Greetings.
My name is Lillian Anderson and I am an Anthropology major here at Temple University with a focus on Linguistics. This is my first semester working in the Anthropology Lab and I am finding my passion.
I have always had a love for museums, as I have a deep appreciation for the world of art—both the creation and the interpretation. I transferred to Temple University the fall of 2018 and felt lost. One of the things I did to feel more at home was to reach out to find a community of like-minded students. I have found those people in the Anthropology Lab.
The first project I was assigned was to work on the Philadelphia Commercial Museum. A majority of these artifacts are from the 1893 Chicago World Fair. The task was daunting, I was worried that I would not be up for it because it was the first time I would be working with a catalogue and real artifacts. After countless German mirrors and little Russian and Chinese dolls, I felt comfortable.
I was up to the task.
Around three weeks after beginning to catalogue the Commercial Museum, fellow Practicum student Aaron Skarzenski, and graduate student Elysia Petras, began working on an exhibit with the artifacts I had grown close to. I jumped at the opportunity to help them with the endeavor.
Fast forward another three to four weeks and we are in our final stages of the exhibit. I have personally put a lot of my free time into researching how to make an exhibit look as professional and as reliable as possible. With the help of the resources made available by the lab, our exhibit is looking put together and professional.
My most recent project has been to increase the social media presence of the Museum. If people are unaware that we, as a campus, even have a museum, how are they supposed to visit us? The people who work here are so knowledgeable and willing to share their expertise on the exhibits; I am attempting to make us more inviting and accessible to non-anthropology majors.
I am looking forward to spending the rest of my Temple career assisting in as many ways as possible with the Anthropology Museum and Lab.