Woody interns expand museum studies partnerships

William Armacost ’26, an art history and environmental science double major, is helping to establish the new partnership with the Charleston Museum while expanding his skills through intensive archival research.

Armacost is taking on a special project, researching a 19th-century fire pump cart made by enslaved craftspeople.

By delving into the museum’s archives, he hopes to contextualize the object and help curate an exhibit that will tell its story, as well as those of the individuals who created, employed, and benefited from it.

Armacost knows firsthand how museum exhibits can be used as powerful tools of artistic and historical expression.  Last year he took “The Curatorial Project,” an art history practicum taught by Associate Professor of Art History Sibel Zandi-Sayek, in which students research an artist, curate their own exhibit, and then stage it in Andrews Hall for students, staff, and the general public.

Curating exhibits, Armacost said, creates fascinating opportunities to connect with museumgoers deeply and powerfully about a specific moment in history.

“I think there's just something really interesting about how museums present information to the public,” he said. “There's limited space, so you have to make sure that you're highlighting certain things and expressing them in a way that’s democratic and equitable to all people.”