Online/Virtual Event

Tuesday, May 9th 2023 from 4:00pm to 5:00pm

See a recording of this webinar here.

New York School of Interior Design’s (NYSID) Archivist/Librarian Julie Sandy talks about her year-long collaboration with professional curators, NYSID faculty, and design team Darling Green for the “Designing Duo: Sarah Tomerlin Lee and Tom Lee” exhibition in NYSID’s Gallery (on view Fall 2022). The vast majority of the exhibition content was drawn from in-house collections—the couple’s own archives and the NYSID Institutional Archives—which allowed for unlimited access and creative flexibility. 

Julie outlines her process in creating a parallel online exhibition using Omeka, including structuring the site, creation of digital surrogates and adding metadata. Drawing on her training as a set and prop designer, she also discusses general suggestions for curating and displaying archival content to tell a cohesive story, whether in a small library case or a larger setting.
 
Viewers will learn to:

• Effectively collaborate and communicate with curators, designers, faculty, and other stakeholders
• Craft storylines using curatorial selection of archival material
• Implement tips for creating eye-catching and cohesive visual displays

About our presenter:

Prior to becoming a librarian and archivist, Julie Sandy held a variety of jobs in the visual arts, including over a decade of designing, sourcing and constructing theater props/set dressing for Broadway and off-Broadway shows. She has served as image editor and collaborator on CEUs, design blogs, and touring lectures, and has worked as an artisan for automated Christmas window displays and trade show design/installation. 

After receiving her MSLIS from the Palmer School, Julie spent time as a project archivist for Roundabout Theatre Company and La Mama Experimental Theatre Company, where she used her firsthand behind-the-scenes knowledge to describe material and create finding aids for shows, solidifying her belief that it is as important to document the process of creation in design archives as it is to capture the final products. Previous curation projects include the Materials Pavilion for Interiors & Sources magazine at the NeoCon trade show (with Grace Jeffers), mini-exhibits in cases in the NYSID Library, and an MSLIS class project at the Grolier Club. 

Julie’s career interests include outreach and teaching using archival materials, discovering “realia” and leading others to appreciate the physicality of objects in the collections, and collecting and documenting all sorts of ephemera. In 2015, Julie was a guest lecturer for a studio art course at her alma mater, Williams College, speaking on the topic of “Ephemera as Art.” She also has long-standing personal collections of bookmarks, greeting cards, cookbooks and restaurant menus, among other items.