Summer 2022 Residential Interns
Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation | Aug 16, 2022
In 2018 the Collections Department began a summer residential internship program. Students lived on site and worked closely with our Librarian and Registrar to more fully document collections materials to make them more accessible. The Covid-19 pandemic interrupted this program for two years, but we are happy to have summer interns here once again at Taliesin West. Pictured at the top (L to R) Sammie Hardewig, Yi-Ju Chen, and Brelynn McGloin near a historic Taliesin West sign (3803.300) outside the collections offices.
Registrar Pat Evans is introducing them to our collections management database. They are adding more information to the existing catalog records and creating new records for recent acquisitions. Various tasks were identified for the summer work and the interns selected projects that piqued their interest. Some of the materials they have been working on in their first few weeks are the research materials of Emeritus Collections Director Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, manuscripts (published and not published), and a portfolio of prints by Gustav Klimt that belonged to Frank Lloyd Wright. Other cataloging tasks include Wright’s canes and walking sticks, Japanese katagami (hand cut fabric stencils), and ceramics.
Sammie Hardewig, an MFA sculpture student at the University of Kansas, built a custom box to carefully store our collection of Frank Lloyd Wright’s canes.
Meet Our Interns
Sammie Hardewig: Sammie earned a BFA in fine arts and BA in Art History from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Currently, she is an MFA sculpture candidate at the University of Kansas in Lawrence and is also pursuing a certificate in museum studies. She plans a career as an exhibition designer or preparator. Recently she helped with an exhibition installation and saw the registrar at work completing condition reports and overseeing shipping and thought it looked interesting.
Brelynn McGloin: Brelynn is a recent graduate from Wesleyan University with a BA in the arts (classical civilizations with a minor in education studies). They will enter the Museum Studies Master’s Program at George Washington University in the fall. They plan to work as a collections manager or registrar and gained experience in research and rehousing collections at the Witte Museum in San Antonio. They note that they gained a love and appreciation of material culture from travels with their grandmother.
Brelynn McGloin cataloged new acquisitions like these lacquer stem glasses and matching tray (2022.035.18.a-f), gifts of William Scott.
Brelynn cataloged prints in the Gustaf Klimt portfolio “Das Werk von Gustav Klimt [The Work of Gustav Klimt],” 1918 (Contains 50 richly printed collotype plates including 10 in color and heightened in gold and silver, all with specially designed unique intaglio signets printed in gold in lower margins.) Presumed owned by Frank Lloyd Wright. Print shown here is “Die Jurisprudenz” (1123.014.8)
Yi-Ju Chen: Yi-Ju has a BA in architecture from the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan and is currently an MS student in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania. Earlier this summer she worked at Taliesin as part of the continuing UPenn group program there. While she’s not planning a career in collections care she feels that working with archives and collections will make her a better researcher (and a better preservation architect).
Yi-Ju Chen, a master’s student in preservation architecture at the University of Pennsylvania works to organize thousands of historic receipts.
All objects are collections of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
