She's a Hip Lady

It has been a very interesting week at the WLA! I began working on the digital exhibit for Virginia Broderick and it is super interesting! There isn't much to say about it so far, however. I began by looking through the collections that are already online, and those are really cool! If you haven't looked through them yet, you really should. I especially loved looking through the old pictures from Mundelein College! It is really cool/weird seeing the different ways that the building has changed over the years. I had no idea that it used to have dorms, a pool, and a library there as well as classrooms. I always feel like it is way to small to hold all that, but apparently not. I love looking through all the different pictures, and seeing all the different students featured in them. It kind of strange knowing that they went to school in the same classrooms that I do, but years ago, and experiencing kind of the same thing by being college students, but during a totally different time with different concerns and trends. I have always loved looking at pictures and trying to understand the context that those people were living in. It was a very interesting and fulfilling assignment.

After looking through the pictures I began looking through the Virginia Broderick collection. I am not very far along in it, but she is a real hip lady. Her art is so flipping cool!! Nothing like what I was expecting. The one thing that struck me so far was how vibrant and colorful the artwork is. Most the religious work that I have seen has been done in more dull colors, so it was pretty solid to see work done in eye catching brights. The pictures of her and her husband in the collection are the most precious things ever too. They were such an adorable couple, and you can see how much they cared for each other through the pictures. I have only gone through 1 of the 41 boxes so far so I still have so much to see and explore, but it was a great start! I really enjoy getting to see all these different things and feel as though I have an understanding of her and her life before deciding what goes into the digital collections. My aspirations of getting to show her story are starting to come together and I really really enjoy this project so far. Once again, I came home thinking about how much I love this internship. Pretty solid.