[IN PROGRESS] In-Person Course | The Curator’s Toolkit: Up Close and Personal with The Rosenbach’s Collections

Sponsored by Gage Johnston and Jack I. Jallo and Danthu Phan and Will Luttrell

Registration

• Tuition for this course is $350.
  • 10% off for Rosenbach members and the Delancey Society. Not a member? Learn more.
  • Thanks to our generous sponsors, scholarships are available for this course to cover tuition. Learn more and apply here.
• This course is limited to participants who are 17 years of age or older.
• This is an in-person program at The Rosenbach that requires proof of vaccination. 
• Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email [email protected].
• Registration opens for Delancey Society members on July 6, for members on July 13, and for the general public on July 20.

Register

Course Description

Do you love discovering fascinating stories from history? Have you ever wanted to get up close and personal with museum and library collection objects, including rare books, manuscripts, paintings, furniture, precious metals, and ceramics? If so, then this course is for you. 

The Curator’s Toolkit will equip you with knowledge and skills for handling, studying, preserving, and learning from fine art, antiques, rare books, and manuscripts at The Rosenbach and beyond, and give you hands-on, behind-the-scenes access to a world-renowned museum and library collection. You will even have the opportunity to study the museum exhibition design process and research objects in the collection. In this course, the historic Rosenbach house becomes your laboratory for the study and enjoyment of art, artifacts, and historic texts. 

Each Curator’s Toolkit course session will combine lectures and discussions with hands-on Artifact Labs that put real Rosenbach collection objects in students’ hands, in order to apply lessons from the course readings and learn directly from original materials. By the end of the course, students will have viewed and handled more than 100 Rosenbach collection objects, including many pieces that are infrequently seen by the public. The course will also include a behind-the-scenes tour of The Rosenbach, and a panel discussion featuring a book and manuscript conservator, focused on work recently completed on a rare Rosenbach medieval manuscript. Special attention will be paid to helping students navigate the rich collections of The Rosenbach and explore their own personal areas of interest within our holdings—both during and after the course. 

The course is intended as a foundational introduction to museums, libraries, and the study of historic artifacts, and no background knowledge is assumed. All members of the general public are welcome to enroll!

Syllabus for The Curator’s Toolkit

Course Scholarship

The Rosenbach is committed to diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI), and is pleased to offer a full scholarship for tuition and course materials for one BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, or low-income student for The Curator’s Toolkit course. To be considered for a scholarship, please write a letter of 1 – 2 pages in length addressed to Emilie Parker, in which you describe your interest in the course content, what you hope to gain from taking the course, your financial need, and your interest in DEAI in libraries and museums.  Please submit a PDF version of your letter to [email protected].

Read more about our ongoing Commitment to Equity here.

About Rosenbach Courses

Revisit beloved classics or experience new ones with Rosenbach courses. Book lovers delve into fiction, history, and poetry with the guidance of a literary expert and the company of other readers. See all upcoming courses.

By registering for this program, you will be added to The Rosenbach’s email database to receive future communication about programs and events. If you’d prefer not to receive these messages please email [email protected]g with ‘unsubscribe’ in the subject line.