主要来源
特别收藏与360°计划和谁建造了布林莫尔的合作伙伴关系?
还原历史，修正叙事
By partnering with broader College programs, such as the 360° program and the “谁建造了布林茅尔??大学历史倡议, Special Collections can support the College’s liberal arts learning goals in deeper and more meaningful ways. Such programs facilitate more sustained (and sustainable) collaborations between Special Collections staff and faculty that not only create targeted opportunities to assess what is and is not known about some of our collections, but that also enfold students into the work by equipping them to pursue a research project using primary sources. ——凯莉·罗宾斯.A. '08, Ph.D. 2013年，艺术和文物馆长
开采矿物收藏
作者:玛雅·霍夫斯泰特(Maya Hofstetter
当弗洛伦斯·巴斯科姆在1901年开始布林莫尔的矿物收藏时, 她写信给全国各地的地质学家和收藏家, 让他们送矿物标本过来. In the 125-odd years since, the collection has amassed over 100,000 specimens from over 90 countries.
1958年，小乔治·沃克斯(George Vaux, Jr .)家族捐赠了一件重要的藏品., a rock hound who devoted much of his life to collecting rare minerals on trips to Iceland, 南美, 以及由费城自然科学院组织的南部非洲.
有时我站在沃克斯系列的中间，闭上眼睛. 我转过身来，随便挑一个柜子，往里面看. 来自澳大利亚布罗肯山的针状细铜铜矿晶体. 天鹅绒般的深绿色孔雀石，产自刚果民主共和国. 来自内华达山脉的黄金. 每个标本都有一段历史, 从地球深处形成, 对它的开采, 前往布林茅尔一间黑暗的地下室, 宾西法尼亚.
沃克斯参观的矿山是由殖民列强控制的, 他们生产的财富又流入帝国用于战争, 贸易, 以及进一步的扩张. 从地下开采这些矿物的矿工的名字和故事都不见了, 但我们知道，这些矿山是靠强迫劳动发展起来的. 这些历史与沃克斯系列有着不可逆转的联系, 这就引出了一个问题:我们如何承认, 讨论, 把它们展示出来?
360º镜头
这些问题是《推荐全球十大博彩公司排行榜》背后的催化剂, 博物馆, 和西方殖民主义, a fall 2022 360 program cluster in which 15 students and three faculty members produced biographies of colonial mineral localities, 创建了一套对矿物进行分类的标准, 并开始了为期一周的美国之旅.K. 参观与殖民历史有关的博物馆.
地质学与殖民主义, 由地质学教授Selby Hearth教授, focused on the history of the field of geology and the role geologists have played in global colonization. 编目集合, with Carrie Robbins (curator/ academic liaison for Art and Artifacts) and Marianne Weldon (collections manager for Art and Artifacts), covered the fundamentals of museum collections cataloging and repurposed the existing collections database to best represent the Vaux Collection. 我们提出的建议, 由我们课程集群的每个成员共同撰写, 将在同行评议前发表吗.
应对殖民历史
我们的团队在十月初启程去伦敦. 降落后数小时内, 我们在大英博物馆里散步, 倒了些时差，被大量失窃的文物和误导人的标语惊呆了. 在伦敦期间，我们还参观了惠康收藏馆, which has taken substantial steps to acknowledge the colonial history of its collections, 包括遣返人类遗骸和文物, 征求公众意见, and commissioning artists and writers with personal connections to artifacts to create interventions to be exhibited alongside the original artifacts.
我们还参观了布里斯托尔和剑桥的博物馆, where we saw different approaches to colonial legacies within museums—from unlabeled human remains, 过时的语言, 并拒绝承认与殖民地的联系, 以委托艺术品的形式进行深思熟虑的干预, 扩展了带有本地地名的标签, 免责声明, 并清除不尊重的物品.
The good that has come from even the smallest interventions shows that this work is vital to the central goals of curation— preservation and interpretation of objects and education about them.
“幽灵记录”
集群期间, 每个学生都选择了一个具有历史意义的矿物产地，代表了沃克斯的藏品. 我选择关注新科洛维, a mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that supplied over 70 percent of the uranium used to create the atomic bomb.
Over 50 specimens collected from Shinkolobwe during a 1930 expedition funded by Vaux sat in our mineral collection for decades, 直到它们被认为放射性太强而无法保存. 一些被捐赠给国土安全部用于培训, 而另一些则与其他放射性废物一起被掩埋. 他们留下的痕迹以空盒子和成堆的身份证的形式存在.
When 布林莫尔 Artist-in-Residence Ellie Ga visited the mineral collection in December 2022, 她对这些“幽灵记录”很感兴趣.” We 讨论ed the importance of empty spaces—how they emphasize the mobility of minerals through space and time—and I 太k inspiration from our conversations to write an object biography focused on these missing specimens.
这个项目, 以及我写的关于新科罗维历史的网站简介, 让我们想象一下开采这些标本的人, 它们进入我们收藏的方式, 以及他们留下的差距的重要性.
玛雅·霍夫斯泰特是地质学专业的大三学生. 去年夏天, 她在特刊实习, 她在哪里通过组织数据库继续360项目的工作, 更新公园科学馆的展览, 研究藏品的历史, 并为未来的工作制定指导方针.
“谁建造了布林茅尔”的新模型?”
艾莉森·米尔斯，学院档案保管员
在过去的几年里, Special Collections staff has partnered with students and faculty to spend the summer researching and developing an institutional history exhibition. 这个名为“谁建造了布林茅尔”的项目?,” supports research and curatorial opportunities for students interested in changing the way the College understands its history. 2023年夏季标志着该项目的第四次迭代, 2020年推出, 一种新的实习模式的开始.
《谁建造了布林茅尔》的第一阶段?聚焦于塑造学院前50年的四位人物:莎莉·布朗, a maid in Merion; Umeko Tsuda, 布林莫尔’s first East Asian student and the founder of Tsuda University; Hilda Worthington Smith, 她是女工暑期学校的创始人, which accepted 黑色的 students years before 布林莫尔 College as a whole did; and Enid Cook ’31, 他是著名的病毒学家，也是第一位从推荐全球十大博彩公司排行榜毕业的黑人学生.
第二阶段的重点是60年代的学生. These students, influenced by the national civil rights movement, shifted the College’s culture. 类似的, 2020年11月, 黑色的, 棕色（的）, and first-generation low-income students formed the 布林莫尔 Strike Collective and led the longest strike in the College’s history. The exhibition connected the concerns of students in the ’60s to students at 布林莫尔 today, 看看校园激进主义的遗产.
项目的第三阶段将问题改为“为什么要建造布林茅尔”?，并探索了布林茅尔学院最早的几年, 从1872年的构思到1885年的开放, 在它运营的第一个十年里. It considered the motives and philosophies of the white Quaker men and women who brought the College into being. 展览展示了布林莫尔成立背后的争论和妥协, 相互竞争的愿景塑造了学院的物理和概念景观.
After three rounds of constructing a large-scale exhibition on the tight timeline of 10 weeks, 我们决定采用一种更可持续的模式. 从今年开始，“谁建造了布林茅尔”?，将从“五一”开始，转变为“三小一大”的时间表. 实习生将策划一部分展览, 这幅画被安放在卡纳迪图书馆二楼的伊娃·简·罗曼·库姆52年套房里, with the goal of a full exhibition being installed in the 1912 Gallery for a grand “谁建造了布林茅尔??每四年举办一次展览. These exhibits will be tied together by an overarching theme and also by a blog kept by the interns as they work over the summer.
“谁建造了布林茅尔??”interns Yihan Liu ’24 and Grace Foresman ’25 kicked off the first summer of this new model in May, 由去年夏天的一名学员提供建议, 马里昂·汉密尔顿，23岁. This year marks the beginning of a concentration on Asian histories at 布林莫尔 College—an expansive, 丰富的选题供学生探索, with many potential avenues for research—and this will provide the focus for the next phase of “谁建造了布林茅尔??”
我们希望, 太, that this extended exhibition model will allow alumnae/i to participate in the project in a way that hasn’t been possible until now. 更长的时间框架为口述历史提供了机会, 随着展览的逐步进行，众包反馈, 对于那些参观校园的人来说，他们可以看到展览的发展. 我们期待在那里见到你!