Three Carleton University Master of Arts (MA) candidates in Art History were recently awarded some very impressive honours.
Manon Gaudet won one of the most prized student internships in the art museum world – a MuSe Internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
For her internship, Gaudet is working with the assistant curator in the American Decorative Arts Department at the Metropolitan Museum to reconstruct the life of a late-19th century silver designer.
She notes that he was an avid collector of East Asian decorative objects, among others and the curator she is working with is interested in tracing the links between his private collecting and the silver designs produced under his directorship at Tiffany’s.
Adds Gaudet: “I’m hoping to learn more about how to do archival research, how to put together chronologies, and how to draw connections between different bits and pieces of evidence. Part of my internship will entail weekly seminars and tours with different departments at the Met. I expect I’ll be surprised by the variety of work involved in such a large institution.”
Manon Gaudet at the Metropolitan Museum
Danielle Siemens
Gaudet and Danielle Siemens both won Sir James Lougheed Awards of Distinction, worth $15,000, from the Alberta government. Only seven of these awards are given out at the master’s level each year.
“After an expensive summer in New York, this award will be indispensable in helping me to support myself while working on my thesis that looks at a collector named Mary Weekes,” shares Gaudet.
Siemens will also use some of her award money for her tuition and to travel to conduct thesis research about photographer Rosemary Gilliat Eaton and her work in the 1950s and 60s. “I will primarily focus on Gilliat Eaton’s work in the Arctic and how her photographs both conform to and complicate a myth of the ‘North’ and its peoples,” says Siemens.
Brittany Watson was awarded a highly competitive RBC Foundation Museum Mentorship Award from the Canadian Museums Association. The CMA, Canada’s national museum association, awards only two of these awards per year. The award allows her to work at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, Alberta, this summer.
Brittany Watson
Watson is working in the archives of the Whyte Museum as an archival assistant. “I am looking forward to gleaning valuable insights into working with archival collections, how an archives of the scale at the Whyte Museum functions within the institution as a whole, and how archival objects are shown or displayed, in particular, historical photographic collections,” she says.
Watson’s thesis project focuses on photographs of Aboriginal Canadians in one specific collection: photographer Byron Harmon’s photographs of members of the Ĩyãħé Nakoda (Stoney Nakoda), Tsuu T’ina (Sarcee), Ktunaxa (Kootenay), and Siksika (Blackfoot) First Nations in and around Banff, Alberta between approximately 1906 and 1922. The collection is held at the Whyte Museum.
As well this summer, grad student Anna Paluch will be writing articles on different activities that are happening at Canada Council’s Art Bank, as well as about topics that highlight artworks or themes found in their collection.
And Hannah Keating will be evaluating the strengths of the Spencer Mill Foundation’s collection and producing a detailed exhibition plan to revitalize and improve their current exhibit spaces that highlights the history of milling in Spencerville and improves the experience of visitors.
This June, two Art History students will be the first students to graduate from Carleton with a concentration in art exhibition and curatorial studies. For more details, click here.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015 in Awards, Grad Student Research, News
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