One Student’s Summer at the Worcester Art Museum
When Abbie Hart ’25 received the Steinbrecher Fellowship and the Sara Bickman Music and Arts Summer Internship Award, she didn’t spend the summer observing. She spent it working — cataloging nearly 40 pieces of Islamic and Asian art, conducting provenance research on antiquities with uncertain origins, and investigating the Western influence on Japanese Shin-hanga printmaking for an upcoming exhibition.
The provenance work had particular weight. Hart reviewed 296 acquisition files to help compile a spreadsheet for the Association of Art Museum Directors database — a resource used by 35 U.S. museums to maintain ethical collecting standards. One discovery stood out: an oil jar with almost no existing scholarship, which Hart identified as likely Egyptian and of the Mamluk Sultanate through close analysis of its glaze and surface. “Part of my family is from Algeria,” she writes. “Making an impact on the display of North African art has greatly strengthened my sense of purpose in my work.”
