ABOVE: Sandra Grullon, Liam Grace-Flood, and myself working with Haseltine’s Arab Filly (Filly), supported by collection assistant, Abe Ziner. Our research uncovered the Filly’s provenance. We additionally utilized Google Earth as a digital platform to exhibit and track the sculpture’s provenance from its creation to its arrival at Wheaton College (MA). Photo credit: Flynn Larsen, 2013.
Tracing the provenance of Herbert Haseltine’s Arab Filly proved to be an adventurous task. As a part of Niederstadt’s course, Gift or Loot: Who Owns Cultural Property?, my provenance team found Arab Filly’s full provenance through extensive research within the Permanent Collection record files. To showcase and highlight our research findings, all teams utilized Google Earth as a visual and digital platform.
Within the same course, we were also required to research and study a failed or successful repatriation. I chose to study the Parthenon (Elgin) Marbles and their failed, full repatriation from the British Museum back to Greece. To highlight our research this time, we were required to utilize Omeka, an online content management platform, to create digital exhibitions detailing each object’s provenance narrative.
Both projects highlight the ways in which object research can engage students in “service learning” in non-traditional, technological ways.
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ABOVE: A screenshot of my repatriation project which followed the failed repatriation of the Parthenon (Elgin) Marbles back to Greece.
Museum and Humanities Projects Beyond the Classroom 