The Botanical Dioramas of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History
PhD Student in History of Art and Architecture
PhD Student in History of Art and Architecture
We reworked Itinera because it was glitching on some tour stops for agents. Now that it's been updated, all the tour stops are functioning, and it looks a lot nicer. This is great because coincidentally, my FE-R presentation is next week.
Last week, I got into the story surrounding Thomas Bruce and the Parthenon Marbles. Now, let me tell you about the controversial past (and present) of these artifacts.
With generous support from the Dean of Graduate Studies, ten HA&A graduate students (Maria Castro, Nicole Coffineau, Clarisse Fava-Piz, Annika Johnson, Isaac King, Colleen O’Reilly, Ben Ogrodnik, Nicole Scalissi, Krystle Stricklin, and Marina Tyquiengco) traveled to New York to conduct individual research and attend the annual conference of the College Arts Association.
I'm still inputting data about the Elgin Marbles (now we're calling them the 'Parthenon Marbles') into Itinera. For your intellectual curiosity, let me educate you a little bit about the international controversy that surrounds these ancient marbles statues.
The Cathedral of Learning’s Japanese Nationality room highlights 18th century minka style architecture and includes a variety of cultural elements illuminating Japanese traditions of all social classes. The room, dedicated on July 25, 1999, differs in purpose compared to the other nationality rooms.
The Hungarian Room that exists today combines folk artistic traditions with a visual timeline to narrate the nation’s complicated history. The Hungarian Committee formed in 1927, and with great enthusiasm became the first committee to put forward a donation to the Nationality Room Council and grew to include Magyars from surrounding Pittsburgh suburbs.
My interests have led me to research the Czechoslovak Nationality Room, in that it represents the distinct and deliberate joining of two or more peoples into a single nation. Formed as a nation in 1918, Czechoslovakia represented a unified nation of multiple ethnicities. However, these self-identifying ethnic groups had (and still have) very different traditions and identities, including language, art, history, and way of life. Since the vast majority of Czech and Slovak immigrants arrived in the Unit
Max Adzema is from Pittsburgh. He is currently a senior studying History of Art and Architecture with a minor in Museum Studies. Among other classes this semester, he is taking HAA 1010 and HAA 1020 which are exhibited in HAAARCH. He will be presenting a thesis on the Czechoslovak Nationality Room, which investigates the challenges and benefits of having both Czech and Slovak identities reflected in a single room.
On March 18, Shirin and I introduced our thoughts for the Methods course we are planning to teach this fall and opened up a lively conversation about object-based inquiry vs historiorgraphically based inquiry. Thanks to Annika for these detailed notes of the conversation, which are attached.
Please feel free to join the conversation here and add your own responses and suggestions.