by Constance Hyder
Margaret Grant Cherin is the Collections and Exhibitions Curator at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, an early college in Great Barrington, MA. After studying Art History at Smith College, Margaret continued her studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, earning a master’s degree in Medieval Art History. Starting her career in art museums, she worked in various capacities with the Norman Rockwell Museum, Clark Art Institute, Williams Museum of Art, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Venice Biennale, and Jacob’s Pillow, before she began at Simon’s Rock in the early 2000s as a part-time exhibitions curator in the Daniels Art Center. After a time, she was asked to oversee the school’s archive as well, and when she made full-time she divided her time between her responsibilities in the archive and in exhibitions. In 2010, wanting to improve upon her skills as an archivist and gain a deeper understanding, Margaret began working toward her MLIS at Simmons College, completing her degree two years later. In recent years, strong student interest led Margaret to shift her focus more to the archiving aspect of her job. This interest is strong enough, in fact, that a work study position was created in the archive, something Margaret expanded into a for-credit internship for the coming semester.
For Margaret, outreach and advocacy are the fun part of archival work. Sure, it can be difficult—most people do not have a concept of what archives are, much less what you can do with them. When Margaret brings students into the archive for the first time, their shock is palpable. Archives are associated with the grand scale of the National Archives—or a high-tech secret lair like something out of a Dan Brown book—but instead they get what is essentially a small room stuffed full of boxes. Still, this dissonance usually only serves to make the archives all the more remarkable. When Margaret explains what the boxes hold, all the different types of materials, their enduring value, and all their possible uses, students tend to, in her words, freak out. It gives them a different context, and students are often so thrown that she can see it in their face the moment they understand.
It’s this sort of understanding that Margaret sees as a key element of successful outreach and advocacy. What you want as an archivist is a reaction: a connection meaningful enough to provoke a response. She points to alumni events and reunions as examples of this, with one project in particular as particularly powerful. At a recent event, they showed a film one of her students had made out of archival materials. Using hundreds of pictures paired with audio from the long-term faculty and staff interviews in the Simon’s Rock Institutional Oral History Project, they created a Ken Burns-style documentary on the school’s history. This resonated so strongly with the audience that people were crying after the film ended—that is when Margaret knew it was a job well done.
In fact, it is projects like this—the ones coming out of the work study program—that Margaret shows the most enthusiasm for. The value she places in her student workers is clear, going beyond the assistance they give her as a Lone Arranger. When the position first opened, Margaret used to give them boring tasks like refiling; but because she wanted them to actually get something out of the experience, she began encouraging students to take on projects of their own instead. When they were able to channel their own personal interests into their work, it improved the final product and a forged deeper connection. The aforementioned oral history project is one instance of this. While it began as an aspect of the school’s 40th anniversary celebration, a student worker suggested reviving it to augment the photographic exhibition they planned for the upcoming 50th. Not only did the project find life in later outreach projects as well, but Margaret stresses that it is involvement like this that can change the way students think about their school, and give them a greater appreciation for it. The student, Molly McGowan, wrote an article on her experiences which can be found here.
In this way, the work study program seems to be Margaret’s most successful outreach project. The students’ point of view and insight is essential in strengthening Margaret’s own outreach work, and their growing enthusiasm turns them into advocates themselves. Students have carried their experiences into other parts of their academic life, improving the archive’s visibility and affecting the mentality of even the Provost himself. It is the interest of Simon’s Rock students, workers or no, that Margaret considers instrumental in getting the archives out of the basement.