{"id":2061,"date":"2017-07-29T21:35:43","date_gmt":"2017-07-30T04:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/?p=2061"},"modified":"2019-11-15T15:55:45","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T23:55:45","slug":"this-is-historyand-youre-still-alive-student-reflections-on-an-internship-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/?p=2061","title":{"rendered":"“This is history\u2026and you’re still alive!” \u2013 Student reflections on an internship year"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

An introduction<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

In which I provide context and describe how the internship came to be.<\/p>\n

Wade through history with me.<\/em><\/p>\n

Since leaving the University of Washington in 1967 as one of its first art history undergraduates, I\u2019ve lived through a lot of history. During this time, I\u2019ve accumulated many boxes of files and ephemera, some of it already in the UW Libraries Special Collections, much of it in my own storage. And all of it in need of culling, sorting, and indexing. You will help me make sense of it. Not only will we learn about archival procedures and working with primary source materials, but we\u2019ll pause as we go through the material to consider what it means, whether it matters, and how it connects with the world we know today. We may also write and host conversations about what we find.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Excerpts from my description of an internship position\u00a0offered to students at the UW School of Art + Art History + Design\u00a0for the academic year, 2016-2017<\/p>\n

Clearing out my storage unit was part of my plan to make the most of my year as Alum in Residence at the School. The opportunity to work with a student intern would make it possible, and the student would receive course credit for the work. When I began to work through the details with Liz Copeland in the School\u2019s advising office, she asked me, \u201cWell, how many interns would you like?\u201d Whoa! I thought. I\u2019d imagined just one, so I cautiously said, \u201cOK, how about two.\u201d<\/p>\n

I interviewed five remarkable applicants that first quarter, and with difficulty selected two \u2026 Karen Beech, an art history student, and Jessica Cap\u00f3, an art student. They continued with me through the entire year and helped me decide that we could handle two more. After another difficult selection process, Zach Heinemeyer (art) and Lizzie Trelawny-Vernon (art history) joined our team in January. Zach graduated at the end of winter quarter, but Lizzie stayed with us. And at the start of spring quarter, Abigail Cloutier (art history) signed on. What a grand gift I\u2019d received with such a team!<\/p>\n

\"\"
The family at Arts Wire, by Lizzie Trelawny-Vernon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rather than tackle my entire storage unit, I chose one project and carted 9 or 10 of the 16 banker boxes of Arts Wire material to my office at the School. Arts Wire, which I founded in 1989, was an early online network for the arts community nationwide \u2013 artists, arts organizations, arts funders, state arts agencies, and more. It introduced many arts folks to this \u201cnew\u201d communications technology and provided an essential national connection for us on the often tumultuous issues in the arts community during those years \u2013 the culture wars around censorship, the rise of the AIDS crisis, congressional debates about arts funding, and the increasing role of \u201cmulticulturalism\u201d (the term of the day). Though Arts Wire continued after I left, my involvement, and hence the materials I have, continued until about 1995.<\/p>\n

The intern team took up the challenge of inventorying the contents of the boxes with a ferocious enthusiasm and commitment. Although we didn\u2019t even get through \u00a0half the boxes that year, both they and I learned a lot about archives. I now have a better foundation for future work on both Arts Wire\u2019s files and all the other boxes still in storage. We also engaged in many conversations about the material. Among the things we discussed were: How does something like Arts Wire get started? What is an artist? What was life like in the early days of the internet? How has it changed our lives? What is archiving, what\u2019s permanent and what deteriorates? How are our times different from and the same as times 25 years ago, especially for the arts and artists? What is history, when does it start? \u201cThis<\/em> is history, and yet you\u2019re still alive!\u201d Indeed, for this archive project, most of the primary participants are still living and available to answer questions and tell stories that weren\u2019t captured in the files.<\/p>\n

The team came to believe that what they were learning is important beyond just the development of an inventory for archives that would go back into storage. As a result, they created ways to share what they\u2019ve learned:<\/p>\n