Who does research at the Rosenbach? The answer turns out to be all kinds of people–literary scholars, cheese specialists, artists, historians, Rosenbach docents, and fashion designers. We’ll be celebrating the fascinating work that these folks have done in an upcoming exhibit Inquiring Minds, which opens November 23, but I thought I’d give a sneak peek at some of the projects that we’ll be profiling in the exhibition.
Linne Mooney is a professor at the Center of Medieval English Palaeography, University of York. Palaeography is the study of historic handwriting. Her research at the Rosenbach involved some detective work about the scribe of our manuscript copy of Gower’s Confessio Amantis, as part of a large research project on the ‘Identification of the Scribes of Manuscripts of Major Works of Middle English Literature.”
Cari Ann Brezina is a fashion design student at the Moore College of Art and Design and she used her research to create fashions inspired by Maurice Sendak–the design in the picture above was inspired by Ida’s yellow raincoat in the 1981 work Outside Over There.
Robert Hicks is the director of our institutional neighbors: the Mütter Museum and Historical Medical Library of the The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. He was interested in some of our narratives of discovery for his recently published book Voyage to Jamestown: Practical Navigation int he Age of Discovery. Yes, that is Dr. Hicks on the cover of the book and there are even more images of him inside, wearing period costume and demonstrating the use of historic navigational instruments.
You’ll have to come by Inquiring Minds when it opens to find out more about these projects and other great work involving our collection. Better yet, you too can join us as a researcher–no academic credentials required, just curiosity about the collections.