2015

LILY HIGGINS

As a child, objects strengthened Lily Higgins’s sense of western identity, and allowed her to explore places and cultures far from her hometown of Boise, Idaho. She received her B.A. in Folklore and Mythology from Harvard University, with a Secondary Field in Russian Language and Literature. In her honors thesis, she studied 19th-century hairwork as a form of physical and emotional labor, and complemented her scholarship with hands-on participation in the craft. As President of Harvard’s Dudley Co-op, Lily experienced first-hand the rewards and struggles of cooperative living and became interested in early American communal experiments, a topic she hopes to investigate at Winterthur. Recently, she returned to her northwestern roots by completing a fellowship with the Center for Idaho History and Politics, and investigated new ways of approaching objects at the Chipstone Foundation’s Object Lab. When time permits, a few of Lily’s favorite ways to lose herself in object study include knitting, quilting, and collecting dollhouse furniture.

<d>

NEAL HURST

Growing up in southeastern Pennsylvania, Neal Hurst developed an interest in the War for American Independence and material culture. After high school, he worked for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in the Department of Historic Trades and finished a seven-year apprenticeship earning his journeyman’s papers as a tailor. He attended the College of William and Mary, where he participated in the National Institute of American History and Democracy and completed an internship at Colonial Williamsburg with the curator of mechanical arts and numismatics. Neal received his B.A. in History with High Honors for his senior honors thesis entitled “‘kind of armour, being peculiar to America:’ The American Hunting Shirt.” During his time at Winterthur, he hopes to spend as much time as possible studying objects and utilizing the manuscripts collection. Neal enjoys visiting historic sites, listening to music, and researching the 18th century in his spare time.

<d>

LEA LANE

Lea Lane was born and raised in rural Kentucky, where she spent summers exploring barns, fields and abandoned structures for objects left behind by her ancestors. She entered The University of Virginia intending to study anthropology, but the omnipresent legacy of the school’s founder, Thomas Jefferson, quickly captured her academic curiosity. Lea served two terms at Monticello as an intern in the Education and Visitor Programs department. Through this program, she interpreted Jefferson’s home, belongings, and historical context. After earning her degree in history, she moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, to work as an assistant specialist at Cowan’s Auctions. She researched a wide array of objects, ranging from the carved pipes and canes of Civil War soldiers to American ornithological sketches. Lea enjoys keeping up with Jefferson scholarship, studying American contributions to World’s Fairs in France and Britain, and frequenting antique shops in search of unusual boxes. While at Winterthur, she hopes to deepen her understanding of self-made commemorative objects.

<d>

KATIE McKINNEY

Katie McKinney is a second-year fellow in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. She has worked for Colonial Williamsburg in both the conservation and curatorial departments as an intern. At James Madison University, she completed a BA in art history and history, where her honors thesis focused on the changing attitudes toward death and the commercialization of the material culture of mourning in 19th-century America. After graduating, she participated in the Historic Deerfield Summer Fellowship Program before becoming a Curatorial Assistant at Monticello. As a fellow at Winterthur, she has continued to explore her interests in portraiture, dress, Southern decorative arts and history, and early American visual culture. In July 2014, McKinney completed a field survey documenting decorative arts in the Gulf South as a fellow for the Classical Institute of the South. Her thesis titled Double Vision: Embedded Likenesses in American Art investigates the convention of depicting portrait miniatures in art and the democratization of the miniature-format through print culture.

<d>

EMILY REBMANN

A native Ohioan, Emily Rebmann graduated summa cum laude from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning with a B.A. in art history and a concentration in classical civilization. As an undergraduate, she presented a paper on classical Greek lion funerary sculpture at the Jonathan B. Riess Art History Symposium and the Cincinnati Art Museum. She has explored material culture as a Fine and Decorative Arts intern at Cowan’s Fine Art Auctioneers and Appraisers, a Jewelry Department intern at Freeman’s Auctions, and as an interpreter at the Cincinnati Museum Center’s Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit. Emily is fascinated by antique jewelry because of its aesthetic appeal and its value in understanding an important and understudied aspect of history. She spent a year working at a Cincinnati jewelry store in order to gain experience, photographing and cataloguing antique and contemporary pieces for the store’s website. Emily is working to become a Graduate Gemologist through the Gemological Institute of America’s distance learning program. Her thesis will explore the significance of middle-market men’s jewelry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She is passionate about understanding objects from many different contexts. At Winterthur, Emily is dedicated to expanding her interpretive skills while experiencing material culture in new and exciting ways.

<d>

CHRISTIAN RODEN

Growing up in central Ohio, Christian Roden’s enthusiasm for architecture, art, and ocean liners inspired him to raid the libraries of two counties for more information. His family’s tradition of watching This Old House and Antiques Roadshow every Thursday night fostered an interest in history and things. Educated in Virginia, England, and France, he graduated from Washington and Lee University with a B.A. in Art History and English Literature. He returned to France as a Fulbright Research Fellow in 2011, studying the cultural iconography and political significance of French ocean liners at L’Association French Lines in Le Havre. He aided his hosting institution by translating documents and recording English versions of museum audio guides. Back in the States, he drove the county bookmobile and helped manage its circulating collection. He enjoys reading, singing, and hiking, and is also an accomplished painter. While at Winterthur, Christian looks forward to guiding, getting lost in the collection, and exploring the further reaches of the gardens.

<d>

NATALIE WRIGHT

Natalie Wright employs object analysis and interviews to examine collective memory in the contemporary world. In her undergraduate career at the University of Toronto, Wright combined material culture with diaspora and transnational studies, gaining a deep understanding of the connections between material culture, citizenship, and pluralism. While living in London, England, she honed her interview skills by working with anthropologist Daniel Miller to find the contemporary diasporic uses of Skype. In her graduate studies at Winterthur, Wright refined her object-analysis skills. There, she explored the consumption of iconic heritage brands, relationships to 9/11 debris, and the emotive nature of objects in contemporary abandoned spaces – the topic of her thesis. At Winterthur, Wright successfully pitched a hand painted Honest Ed’s sign to the Canadian Museum of History, where it will become a starter kernel for a much larger Honest Ed’s collection. During her time at the Canadian Museum of History, Wright was the assistant curator for the upcoming exhibit, “Terry Fox: Running to the Heart of Canada,” in which Wright created an interactive map exploring the collective memory of Fox’s 1980 cross-Canada run. Wright also has a strong interest in brand identity construction and maintenance, and is passionate about print and web design. She explored both of these passions as an intern at Hidden City Philadelphia and Creature London advertising agency.

<d>