Class of 2027

Raised in Stamford, Connecticut, Matthew Becue developed a passion for antiques, collecting, and material culture after an unintentional childhood foray into mudlarking while fishing along the shore of Long Island Sound. He refined these interests while at Cornell University, earning a BA in history with minors in archaeology and American studies, and interning at Significant Elements, Ithaca’s architectural salvage store. Matt’s interest in using material culture for restorative justice led him to earn a master’s degree in historical archaeology from the University of Massachusetts Boston. During that time, he enjoyed using his skills in artifact analysis and remote sensing to serve collaborative archaeological projects, including those with the Hassanamisco Nipmuc and the Eastern Pequot tribal nations. Eager to work with one of his favorite material types, Matt’s master’s thesis analyzed the assemblage of nineteenth-century bottle glass from a Central Massachusetts farmstead to examine the experiences of working-class farmers and shoemakers navigating rapid industrialization. At Winterthur, Matt hopes to gain further experience using collections to amplify marginalized voices and fill in historical gaps, while also deepening his love of glass and ceramics and expanding his knowledge of all material types.

Born in Northeast Ohio, Kayleigh Danowski began life in pursuit of becoming a ballet dancer. During her professional career, she had the opportunity to dance in many small towns across the United States, where she developed a strong interest in domestic architecture and historic objects, nurtured by neighborhood sightseeing and small-town thrifting. Upon retirement from ballet, Kayleigh began her undergraduate studies and discovered that her love for storytelling through movement transcended the stage, taking new footing in the formal study of material culture. Kayleigh graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a Sc.B in history of art and architecture and psychology, receiving The Ann Belsky Moranis Memorial Prize and departmental honors in art history. During a summer internship at the Lippitt House Museum in Providence, Rhode Island, Kayleigh dove into archival research of late-Victorian local history, where she formed the foundation of her honors thesis that recovered the voice of dollhouse furniture maker and founder of TynieToy, Marion Perkins (1872-1947). Through Perkins’ story, Kayleigh explored intersections of historical feminism, the Arts and Crafts movement, and contemporary feminist theory. At Winterthur, she plans to continue her investigation of how domestic spaces and everyday objects both reinforce and resist gendered expectations.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, William Gerhardinger spent formative time lost among machines at the Henry Ford Museum, learning carpentry from his uncle who is missing part of a finger, and taking apart anything he could get his hands on. At Kenyon College he integrated his academic interests with his passion for handicraft by majoring in the history of science and technology. A proponent of being a historian practitioner, he built his own automaton while completing an honors thesis on nineteenth-century French automata. After a productive internship in the company of automata and music boxes at the Morris Museum, William spent the next four months at a trade school learning clockmaking. Working as a professional clockmaker, he researches and documents his repairs on his blog, honing his historical knowledge and communication skills. He recently completed building a mechanical calculator by hand based on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century machines, which allowed him to see a fuller picture of the labor and knowledge materialized in such objects. At Winterthur, he hopes to continue to unite his interests in both the arts of the hand and the arts of the mind by studying the relationships between people and their objects.

Charlie Manion is an artist and researcher from the American Midwest who specializes in sound and glass. His experience as a fabricator, glassblower, and touring musician informs his relationship to material culture studies. At Winterthur, he hopes to deepen his research into labor histories, artisanal epistemology, and consumer society, and to integrate Winterthur’s object-driven approach into his analyses. This research supports and runs parallel to Charlie’s interdisciplinary artwork, which ranges from plays and recorded music to sculptural installations. His artwork has been exhibited throughout the United States— most notably at Westbeth Gallery, the Design Museum of Chicago, and in residence at Millennium Park, in collaboration with the Experimental Sound Studio and Antennae Journal for the park’s 20th anniversary celebration. He was the Public Glass Studio Manager at Firebird Community Arts, a trauma-recovery nonprofit for Chicagoans injured by gun violence, before completing an MFA at the NY State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. He taught glass art there and at numerous institutions, including Pilchuck Glass School and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and he intends to continue teaching.

Growing up in the heart of Chicago, Amalia Pappa took full advantage of the amazing museums that surrounded her. At eight years old while her friends were at the YMCA, she went to summer camp at the National Museum of Mexican Art. Amalia’s advocacy for museums as sites of identity formation and cultural connection can probably be traced back to the summer she made a shoebox ofrenda (altar). In college, she spent her summers in much the same way, interning in the exhibitions department at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023 and in the curatorial and education departments at the National Postal Museum in 2024. Amalia graduated from Carleton College in 2025 with a BA in history and American studies. Her history thesis investigated the symbiotic relationship between uniform access and gendered perceptions of labor for female city letter carriers in the USPS, while her American studies thesis examined the cigarette as an emblem of coming of age in contemporary American society. Fascinated by the symbolic power of quotidian objects, Amalia is excited to learn and practice various forms of object interpretation at Winterthur in order to create a usable past for minoritized communities and social movements.

Originally from Charleston, South Carolina, Abigail Sullivan was always influenced by her colorful Southern surroundings. She is a recent alumna of Barnard College of Columbia University, where she
studied art history and was awarded the Josephine Paddock ’76 Prize. Her thesis, funded by Columbia’s Tow Summer Research fellowship, explored the creative agency of female Gullah coiled basket sewers, particularly Mary A. Jackson, who continue a tradition of survival, resistance, and innovation that began with the birth of the medium. While living in New York, she researched for the David Zwirner Gallery, the Whitney Museum, and the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2023, she coauthored a publication with her supervisor at the Met about a discovery they made together about women’s art education and material lives in New York during the 1860s. Her academic interests combine the history of craft, container-objects, and material culture historically tied to women. At Winterthur, she is excited to join, contribute to, and learn from its community of researchers.

Chicagoan Madeleine Ward-Schultz grew up fascinated by historic house museums and period rooms. She cultivated her interest in the embodied experience of historic spaces at Skidmore College, studying eighteenth- and nineteenth-century decorative arts, especially arts of the table and the sociability of dining with an emphasis on transcultural connections, racialized anxieties between Europe and Asia, and themes of Chinoiserie and Orientalism. As an undergraduate, she researched Gilded-Age dining practices
as an intern at the Richard H. Driehaus Museum in Chicago and highlighted problematic histories and revisionist perspectives in her curated exhibition on the embroidery and creativity of Chinese shoes for bound feet as the Charina Endowment Fund Endowed Intern at the Tang Teaching Museum. In 2022, Madeleine graduated summa cum laude from Skidmore with a major in art history and minors in Asian studies and English. She then worked as the Curatorial/Registrarial Assistant at the Columbus Museum of Art
in Ohio, contributing to exhibitions featuring European decorative arts and Asian export ware, and an exhibition highlighting postwar ceramic artist Toshiko Takaezu. At Winterthur, Madeleine hopes to deepen her critical engagement with the objects and foodstuffs reciprocally shaping global connections and the complex narratives of cultural exchanges.

Anna C. Wershbale is from Richmond, Virginia, but calls every art museum she visits “home.” Her passion for archival research and experiential design began in high school through the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Museum Leaders in Training program, where she contributed to digital humanities projects on local artists Willie Anne Wright, Benjamin Wigfall, and Louis Draper. As an undergraduate at William & Mary, Anna expanded her interests to include creative coaching and arts outreach through internships at the W&M Entrepreneurship Hub, the Taft Museum of Art, and the Muscarelle Museum of Art. In 2024, she graduated magna cum laude with a BA in art history, concentrating in built environment studies, and a minor in innovation & entrepreneurship. Her interdisciplinary approach is exemplified by her honors thesis, Beyond the Exit: MoMA Design Store & the Extended Museum Experience. There, she analyzed MoMA’s retail ventures as case studies in commercial innovation and the evolving cultural valuation of modernist design. After graduation, Anna worked as the Social Media Manager at The Branch Museum of Design, where she created and managed promotional content. At Winterthur, she aims to deepen her curatorial practice by exploring the material intersections of commerce and identity.