Category Archives: Student Spotlight

Student Spotlight: Becca Frantz

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Becca Frantz ’13 Art History Major

Hi! My name is Becca Frantz and I am an Art History (and secret studio) major at Franklin & Marshall. I have been working as a docent at the Phillips Museum since my sophomore year. What I love about being a docent is the opportunity to watch and learn how a show takes shape as well as discover more about the meaning of the artwork. Also, one of the best aspects of being a docent is talking to the visitors and discussing the works with them. One memorable experience was when a little girl wondered in and became so enchanted with one of the pieces that she pulled her parents into the museum while shouting “This is awesome!”

Working at the Phillips Museum has also allowed me to explore the possibilities of what I can do with my degree. Being immersed in the artwork helps inspire my own projects as well. As an artist who uses numerous mediums (I am now just starting to explore video art), I have mainly focused on found art by looking to artists such as Edward Kienholz for his installations. Additionally, the recently concluded exhibition Uncommon Denominator: James Nestor and His Former Students, one of my favorite shows to date, opened my mind to new ideas on how I can integrate found material into sculptures and installations. In the portfolio I am creating for my application to graduate school in sculpture or new media, I will be taking ideas and inspiration I have had at the museum to continue to explore the ghosts that linger onto these cast away objects and therefore create new meanings for them.

Student Spotlight: Stephanie Lifshutz

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Stephanie Lifshutz, ’13, Studio Art Major

Hi, my name is Stephanie Lifshutz, and I am a senior Studio Art major and International Studies minor.  I have been working at The Phillips Museum since the summer as a curatorial intern for the Humanities Commons in the Barshinger Life Sciences & Philosophy Building.  My favorite artist is Edward Hopper because of his personal portrayal of modern American life through his proficiency as both a painter and printmaker.

This job has been an incredible experience and has given me a new understanding of the details and planning that go into curating an exhibit, from researching what should be on display in the first place, to coordinating the specific arrangement of the art in a space.  As a studio art major I think I have a unique perspective in understanding the full process of how the art was made and the artist’s intention for it, which helps me understand how to best display the work. My first project was working on displaying the collection of prints by the American artist Luigi Rist.  We exhibited his Japanese woodblock prints and the original blocks used to make them, as well as two Japanese prints made with the same process.

My favorite thing about the museum is that it has such an extensive collection, ranging from original Roman coins to contemporary works by Bill Hutson.  My favorite exhibit at the museum was the Biannual Faculty Show, because it offered us a chance to see what our professors were working on and what they specialized in.

This year I will be applying to graduate programs for an MFA in printmaking, though I am open to new opportunities and potential museum or gallery internships.  This job allows me to explore the various sides of the art world at the same time, and I think it offers me a greater array of career possibilities in the future.  For my senior year I am looking forward to working on my independent study in silkscreen printing and my capstone project next semester.

 

 

Student Spotlight: Maddie Fye

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Maddie Fye, ’13, Art History Major

I am Maddie Fye, a senior art history major and a Mellon Fellow here at The Phillips Museum. I have been working with the collection since the beginning of last year and love every minute of it!

I am currently in the middle of cataloguing the photographic collection and performing some research to fill in any gaps in their object records. I love getting up close and personal with the objects I am working with, whether they are the photos I am working with this year or the ceramics I handled last year. There is something amazing about connecting with the past through the things that remain. I especially love looking at the nineteenth century portrait photographs and wondering about what kind of person they were and the paths their lives took. But there is also something really nice about touching objects; really, what person doesn’t want to handle all the pieces in a museum?

The most difficult aspect of this job is the potential for monotony. Cataloguing works can be very repetitive, but it is also easy to get distracted and excited by some kind of research that benefits the museum as a whole. In this way, there is always something new and productive to learn!

Next year I hope to be in a graduate program studying Museum Studies in hopes of continuing with a career in collections work. I think that my experience at The Phillips has contributed a lot to what I have to offer other institutions in the future. I have a strong base of knowledge now that will serve me well, which I can build upon in the future.

My favorite thing about the museum is the eclectic nature of the collection. We have samurai suits and African masks and beautiful art from the likes of Caroline Peart, Andy Warhol and Cezanne. I don’t always feel that the permanent collection gets the attention it should deserve, and so I am very excited about the re-opening of the Nissley Permanent Collection Gallery. Not only will more of the permanent collection be on display, but there will be places in which visitors can connect with works in some non-traditional ways. I hope everyone– students, teachers and Lancasterians– will come in and take full advantage of the fabulous resource that is The Phillips Museum of Art.

Student Spotlight: Sheena Crawley

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Sheena Crawley, Studio Art and Economics '13

My name is Sheena Crawley and I am a double major in Studio Art and Economics.

I would have to say that my favorite artist is Pablo Picasso.  I feel like his art walks the line of abstract art even though he was one of the most important artists responsible for the cubism art movement.  I enjoy how I have to take time to analyze his artwork in order to appreciate and understand all of the elements that are working together.  I see his work as visually challenging and I like a challenge.

 My responsibilities at the Phillips Museum consist of maintaining the website, including setting up the website’s configuration, and adding all of the text and photographs.  I am also responsible for using social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr to interact with our community outside of the museum.  Lastly, I help to promote and document the exhibitions and events to the community through making videos from exhibition receptions, adding photographs from the exhibitions to our social media outlets, and making all information from past exhibitions available on the website in an organized exhibition archive.  During my time here I have worked on the Outdoor Sculpture Map on Google Maps, archived all past exhibitions since the 2007-2008 school year on the website, created videos to recap receptions and gallery talks for exhibitions, and created web banners to advertise current ongoing exhibitions.  Now that I am leaving this position, I have also begun to write a Digital Media Manual to help the next incoming intern when they begin to work.

My favorite thing about this job is that I am always busy working on something.  I enjoy having multiple things to work on because I am able to take a break from one task and work on a different one.  I also like how some of my responsibilities are routine, but then I get to work on various projects, which makes things exciting.

What I find most challenging is editing information that has gone onto the website.  Often, there are small mistakes that are easily missed, particularly misspelled names and dates, so it is important to take your time in transferring information to the website and make sure you double check everything.

 This job has definitely given me technical skills in learning how to use InDesign and learning more about Photoshop.  I have learned that research before planning and organizing projects is helpful for the final outcome and that multitasking is an essential skill for any job.  This job has also taught me that the work each employee does is very important in developing the museum to its full potential and that my input and opinion is helpful even though I am just an intern.

I am most looking forward to being the new graphic design intern here at the museum.   I believe this opportunity is very important in developing skills and experience that I will need in the future.  I will accumulate great print pieces that I can add to a growing portfolio and I will finally get a real taste of what it is like to be a graphic designer.

 

Student Spotlight: Erika Herrera

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Erika Herrera SP'12

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m from Los Angeles and I am a studio art major with a focus in photography. I would have to say my favorite artist is Man Ray. I fell in love with his work after an artist presentation for digital photography and took interest in a lot of his work.

This year I worked as assistant to the preparator in The Phillips Museum of Art and have been involved in hanging the various exhibitions shown this year. One of my favorite exhibitions has been Colors of Greece – The Art and Archaeology of Georg von Peschke. Peschke is an artist I had never heard of and I found his work truly amazing.

The most challenging aspect of this job has been the amount of work that goes into getting a show ready. I really enjoy working with the museum staff because of everyone’s energy. It has been very hard balancing the museum and school work, and I am very fortunate to have worked with wonderful people.

After graduation I will be returning to The Phillips Museum to work as next year’s Mellon Post Baccalaureate Fellow. I am very excited to spend another year around the museum doing something I enjoy. Once the year is over I am considering pursuing an MFA in photography, but things can always change.

Student Spotlight: Judith Stapleton

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Judith Stapleton, Art History, Class of 2012           

Hello. I’m Judith Stapleton, a senior Art History major. I’ve been working at the Phillips Museum for two years now. I’ve known since before college that I wanted to be an Art History major and continue my studies in this discipline into graduate school and beyond. My advisor suggested that having work experience at a museum would be invaluable, and so I started volunteering at the Phillips Museum during my junior year.

 

As a volunteer, I worked with a collection of drawings by a Polish émigré artist Zdzislaw Czermanski. Born in 1900, he lived in London, Paris, and New York. The museum had acquired some of his political drawings through a donation by his widow, but they had yet to be cataloged. Making descriptions of the objects was fascinating. While practicing concisely describing art, I did research on London coal companies, Polish army uniforms, Parisian cafés, and world history in order to accurately describe the art objects.

 

My experience at the museum helped me get an internship at Palazzo Vecchio when I was studying abroad in Florence, Italy. On my return, I was awarded the Mellon Pre-Baccalaureate Collections Cataloguing Fellowship. Since the summer, I have been making object files, digitizing our collections records, and adding new items to the catalogue. I’ve gained experience with museum terminology and resources. I’ve also been privileged to work with local artist and former F&M professor Bill Hutson, as I continue to catalogue the exhibition posters he has collected over his long career. My experience at the museum has exposed me to a wide range of art objects and time periods, while giving me the tools I need to work comfortably in a museum setting. Who knew that so much went on behind the scenes?

 

Student Spotlight: Rachel Jones

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Rachel Jones '12 in Copenhagen, Denmark during Study Abroad, Spring Semester 2011

My name is Rachel Jones and I’m from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. When I first came to Franklin and Marshall College I wanted to become an astronaut.  Shortly after the first semester I realized that science and math were not for me and I switched to an art history major. During the summer before my junior year I was offered the position of Graphics Intern at the Phillips Museum of Art. I had never taken a class about design and knew nothing about working with InDesign or Photoshop. Bonnie Halloran (the previous graphics intern) showed me a few pointers and then I was left to learn the rest on my own. It has been a challenging but rewarding process working with a wide variety of artists and faculty members throughout my internship.

My most challenging project was working on the catalog for the Zorach: Paint & Spirit exhibition last fall. I had never worked on a project this big and it was great to learn new techniques and styles for designing layouts for larger books. This was also my favorite exhibition because the artwork was so beautiful and my class curated the show!

After I graduate I’ll be moving to Copenhagen, Denmark to experience Danish culture for an extended period of time. I hope to find a job working in a museum or an internship with a design firm. Eventually, I would like to go to school for graphic design. I really appreciate all the time that I’ve spent at the Phillips Museum because I would have never have had the opportunity to work in graphic design.

Rachel’s Portfolio can be viewed at http://www.behance.net/rachelkapisak

Deconstructing the Human Form

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Today’s Guest Blogger is Dan Deibler ’12 whose exhibition Deconstructing the Human Form is on exhibit in the Rothman Gallery Atrium in the Steinman Student Center (ground floor) through May 12, 2012.

Legs, 2012, Under Copyright, Used with the permission of Dan Deibler

“I believe the most important element of my study to discuss is how I made the leap from discovering the viewer’s identity to discovering my own. Since the beginning of my study, I had proposed that peeling away layers of people’s skin (theoretically speaking) could reveal something about their identity that they took for granted. During the course of the study, I could never really elaborate any more on how, an idea that haunted me for a long time. To ease this feeling, I would simply tell myself to just keep painting, and the answer would reveal itself to me.

It took me up until the past month to realize that trying to force the audience to draw conclusions about their identifies using my representations was foolish. Each painting was, and could not have been otherwise, an extension of myself. Even with access to “scientifically objective” medical imaging, everything I made was always at least one step removed from the original source. That step contained predispositions exclusive to me no matter how accurate I tried to capture the subject. My finger prints are all over the paintings, both literally and figuratively. My project in its current state is trying to bridge the gap between my internal physiological self and the objects and ideas that exist outside my body. While I certainly hope for my audience to draw the same conclusions that I do, I feel that it’s too big of a stretch to expect each viewer to achieve such a revelation about themselves.

My favorite painting at the present time is Legs. The painting is covered from top to bottom in heavy brush strokes, palette knife slashes, ridges, smudges, and drips, and still looks like a pair of legs. I tend to hold these landmarks and artifacts of the painting process in high regard.”

–
Dan Deibler
Franklin and Marshall 2012
Digipen Institute of Technology
http://tunamatrix.blogspot.com/

Student Spotlight: Deena Gittle

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This week’s blog post is the first in a series that will be highlighting the student workers, interns, and volunteers of The Phillips Museum of Art.

Deena Gittle, Art History, Class of 2012

Hi, my name is Deena and I am a senior Art History major. I have worked at the Phillips Museum since the summer after my junior year. My first assignment at the museum was to catalogue a private collection that housed works that were going to be used in a future exhibition at the museum. My assignment was to use a program called, FileMaker Pro to classify this private collection that had over four hundred works of art. This was the first time I would be doing this type of work, which included handling the art, doing condition reports, and photographing the collection. I was fortunate enough to be taught by the museum staff how one would go about working with a collection like this to put it in a computerized database. The museum staff made it clear to me what fields of examination would be for each work and what would need to be observed in depth. They taught me the whole process to follow. I learned how to catalogue a collection through hands on experience that I would only be able to gain through my work at the Phillip’s Museum. Throughout the summer I catalogued most of the works that were in this collection. I ended with just over four hundred pieces of art in my database. After the summer ended I began to work at the museum as a docent. I am currently responsible for knowing about each current exhibition and being prepared to learn about future exhibitions being held at the museum. I have enjoyed working at the Phillip’s Museum and learning a lot of the behind the scenes work that goes on in a small museum setting.