Ceara Buzzell, History of Art & Museum Studies, BMC ’20

Museum Studies Fieldwork Seminar (Prof. Scott)

Faculty Advisor: Monique Scott,

Field Site: Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, Art and Artifacts Department

Field Supervisor: Marianne Weldon

Fieldwork Description:

My work in Special Collections was centered on researching and cataloging a group of Peruvian textiles. This involved object research and identification, collections research, updating database information, writing catalogue entries, and imaging the objects. The purpose of this work is in part to maintain the collection, and in part to make it more assessable for students, faculty, and researchers.

Final Presentation and Report:

C Buzzell Special Collections Praxis Presentation

Please click here to access a PDF version of the report.

5 thoughts on “Ceara Buzzell, History of Art & Museum Studies, BMC ’20”

  1. Mira

    I’m really glad you got to help make the collections more accessible for online use. The situation we are in right now makes it very clear that having online collections is super important!

  2. Alexandra Stern

    It was so wonderful to get updates on the collection every other week (especially after our last semester with them)! I’m sure future generations of researchers will really come to appreciate all of the work you put into making the catalog 🙂

  3. Tessa

    Hey Ceara,

    Congrats on all your great work this semester!! Having worked with our collections I can’t tell you how incredibly helpful the work that you did will be for *generations* of BMC students and interns.

    CONGRATS again and great job!

    Warmly,
    Tessa

  4. Liv Raddatz Post author

    What fascinating work, Ceara! I learned so much from your presentation. It’s incredible that there are over 50,000 objects in BMC Special Collections and that faculty used to keep many of them in their offices until the mid-1980s. I was particularly intrigued to learn about the use of multi-band imaging to better understand the presence of different dyes in the Peruvian textiles. I have worked with multi-band imaging in the context of map making and spatial analysis and never considered that the same technology could be used to learn about historical objects in this way. It’s exciting that the college now has the technology to do this type of analysis and that you were among the first people to use it. I also really enjoyed the microscope images of the textiles and your analysis of the technique used to create them.

    Thanks for sharing and congratulations on your graduation!

    Liv

  5. Judy Balthazar

    Thanks for sharing your research, Ceara. I love the combination of high-tech and low-tech!

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