During Spring 2020 the Block Museum staff and students continue to connect online and advance the Museum’s teaching and learning mission. This week, we check in on Madeline Hultquist, our Research Assistant who is funded through the Office of Undergraduate Research (shown here on screen as she works with Melanie Garcia Sympson, Block Curatorial Associate)

I am currently working as an Undergraduate Research Assistant at the Block Museum. This position is a really unique opportunity because I am able to work on a variety of different projects, both long and short term, to help where I am needed most. For example,  some of the longer and more in-depth work I do focuses on researching new acquisitions to the Block collections, or researching pieces that we have had for a while that don’t have a lot of information or research done about them previously. I also get the opportunity to do more public-facing work, like writing blog posts for the Block’s website.   

Recently, of course, working has changed a little bit as I am now working from home. I stay engaged by keeping in touch with the colleagues I work with, both by email and Zoom calls. Having these check-ins, especially video-conference style, is a really great way to stay connected and remember that while our offices may look different, we are all still working on our projects and looking to the future of the museum! 

Right now, I’m wrapping up an ongoing project that researched some really interesting landscape photos, which was fascinating to me as I have not really studied a lot of contemporary landscape photography before and was thus able to learn a lot. Now, I am turning my attention to a new project of adding more research and information about artists to our online database. I am excited to begin this project as it will bolster the amount of information available to the public through our online resources, which is especially important now as the online museum resources are currently the only ones available to the public