Kudos for Summer 2023

Kudos to…  Erica Lehrer (MSP04), Professor in the Departments of History and Sociology-Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal, co-edited the recently published book, My Museum: A Museum About Me: Curatorial Dreams for the Kraków Ethnographic Museum.  Through her work with the international research project, Thinking Through the Museum, Erica assisted in organizing a workshop in May, “Trauma, Memory, and Material Culture: NMAI + USHMM in Dialogue.”  Erica also published this article in February 2023, “Decolonial Museology in East-Central Europe: A Preliminary To Do List.”

Kudos to… Ksenya Gurshtein (MSP06), Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Wichita State University’s Ulrich Museum of Art, received an award for excellence this year from the Association of Art Museum Curators.  Ksenya was recognized for her work as lead curator of the exhibit, “Myths of the West: Narrating Stories of the Land and People through Wichita Art Collections.  

Kudos to….  Monica Patterson (MSP07), Assistant Director, Curatorial Studies, Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art, and Culture, and Associate Professor, Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario was interviewed by Sarah Gensburger for  the open source journal In Situ, Au regard des sciences sociales: 3:  “Discovering Child Curating.”  Monica continues her collaboration with another MSP Alum, Erica Lehrer (MSP04), in their international research project, Thinking through the Museum.  Monica and Erica held their first workshop in Warsaw, Poland this past summer.

Kudos to….  Joe Cialdella (MSP09) was recently promoted to Interim Assistant Director of Experiential Learning at the University of Michigan’s Rackham Graduate School.  In this role, Joe helps to lead and manage programs that support experiential learning opportunities for graduate students, including internships and publicly engaged scholarship.

Kudos to… Abigail Celis (MSP11), Assistant Professor in decolonial Art History and Museum Studies at the Université de Montréal, recently  published an article about France’s National Museum of the History of Immigration, titled “Refusing the “Gift” of Integration Narratives of Migration at the Galerie des dons” in the Journal of French Politics, Culture and Society.  She also received the 11th Annual Lawrence R. Schehr Memorial Award for “Rehearsing the Future: Visualizing Resistance in Omar Victor Diop’s Liberty Series,” a conference paper presented at the 20th/21st Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium.

Kudos to…  Shannon Schmoll (MSP11), the Director of the Michigan State University Abrams Planetarium since 2014, has been elected president-elect of the International Planetarium Society.

Kudos to….  Alison Rittershaus (MSP13) has been working for nearly a year as the Lynch Postdoctoral Associate in Curricular Engagement at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University.  In her position, Alison coordinates and teaches classes from Cornell and other regional colleges and universities where meaningful connections are created between collections and classroom learning across disciplines. 

Kudos to… Caitlin Clerkin (MSP14), the Frederick Randolph Grace Curatorial Fellow in Ancient Art at the Harvard Art Museums, co-curated the special exhibition “A World Within Reach: Greek and Roman Art from the Loeb Collection” at the Harvard Art Museums this winter. 

Kudos to….  Craig Harvey (MSP14), following a postdoc in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Western Ontario, has recently accepted the position of Assistant Professor in Roman Archaeology at the University of Alberta in Canada.

Kudos to… Allan Martell (MSP15) had a book chapter published earlier this year, “Las Exhibiciones Posmemoriales: Una Aproximación para Negociar el Trauma Cultural desde el Diseño Museístico” (Post-Memorial Exhibitions: A Design Approach to Negotiate Cultural Trauma) in Memoria Histórica y Transformación Sociocultural en El Salvador edited by C. B. Lara Martínez.  Allan’s research was supported by the Fellowship for Doctoral Research in Museums in 2018.

Kudos to… Mariane Stanev’s (MSP16) article “‘715 Haven Street: Art Looks Back’: The Archival Question of Art Resistance for Abolitionist Futures in a Pacified Present,” which emerged from her 2021 MSP-DAAS internship and was sponsored in part by the MSP’s Fellowship for Doctoral Research on Museums, has been published in the Journal for Cultural Research.

Kudos to… Félix Zamora Gómez’s (MSP16), UMMA’s AY22-23 Irving Stenn Jr. Fellow in Public and Digital Humanities and Museum Pedagogy, first exhibition “A Gathering” opened at UMMA in June and will remain on view for several semesters. The exhibit showcases UMMA’s recent acquisitions and has a particular focus on works addressing issues of climate change, gender and race, and global migrations. Also in June, Félix contributed to the Symposium on WICAD (the Workshop on Inclusive Co-Creation of Audio Descriptions) With Museum Visitors Who Are Blind, Partially-blind, And Sighted at UMMA.

Kudos to…  Emily Finch (MSP18) has been accepted into the Association for Research into Crimes against Art Postgraduate Certificate Program. Emily will be spending the summer in Italy studying art crime and cultural heritage protection. 

Kudos to…  Mark Ramirez (MSP19) returns to Ann Arbor after a stint as the Assistant Registrar at the Toledo Museum of Art to take a position as a NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) Project Associate here at the University of Michigan.

Kudos to…  Chad Machinski (MSP21) was recently hired as the Conservation Manager at Michigan Audubon whose mission is to connect birds and people for the benefits of conservation, education, and research efforts in the state of Michigan.  Chad’s responsibilities include developing habitat management plans, conducting biological surveys, managing the 18 sanctuaries throughout the state (which total 4,000 acres), and leading tours.   

Kudos to….  Katie Mikos (MSP21) will begin a fellowship at UMMA this fall through Rackham’s Public Engagement Fellowship where she will work with both the University Learning and Programs and the Public Experience and Learning teams.  Katie was also selected to serve a 2-year term on the Presidential Advisory Committee for Public Art at the University of Michigan.  Last year, Katie was an education intern at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology where she planned a successful family day event, “Stinky, Noisy, Fun: The 5 Senses of the Ancient Mediterranean.”

Kudos to … Emily Na (MSP21) has been offered a part-time research assistant position at the Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA, Pittsburgh) following her curatorial internship. Emily will be supporting the CMOA as it prepares to reinstall its permanent collection.

Kudos to…  Sony Prosper (MSP21) recently received the Society of American Archivists Theodore Calvin Pease award.  The award recognizes superior writing achievement by a student of archival studies, and entries are judged on innovation, scholarship, pertinence, and clarity of writing.

Kudos to…  Taylor West (MSP21) who has recently begun a position as a Micro-CT Scanning Specialist within the Core Research Laboratories at the Natural History Museum in London.

Kudos to…  Mia Glionna (MSP22) who, after completing her MSI, has been working on a multimedia oral history exhibit at the Black Washtenaw County Humanities Collaboratory which will premiere at the African American Cultural History Museum, Ypsilanti District Library, and Ann Arbor District Library this fall.