The following is written by Lead Public Services Librarian Lindsay Moen
The University of Iowa is home to the country’s oldest Museum Studies Program, with related courses dating as far back to the 1889–1890 academic year, according to early university course catalogs. This rich history of museum education continues today with Iowa’s Museum Studies Certificate Program that combines history, theory, and experiential learning to create a robust curriculum preparing students for work in a wide range of museums and cultural institutions.
Special Collections and Archives at the UI Libraries is a proud collaborator with the certificate program, regularly hosting student interns within the department in order to provide hands-on experiences with collection materials and digital collection maintenance. During the spring 2026 semester, Special Collections had the opportunity to take experiential learning to new heights by working with Anthony Carfello’s MUSM:3004 Exhibition Planning course, where the students curated a group exhibit—Unpacking Travel—for the Special Collections Reading Room.
“Much of our course has focused on exhibitions as a method of communication, and at the core of exhibition-making is the notion of saying something with things, be they artifacts, artworks, records, etc.,” shared Carfello. “Working with the library was a crucial part of the semester, where everyone was able to take on the challenge of asking, ‘What can I convey using these materials?’ And it was even better that the special collections are vast and students had to narrow it down greatly.”
The class visited Special Collections and Archives eight times throughout the semester and worked with Lead Public Services Librarian Lindsay Moen; Curator of Rare Books & Maps Laura Michelson; Olson Graduate Research Assistant Calvin Covington; and Special Collections Graduate Student Lead Hailee McCormick, who helped guide the students in tandem with Carfello. The students learned more about exhibit curation within a special collections and archival setting, the way to search for resources within library-specific databases, what the roles of conservation and exhibit coordination staff are, all while thinking of how to present these physical materials to an audience. For each student, it was their first time curating an exhibit of any kind.
To better prepare the class for a fast-tracked exhibition experience, the theme of travel was selected. As Carfello noted, “because students come to the Museum Studies program from different interests—art, biology, classics, history, paleontology, and more—we arrived at geography as a common ground and sought out the collections focused on maps and travel books. The resulting exhibition presents these dozen students’ widely varied perspectives.”
As stated in the class’s curatorial statement, “the students of MUSM:3004 Exhibition Planning began with the general subject of travel, each charting their own path through the books, records, and maps of the Special Collections over the course of several weeks. Some approached travel as a pursuit; others saw it as means to an end. The resulting exhibition, Unpacking Travel, collects their perspectives, with particular emphasis on journeys of the past and the ways navigation determines understanding.”
As luck would have it, there were 12 students and 12 front case sections, so each student was assigned a section. After the four-week residence, the students came together with Carfello to create Unpacking Travel. Conservator Technician from the Libraries’ Conservation Lab Bill Voss prepared the selected materials for safe display, and the students were able to work with Voss to see how materials are prepared for library exhibitions.
Student Lauren Abbott described the experience as “an incredibly valuable experience in exploring and rehearsing the exhibition design process from start to finish. I gained a great understanding of the planning and creation of exhibits that I can carry into a career in museums or teaching centered on experiential learning.”
Grant Wiebke, another Museum Studies student in the class, added, “I’ve always enjoyed any chance I’ve had to work with collections, and getting to design and put together every part of an exhibition of my own for this class has been a great experience, and a lot of fun.”
Unpacking Travel is on display in the Special Collections Reading Room on the third floor of the Main Library and will be on display until May 7.
