Ariel Senackerib (‘17) worked with Professor Janice Mann on the Packwood House Museum Digital Collections project, which grew out of Prof. Mann’s course Art History 373: “The West Encounters the Rest.” After her experience in that class—in which students were introduced to the Packwood House and the works and life of its former resident Edith Fetherston—Ariel (together with two other students) applied for research funding to continue their work. She created an Omeka exhibit featuring Edith’s artworks from the years 1931-1949 (in which roosters appear more than once).
Ariel says she enjoyed working on the Packwood House project, and her experience there influenced her decision to pursue a Master’s degree in fine and decorative arts. She applied to programs at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in New York and was accepted by both; she credits her acceptance to Sotheby’s in part to her experience working on the Packwood House project.
I think one thing that definitely did contribute to my acceptance was the Omeka site. So I got to actually pull that up during my interview there, and show people who worked there, which was cool. They were really excited about it. -Ariel Senackerib '17
She also says that working at Packwood House has given her opportunities she would not have had otherwise. It was a unique opportunity to do primary research with paintings, and gave her the opportunity to learn about Omeka and the use of metadata in cataloguing.
I just think L&IT staff was super helpful. They definitely reached out to us and helped us with all of our digital stuff, and they didn't really need to do that. Professor Mann was our advisor. So we’re very grateful that we got help from them. And I think that Packwood just has a lot of more opportunities in the future for students. We were just kind of breaking into what's in that collection, and what you can do with it. -AS