Sterling Library exhibition celebrates 10 years of student curators’ achievements

The anniversary exhibition “Developing a Curatorial Eye”—on view in Sterling Memorial Library through April 19—opened with a lively panel discussion among four alumni who shared their experiences as undergraduates in the Yale Library Student Exhibition Program.

Former student curator Courtney Sato ’19 Ph.D. led the conversation with Sarah Holder ’17, Chucho Martinez Padres ’23, and Eve Sneider ’19. Each spoke about what they discovered about their topics and themselves as they learned to translate their research into museum-quality exhibitions.

Each also shared the ways in which their new skills and experiences benefited them personally and professionally. All expressed gratitude to the many library staff members who provided them with inspiration and guidance along the way.

Closing the event, Sato asked the panel members what advice they had for current Yale College students. Their two strongest recommendations were that students spend time in the archives—on their own or through a class—and that they talk to librarians. “They know so much,” Sneider said. “This program really taught me to reach out to people who so obviously know so much more about these collections than you do when you are a researcher, Googling finding aids online.

“Yale has so many amazing materials that are just waiting for someone to do something interesting with them.”

The alumni curators

Sneider, an English major, researched the Janet Malcolm Papers for her exhibition. Although notoriously private and reluctant to be interviewed, Malcolm eventually visited “The Courtroom, The Couch, and the Archive: Janet Malcolm’s Journalism.” The topic later became the subject of Sneider’s Ph.D. dissertation. In July, the publisher W. W. Norton will publish Sneider’s book about Malcolm, which grew out of the work that began during her time as a student curator.

Holder’s exhibition, “Housing/Houses/Home: A Visual History of Physical Space + Lived Experience in New Haven’s Oldest Public Housing,” intensified her interest in housing and public housing. Today, as a journalist for “Bloomberg News,” Holder covers these same topics for Bloomberg City Lab and as cohost of “The Big Take” podcast, Bloomberg’s daily show on business, politics, and economics.

Architecture student Chucho Martinez Padres dove into the archives of Yale art historian George Kubler for his exhibition, “The Study of Things: George Kubler in Latin America.” After graduation, Padres joined Steven Harris Architects, where he works as a designer on residential projects across New York City, including historic house restorations. Armed with the skills he learned as a student curator, he eagerly accepts all the firm’s assignments to dig into the city’s archives.

Sato, who earned a Ph.D. in American Studies at Yale, is the Mellon Assistant Professor in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University. During her research for “Out of the Desert: Resilience and Memory in Japanese American Internment,” she discovered a diary by Yonekazu Satoda, a Japanese American incarcerated during World War II. She reunited Satoda with the diary he had long forgotten, which inspired him to establish the Satoda Scholars Program. The grant program, hosted by Yale’s Asian American Cultural Center, supports students’ research into the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans in the early to mid-1940s.

The anniversary exhibition

Since 2015, the Student Exhibition Program at Yale Library has presented the original research of almost 50 Yale College students in the Exhibition Corridor. Through photographs and texts, this 10th-anniversary exhibition celebrates the accomplishments of these student curators.

The photographs trace the many steps in the behind-the-scenes processes: researching in the archives, designing case layouts, installing the objects, and presenting curators’ talks to invited guests. They also reveal the wide range of the students’ topics—from whaling logbooks, studies of color, New Haven history, and comic books to Edith Wharton and Anne Boleyn. Library staff, faculty, and Yale community members who mentored these student curators throughout the process are also represented.

Alongside the photos are quotes from several student curators, reflecting, in their own words, on the impact the program continues to have on them, years after graduation.

“The opportunity was phenomenal for my career trajectory. It was one of the strongest lines on my CV for Ph.D. applications. I used the exhibit as a way to make connections with new mentors, and the curation experience allowed me to continue curating small exhibits at University of Texas—Austin.” —Emma Marie Duke ’21

“The student exhibition program was my first opportunity to curate an exhibition based on my research. This has since become central to my practice as an academic and curator in the area of classical art and archaeology.” —Daphne Martin ’19

“I really valued the training provided in how to engage audiences from a variety of backgrounds. I learned how to condense information into a short format—a label is very different from an academic essay! All these skills were essential to my later curatorial and academic work.” —Eve Houghton ’17, Ph.D. ’24

“The student exhibition program shaped my senior thesis and my excitement for using archives and multimedia in my research… . The experience was a highlight of my time at Yale, and I am very grateful for it.” —Hannah Oblak ’24

Students in the class of 2027 who are interested in submitting a proposal to become a student curator in the Yale Library Student Exhibition Program should submit their proposals by March 6. The application process will open in February. Online info sessions will be offered in January. Learn more about the Senior Exhibit Program at Yale Library.

Read more about the 10th anniversary exhibition “Developing a Curatorial Eye.”

View the online exhibition “Out of the Desert” and read more in Yale News. View Yonekazu Satoda’s diary in Digital Collections (available with a NetID login to the Yale network).

Learn more about Eve Sneider’s forthcoming book, “The Absent Woman: The Genius of Janet Malcolm.”

—Deborah Cannarella

Photos: (left to right) Eve Sneider, Courtney Sato, Exhibits Production Program Manager Kerri Sancomb, University Librarian Barbara Rockenbach, Chucho Martinez Padres, Sarah Holder; the alumni student curators in conversation. Photos by Harold Shapiro