A Museum Studies alumna motivated students, on a study trip in Washington, DC, to chronicle the history of the Museum Studies program at the University of Toronto (UofT), resulting in a historical timeline, and a revamped student blog.
A year ago, Museum Studies students met with Anne Halpern (MMSt ‘75) who works in Washington’s Department of Curatorial Records, at the National Gallery of Art. Over the years, Anne has met a number of MMSt summer interns at her workplace, and through them, enjoys keeping up with the program.
A natural collector, Anne shared with this year’s class memorabilia and stories from her student days —volunteering in the Royal Ontario Museum’s Registrar’s Office, interning at Black Creek Pioneer Village, playing varsity field hockey for U of T — when the program was run out of the ROM (in 1973, there were less than 12 museum studies programs in North America!) After sharing stories, Anne gave the students her collection of documents.
“I save things — having always been interested in history and archives. So I was pleased to share with MMSt students information about the early years of the program,” she says.
With that inspiration, second year Museum Studies student, Jaime Clifton-Ross began researching and working with iSchool librarian Nalini Singh to chronicle the program’s key events. Fellow student, Anya Baker, a contributing editor and content developer for the student blog, Musings, wrote the timeline based on Jaime’s research.
The result is a graphical program timeline documenting major transitions that affect the development of the MMSt program, such as the 1983 move to Robarts Library. Another fact Jaime found was that in 1972, women paid $20 less tuition than their male counterparts!
“After meeting Anne and learning about her experience in the program during the 70’s, I was inspired to piece together the history, as little information was available online,” Jaime says. “My goal was to provide additional information about our program without repeating what was already on the iSchool website.”
While Museum Studies officially joined the iSchool in 2006, its history starts in the late 1960s.
Professor Emerita Lynne Teather, who taught at U of T for more than 30 years, including the iSchool until her retirement in 2012, watched the integration of the Department of Museum Studies into its various homes.
“The iSchool has proved to be ready and willing to explore not only the informatics aspects of our fields, but also support the development of the other features of museology’s theory, practice and professional directions, and its often more material and exhibitionary elements, among others,” Prof. Teather says. “I believe that at the iSchool, we honour the long history of Museum Studies, its founders, faculty, colleagues, and students who worked so hard to sustain this unique Canadian degree, a leader on the international scene.”
Musings Revamped
Prior to meeting Anne, Jaime had been working as a Research Assistant since September 2013 with Museum Studies Professor, Irina D. Mihalache, and was redesigning the Musings blog as a central hub for all things related to Museum studies.
Musings was named after the first newsletter launched in 1977 by the Museology Student Association, with its first editor being Marian Macaulay, who graduated that same year.
“The idea of Musings was to share the student perspectives on a more casual platform, so that people get a sense of the students behind the program,” Jaime explains. Each year, a new editor-in-chief will run the blog.
Jaime is working closely with Professor Mihalache, who teaches Curatorial Practice and Interpretation and Meaning Making at the iSchool.
“We wanted a place to exchange information that would be of interest to Museum Studies students, and share insights into our experiences while going through the program,” Prof. Mihalache says.
She would not have imagined that Musings would grow into such a professional project presenting on so many aspects of the museum practice.
“Initially, Musings was envisioned as a communication hub for the MMSt candidates, but now it has grown into a professional blog followed by museum and heritage professional from Canada and beyond.”
Together with Prof. Mihalache, the duo spent hours figuring out the blog’s purpose — who were there readers? Why would they visit the blog? What kind of information do they want? Jaime redesigned the blog, even teaching herself basic HTML and CSS.
However, it became apparent running a blog was too much work for one student, so the team expanded to five to six student columns per week including:
• Museum Monday
• Tuesday News Day
• What’s Happening Wednesday
• Thursday: Person of Note
• Friday: Object of the Week
That summer, with a lighter content load, Jaime began a new column, Museum Innovations, where she highlighted innovative and cutting edge museum practice, while exploring different forms of museums. Other students began sharing their research.
By then, Jaime was interning at the ROM, where she conducted a research survey to help strategize how best to transform the official blog. She also wrote articles for the blog on the ROM’s collections, programming, and conservation practices. “I created a Best Blogging Practices document to share amongst the community. I am really proud of that,” Jaime says.
Following her internship, Musings embarked on a recruitment blitz for first and second year students, resulting in a much bigger team of 18 contributors. There is now a video, and the team is working on a succession plan as Jaime is graduating in June. “I’m excited to see where it goes.”
