Emory University Student Programs
Admission to the Carlos Museum is free to Emory faculty, staff, and students. The Museum offers a variety of programs of interest to the Emory community.
Thanks to the generosity of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Carlos Museum offers two paid summer internships for Emory University students. Graduate and undergraduate students with strong interest in and aptitude for museum work may gain experience during the summer term to augment their academic program. This summer, two interns will be selected by a committee of Museum staff and faculty advisors. The internships are ten weeks in length, forty hours per week, and students are paid $5,000.
One Andrew W. Mellon Internship is available during the academic year, with students working approximately 10 hours per week and also receiving a $5,000 stipend. This summer's internships will begin Monday, May 20 and conclude on August 2, 2012, though some flexibility in scheduling is possible.
2012-13 projects include:
Working with Curator of Works on Paper, Margaret Shufeldt, on the organization of a large temporary exhibition, Antichità, Teatro, Magnificenza: Renaissance and Baroque Images of Rome, which is opening at the Museum at the end of August. Duties will be many and various: research for labels, assisting with the publication of a small catalogue, helping to install the works in the show, etc. This is an opportunity to learn all the aspects of working in a museum. Knowledge of Italian is very desirable.
Working with Professor of Art History Sarah McPhee on a three-dimensional digital reconstruction of Rome in the final quarter of the seventeenth century. The project is grounded in the celebrated bird’s-eye view map of Giovanni Battista Falda, published in 1676, which subsumes the fine detail of over 300 etched views of the city made by the young artist. The composite image shows the urban fabric in exquisite visual detail, allowing the patient viewer to stroll the streets, count the windows in facades, and distinguish deciduous trees from evergreens. The project envisioned here is to transform Falda’s two-dimensional map into a virtual, walkable Rome using the gaming platform known as NVis360. The intern will work closely with Professor McPhee to prepare the data set to be used in the virtual reconstruction. We will document Falda’s Rome in map and views, checking Falda’s data against Rome today (Google Earth), against the surveyed map of 1748 by Giambattista Nolli, and against seventeenth-century ichnographic and surveyed maps that survive in the Roman archives. We will do spot research to check the heights of facades, the material of street surfaces, the width of piazzas. We will proceed block by block, façade by façade, to create an immersive, walkable, correctly scaled and detailed version of the Rome Falda’s etchings preserves for us ca. 1676. The virtual reconstruction will be featured in the exhibition Antichità, Teatro, Magnificenza: Renaissance and Baroque Images of Rome in the fall of 2013.
Academic Year 2013-14 project:
Working with Dr. Jasper Gaunt, Curator of Greek and Roman Art, on the organization of the recently acquired photographic archive of Conrad Stibbe. This comprises approximately 10,000 images of black-figure and black glaze pottery, terracottas, sculpture, bronze statuettes and vessels made in Sparta from around 700 to 400 BC, as well a large collection of offprints, and slides of Sparta and Laconia in general. In addition to physically organizing the material, the intern will work with Dr. Gaunt and others to explore ways that the might be accessed digitally.
Download the Mellon Internship Application here.
The Carlos Museum also offers unpaid internships, often for credit, and other opportunities for working and learning in a museum environment for Emory students. For more information about internships, contact Elizabeth Hornor by phone at 404-727-6118, or by email at ehornor@emory.edu.
Spring Semester 2013
CL329: Pyrotechnology in in the Ancient World
The experience of casting bronze and shaping glass has changed little since the 7th century BC: the artists who created the vessels, statues, and jewelry we find in Mediterranean archaeological sites would feel very comfortable in the foundries and studios of Atlanta. In this one-credit hour course, students will work with artists from Atlanta’s Inferno Foundry and Janke Studios of Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward to close the gap between themselves and the craftsmen who lived on Hephaistos street in ancient Athens. We will start with examination of the bronze works in the Carlos galleries, looking closely for signs of technique, special skill, and the possibilities of the medium. Artists from the Inferno will then guide students through the lost-wax process, making a wax sculpture, forming a mold, pouring the molten metal, and finishing the final product at the Inferno Foundry in Union City, GA. We will then take up glass making of the kind practiced in antiquity – core-forming, slumping, sand casting and blowing. Transportation to Inferno Foundry and Janke Glass will be provided.
ArtHist 319: Kingship in Ancient Egypt
Have you ever wondered why the ruler of ancient Egypt is often referred to as a god-king? Does it seem absurd to you that a human being could be regarded as a god? In this class we will explore ancient Egyptian ideas about the king and the office of kingship in order to understand how a mortal king could also be in some sense divine. The ideology of kingship and the duties it imposed upon the king are reflected in much of the representational material surviving from ancient Egypt. We will examine how the Egyptians expressed their ideas about kingship visually, where these images were displayed, what their function was, who the intended audiences might have been, and what this tells us about the divine status of the king. The course will include visits to the Carlos Museum.
ArtHist 729: The Acropolis Museum
The nineteenth century project to lay bare the Periklean buildings on the Athenian Acropolis also brought to light thousands upon thousands of dedications. Some were locally made, but many were imports. This course addresses these votive gifts, offered by men and women, humble and elite alike: in particular the dedications that have survived physically in bronze, marble and pottery, as well as the contents of the temple treasuries, largely gold and silver plate long since melted down, but attested from inscriptions. While the focus will be on the archaic and classical periods, where the evidence is richest, the course will also examine the bronze age and geometric finds.
Objects from the Carlos Museum’s collections that are similar will be used in every class.
ArtHist 190: Aztec and Inca Art
The great empires of the Aztecs in what became Mexico and the Inka in what is now Peru were impressive in their art, architecture, statecraft, agriculture, and many other endeavors. This seminar will introduce these peoples from a cultural and an art historical point of view. Original works of art in the Carlos Museum will be part of class discussions.
ArtHist 735: Textiles of the Americas
This seminar concerns the technique, design, and iconography of fiber arts in the Americas, with special emphasis on the ancient Andean textile traditions, and those of the modern Maya of Guatemala and Kuna of Panamá. Works of art from the Carlos Museum will be featured, especially new acquisitions, and students will write museum labels for textile displays for 2014-2016.
ArtHist 387/ 592: Issues in the Conservation of Art and Cultural Property
This course will provide an introduction to the field of Art Conservation as well as an overview of the principle issues surrounding the care and preservation of cultural properties. Lecture and discussion will address historic materials and technologies, as well as aging properties, deterioration, and conservation treatment. Examples will be drawn from a wide variety of cultures and will represent diverse media, including paper, paintings, stone, metals, ceramics, archaeological remains, and historic monuments. We will examine the use of science to recognize fakes or forgeries, document artists' working methods, and identify historic materials. Discussions will consider issues of aesthetics, artist’s intent, change over time, and compensation for loss or damage.
ArtHist 393/ Phys 380: Special Topic – Investigating Art with Physics
This course will introduce students to a selection of art materials and to the physical techniques used to analyze them. Questions of material choice, working method, authenticity, provenance, and restoration are each addressed through the scientific investigation of art. Lecture and discussion will consider historical uses of materials in the production of art, as well as the circumstances motivating the scientific investigation of specific objects. Case studies from the Carlos Museum collection will provide context for these discussions. In hands-on workshops students will produce paper, drawings, and paintings on which they will conduct practical lab experiments using beta radiography, infrared reflectography, neutron activation analysis, and ultraviolet fluorescence. Prior coursework in physics, visual arts, or art history is not required.
Undergraduate and graduate students are invited to join the Museum's Docent Guild to give tours to K-12 groups, students, and the general public. Each fall new student docents are recruited and receive training on the collections. They begin touring in the spring. This provides students an excellent opportunity to develop research and presenation skills. For information, please contact Julie Green at jgree09@emory.edu.
The Carlos Museum offers a wide variety of public programs of interest to Emory students. For a complete listing of these programs, please see the Calendar.