Alumni Connect: Chief Black Coal’s journey back home

February 24, 2020 by usfmuseumstudiesblog

By Jordan Dresser (MA, 2015) Editors’ note:  We are pleased to reprint this recent article by USF Museum Studies alumnus Jordan Dresser.  Jordan currently serves as Collections Manager for the Northern Arapaho Historical Collections in Wind River, Wyoming.  To the see original article:  click here. “It’s the tribe’s now.” Temple Smith had tears in his eyes as he uttered those words to me on a cold January day. It was understandable. Letting go is hard. But letting go is the […]

Categories: Alumni, Community, Museum Studies, Social Justice • Tags: Alumni, collections, law, social justice, USF Museum Studies

Celebrating Our Alumni

February 10, 2020 by Paula Birnbaum

by Paula Birnbaum Editors’ note: A year ago, on February 8, 2019, USF’s Master’s Program in Museum Studies held its first ever reunion to celebrate the momentous occasion of the fifth anniversary of our program. Organized in conjunction with the annual meeting of the California Association of Museums, over 100 alumni of the USF Museum Studies Program convened for a festive gathering at the Marines Memorial Club in San Francisco. Today we are reprinting an excerpt from a speech given at […]

Categories: Alumni • Tags: Alumni, USF faculty, USF Museum Studies

Intern-connectivity: Memoirs of the Eocene — Giant Skulls and Ethafoam at the California Academy of Sciences

December 9, 2019 by usfmuseumstudiesblog

by Dakota Harr (MA, 2019) One of my most exciting projects at the California Academy of Sciences during my Summer 2019 Geology Collections internship was the work I did on a massive skull of the prehistoric mammal, Brontops. Standing at around 8-feet tall and 16-feet long, (roughly the size of an African Elephant today), Brontops was an impressive sight during the late Eocene epoch of North America. With a big stocky body and large y-shaped horn situated right on the […]

Categories: Alumni, internships, Museum Studies • Tags: collections, internships, nature, science, USF Museum Studies

Policies, Procedures, and Forms: The Documentation of Museum Collection Practices

October 21, 2019 by usfmuseumstudiesblog

by Mackenzie Doerksen (MA, 2019) Documentation is a critical element for maintaining museum materials in an ethical and legal manner and can be manifested as a form, policy, or procedure. Every museum has different documentation that fits the needs of their mission and collection and stipulates the expected standards of care. Documentation is a way to uphold ethical and legal practices. Practically, it is in large part risk management, as it tries to address as many potential collection scenarios as […]

Categories: Alumni, internships, Museum Studies • Tags: Alumni, anthropology, collections, internships, social justice, technology

Alumni Connect: Social Media Journalism at the AAM Conference in New Orleans

August 5, 2019 by usfmuseumstudiesblog

by Angela Gala (MA, 2016) After moving back to Europe from America in 2016, I had never been able to come visit until last month. That’s when I flew all the way to New Orleans to attend this year’s Annual Meeting of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and document it through my Instagram and Twitter accounts (@imamusaller). Much to my surprise, this year I was selected as one of AAM’s Social Media Journalists (SMJs). Since I was assigned an international focus, I also had the wonderful […]

Categories: Alumni, Museum Studies • Tags: Alumni, professional development, technology, USF Museum Studies

Alumni Connect: Impactful dialogues at The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections

July 15, 2019 by usfmuseumstudiesblog

by Alice Fornari (MA, 2018) In late May 2019, I attended my first-ever museum conference, the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (or SPNHC, pronounced, “Spinach”), in Chicago. The annual meeting was being hosted by the Field Museum of Natural History. I presented a project that I co-authored and created the protocol and setup at the Entomology department at the California Academy of Sciences, during my internship from Fall 2017 – Summer 2018. During the project I was […]

Categories: Alumni, Forums, Museum Studies • Tags: Alumni, collections, professional development, research, science, technology, USF Museum Studies

Alumni Connect: LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes

May 6, 2019 by usfmuseumstudiesblog

Editors’ note:  Few people know that Cinco de Mayo is a holiday born in Southern California to celebrate Mexican heritage, culture and strength.  So for our blog’s Cinco de Mayo edition of Alumni Connect, it seemed time to e-interview Mariah Berlanga-Shevchuk (MA, 2014), Associate Curator at the LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. Mariah offers a wise perspective on what it means to curate the Latinx American experience given today’s political climate.  She is currently researching an exhibition on the history and realities […]

Categories: Alumni, Exhibits, Museum Studies, Social Justice • Tags: Alumni, art, California history, global, social justice, USF Museum Studies

On Tuesdays we wear stripes: Teamwork at the SFO Airport Museum

April 22, 2019 by usfmuseumstudiesblog

by Ana Paola Romero Latapi (MA, 2018) On March 15, 1927, the City and County of San Francisco leased 150 acres from the family of banker D.O. Mills to use as a temporary, experimental “air port.” Ninety-one years later, it has become the seventh busiest airport in the United States, serving a record 54 million passengers in 2017. The massive number of travelers who step through SFO each year, however, is not the only thing that makes it stand out: in […]

Categories: Alumni, Exhibits, internships, Museum Studies • Tags: California history, collections, community, internships

Alumni Connect: Center for the Arts & Religion in Berkeley

April 15, 2019 by usfmuseumstudiesblog

Editors’ note:  For this edition of USF Museum Studies’ Alumni Connect, we were pleased to catch up with Lydia Webster (MA, 2017) who is blazing trails a the Graduate Theological Union as Assistant Curator of the Center for the Arts & Religion in Berkeley, Lydia, who is originally from Scotland, moved to California in 2016 to pursue her MA at University of San Francisco. Museum curators are often seen as the arbiters of knowledge: those who decide what narratives will […]

Categories: Alumni, Collaborations, Community, Exhibits, Forums, Interviews, Museum Studies • Tags: Alumni, art, curating, exhibit, music, USF Museum Studies