2017
SARAH BERNDT
Sarah Berndt first discovered her love of material culture as a child while wandering the aisles of her grandmother’s antique shop. Originally from Indiana, she received a B.A. in anthropology and art history at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. As a member of a three- person research team in eastern Germany, Sarah studied Romanesque fieldstone churches and how their function within their communities changed over time. In addition, she conducted ethnographic research on the Midwestern antique trade. Interviewing antique dealers, she focused on how objects accumulated value as they circulated through networks of people. During this scholarly research, Sarah became interested in what people chose to surround themselves with and why. Similarly, internships at art and heritage museums confirmed her desire to work in the field of material culture. Her interests include the practice of contemporary collecting and how communities change over time.
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TREVOR BRANDT
Growing up on a farm established during the eighteenth century in southeastern Pennsylvania, Trevor Brandt became interested in material culture as he explored his house’s provenance with his father and went antiquing with his mother. These early experiences shaped his interests in history and objects. He received his B.A. at The Pennsylvania State University, majoring in history and political science with minors in classical studies and German. He spent a semester in Athens, Greece, and worked as a research assistant for several interdisciplinary professors in the humanities. An internship at a museum in his junior year introduced Trevor to a branch of history that he had never previously considered as a career track. By the time he graduated as valedictorian of Penn State’s history department, Trevor had completed a thesis examining connections among language, religion, and group identity in medieval southeastern Europe. At Winterthur, Trevor hopes to further his ability to study questions of group identity by mapping the intersections among the religions, groups, and material cultures of Pennsylvania’s early German settlers.
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MICHELLE FITZGERALD
A native of the Baltimore area, Michelle Fitzgerald became fascinated with mid-Atlantic history and style at a young age. She graduated from the University of Maryland with degrees in theatre and history, and a focus on the gender politics of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. At Wilton’s Music Hall in London, the discovery of long- forgotten possessions left in the Victorian-era building sparked her interest in material culture. As a curatorial assistant at the Maryland State Archives, Michelle completed research on ceremonial protocol and the confiscated property of loyalists. She also worked on several exhibits featuring the archival collections, including the restoration of the Maryland State House’s Old Senate Chamber to its appearance when George Washington resigned his commission. During her time at Winterthur, she looks forward to continuing her exploration of the furnishing and British-American connections of historic civic sites. Outside of her studies, Michelle enjoys horseback riding, traveling, and collecting historic prints.
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EMELIE GEVALT
Growing up in New England, Emelie Gevalt developed an initial interest in historic properties through regular visits to the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow house, Old Sturbridge Village, and her grandmother’s eighteenth-century Litchfield County home. Each of them provided ample fodder for creative re-imaginings of early American domestic life. In later years, Emelie would further pursue her curiosity about private homes and collections through an internship in the education department at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Emelie’s interests eventually led her to a position in Christie’s Estates, Appraisals & Valuations department in New York, where she worked for seven years. In her most recent role as Senior Account Manager, Vice President, Emelie served as a team leader and primary client contact for a wide range of large-scale consignments and valuations, spanning categories such as American paintings, Chinese works of art, antiquities, and American furniture. Previously, Emelie was a curatorial assistant for a private foundation and collection in New York. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale with a B.A. in History of Art and Theater Studies. Emelie has also studied at the Sorbonne and is trained as a classical singer. She looks forward to exploring her interdisciplinary interests during her studies at Winterthur.
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ELISABETH MEIER
Elisabeth “Libby” Meier was raised in Madison, Wisconsin, the departure point for many of the family road trips that nurtured her interests in history, museums, and ships. She graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in history. Her thesis, which won the department’s Barnard Prize, examined the role of Chicago’s harbor system in mediating the development of the city’s built environment. Both before and after graduation, Libby has explored maritime material culture from a number of perspectives. Most recently, she has worked with collections at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland, and Auburn Heights Preserve in Yorklyn, Delaware. She has also worked as an interpreter at Mystic Seaport demonstrating nineteenth-century maritime skills, and served as a deckhand on an eighteenth-century replica, the schooner Sultana. In her spare time, Libby enjoys reading, stitching, cooking, and simply messing about in boats.
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LAN MORGAN
A native New Englander, Lan Morgan’s visits to historic sites regionally and abroad fostered her early passions for American and French culture. She explored the cognitive processes linking people to their visual environments while majoring in communication and art history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Additional studies at Oxford University, and in Siena, Italy, illuminated the ways in which regional aesthetics move across geographic boundaries. After graduation, Lan worked at Sotheby’s New York in the European Decorative Arts department, and most recently, was a Curatorial Fellow for American Decorative Arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. While cataloguing the Wadsworth’s historic collections, Lan became fascinated by the relationship between American objects and their European influences. She has a particular interest in examining the social and intellectual networks that influenced transatlantic exchange between France and America in the nineteenth century. At Winterthur, Lan looks forward to developing her object-analysis skills and expanding her knowledge of the cross-cultural influences that shaped American design and aesthetics.
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KRISTEN SEMENTO
Growing up as a member of a military family, Kristen Semento experienced American culture from a national and international perspective. Throughout her travels, she investigated variations in the regional cultures she encountered. Kristen strengthened these interests academically at the University of Texas at Arlington where she graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Art History. Kristen completed award-winning research on surrealist French film during her internship with the McNair Scholars Program. A second internship under the university’s head of collections developed her knowledge of materials through work with the Mac Stiles glass collection and the Dowdey-Campbell African Art collection. Apart from her academic studies, Kristen greatly enjoyed her six-year career as a veterinary technician where she cultivated her passion for animals and medical science. As a fellow at the Winterthur Museum, Kristen looks forward to undertaking research on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century wartime field medicine, oddities, and period fashions. Kristen’s other interests include drawing, Japanese culture and illustration, and interior design.
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ALEXANDRA WARD
Alexandra Ward’s passion for history led her from her home in Maryland to Gettysburg College. During her senior year, she worked as a Student Conservation Assistant in her college’s Special Collections. From beautiful, yet functional, endbands that strengthen a book’s structure to hidden fore-edge paintings, Alexandra became intrigued by the craftsmanship that went into books and bookbinding. Her efforts to preserve and protect these rare books fostered a deep appreciation for objects and their ability to connect us to our past. Alexandra graduated cum laude from Gettysburg College with honors in both History and Philosophy. Following her interest in history and material culture, Alexandra worked for Historic Annapolis, Inc., where she helped catalog their collection and guided. In her free time she enjoys being outdoors, especially out on the water kayaking or snorkeling. Alexandra is also an avid world traveler. While at Winterthur, she plans on deepening her understanding of books as art and exploring other aspects of American material culture.