After doing some research on more suitable repositories, I assumed the role of a researcher with a reference request and contacted the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Switzerland, which holds a large Stravinsky collection, to see if I could get any more information on how they functioned as an institution. I really wanted to see how professional their staff was before conducting any business. They were very responsive, and my supervisor and I concluded that this should be the collection’s final home. We still have yet to negotiate donating the material, but working with the Libman papers on Igor Stravinsky has certainly been an exciting and informative adventure. Also, can’t leave out the fact that I got to go to free concerts at the Philharmonic!

Photographs of Stravinsky during his time in Switzerland. Top right: Composing the Right of Spring. (Photograph courtesy Conor Snow)

Lillian Libman (Photograph courtesy Conor Snow)

This past spring semester (2019), APH student Allie Gallo interned at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Special Collections and College Archives in New York City. Below you’ll find Allie’s blog post about her experience.

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Over the course of this past semester, I was lucky enough to experience the ins and outs of working in the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Special Collections and College Archives. I was not assigned one huge project that would take all semester to finish, but rather many smaller projects, which allowed me to experience many types of tasks and duties expected of one working in the archives. It also enabled me to interact with an array of exciting materials, such as original Chanel sketches from 1912, student notebooks and final projects from 1953, and the brochures from every Museum at FIT exhibition beginning in the 1970s.

Selection of books from FIT collection (photo courtesy Allie Gallo)

One of the bigger projects I worked on was processing the Corduroy Council of America’s collection. This collection had many different types of materials to work with, so it remained interesting. The press materials included a nursery rhyme book with fabric swatches adhered onto the sketches to display the upcoming trends in children’s wear, many newspaper clippings, and over-sized scrapbooks. This was fun to work with because I got to see what fashion they thought would catch on and it was interesting to see how far and wide fashion as a whole had spread. I came across a Press Release meant for ABC News that highlighted “Soviet Women Becoming Fashion Conscious.” I have come across a few instances in other collections where travel was necessary to learn the fashion of other cultures. One was an FIT employee who traveled to Japan and wrote a report about what she had learned.

ABC News press release, “Soviet Women Becoming Fashion Conscious.” (photo courtesy Allie Gallo)

FIT was an exciting place to complete my internship. The small team made for a comfortable atmosphere, while also presenting more varied opportunities for me. Whether I wanted to practice acquisitions, cataloging, or fully process a collection, I was able to ask for what piqued my interest that day. I think having options in learning environments allows for exciting opportunities and chances to step out of the box.