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Museum Studies BS

The Museum Association of New York features imaging science and museum studies students for developing an affordable imaging system to help museums and libraries preserve and expand access to their collections department.

Katie Keegan has always been a fan of history. As a child growing up in Ithaca, N.Y., Keegan would ask her parents to plan family vacations to museums or historical sites, not Disneyworld or the beach. So when it was time for Keegan to decide on a college major, her parents suggested museum studies.

A virtual opening reception for the Dyer Arts Center’s newest exhibit will take place from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 26, via Zoom. The exhibition “This is Not Normal: Deaf Modernist Sensibilities,” will showcase Surrealism and other works within the broader genre of Modernism by Deaf artists.

Students Devin Hull and Sophie Walter are using their creativity to expand ongoing digital efforts of the Genesee Country Village & Museum.

RIT alumni contributed to a major exhibition at the Rochester Museum & Science Center highlighting Rochester and Haudenosaunee women who pushed for social change. “The Changemakers: Rochester Women Who Changed the World” opens Nov. 20.

RIT celebrates the 19th Amendment, equal rights, and the power of voting with “Moving Forward: Suffrage Past, Present, and Future.” The special programming includes talks, voter registration and pre-election events and exhibits.

Scientists from RIT are developing affordable imaging systems to help libraries and museums preserve and expand access to their historical collections. The project, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, aims to create a low-cost spectral imaging system and software that can be used to recover obscured and illegible text on historical documents.

Friday’s celebration of the Class of 2020 certainly cannot replace the atmosphere of a traditional commencement, which RIT plans to host on campus when it’s deemed safe. But many of graduates say they won’t let the pandemic, or the circumstances surrounding the virtual celebration, define them or their feelings about their time at RIT. (Pictured: Bradley Speck, who will finish his classes online this summer, has a job waiting for him at GE Aviation in Cincinnati, where he completed four co-ops.)

Intersections: The RIT Podcast, Ep. 36: The right academic major can be a pathway to a dream career. Professor Tina Lent, director of RIT’s museum studies program, talks with 2019 alumna Katherine Hensel about how her degree in museum studies led to her dream job as a U.S. national park ranger.

Intersections: The RIT Podcast, Ep. 33: Community partnerships are one way RIT provides its students with experiential learning opportunities. James Winebrake, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, and Juilee Decker, associate professor of museum studies, talk about a unique partnership between the college and one of the Finger Lakes Region’s cultural gems, the Genesee Country Village & Museum.

A traveling exhibit that calls upon craft as a creative force in voicing dissent and expressing hope in an era of political disruption is making its first-ever stop at RIT over the next month.

RIT's endowed partnership with Genesee Country Village & Museum—which was established in September by a gift from RIT alumnus Philip Wehrheim ’66 (business) and his wife, Anne—is one of the ways students connect with the Rochester community.