Staff & Volunteers — Henry Sheldon Museum

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Staff

Eva Garcelon- Hart has overseen the Sheldon Museum Stewart-Swift Research Center archival collections since 2011. She earned her Master’s Degree in History of Art and MLIS from the University of California at Berkeley. Since the mid-1980s, she has worked for institutional and private archives, including that of Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz and The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. In 1999 she moved to Vermont in 1999, where she worked as a consultant for the Vermont State Archives, Vermont Folklife Center, and artists’ estates. In her work at the Research Center, she is particularly interested in bringing to public attention its overlooked stories and collections through exhibits and public programing. While at the Sheldon she has curated several exhibits including: “Charity & Sylvia: A Weybridge Couple,” “Conjuring the Dead: Spirit Art in the Age of Radical Reform,” and “Elephant in the Archives: Silences, Erasure & Relevance.” During 2021/22 she and her colleagues invited national scholars, curators and artists to participate in a popular virtual talk series, the “Elephant in the Room: Exploring the Future of Museums.”

Volunteers

Nancy Rucker holds a Master’s Degree in musicology. She began her association with the Sheldon Museum in 1977 and has continued volunteering and working in various roles in both the Museum and Research Center. She served as Librarian at the Sheldon from 1995 to 2001 and has continued to volunteer in the Research Center since her retirement. She also processes and catalogs manuscripts, processes collections, organizes letter collections and is a vital support to the Center’s staff. Nancy is married to Ron Rucker, former Librarian of Middlebury College, who now joins her volunteering at the Research Center.

Charlotte Barrett works as a Field Service Representative for the Preservation Trust of Vermont. From 2016 to 2022, she was the Community Preservation Manager for Historic New England in Vermont. During her first year with Historic New England, her office was located at the Sheldon Museum, where she was introduced to the Stewart-Swift Research Center archives. Returning as a volunteer in the Research Center feels like coming home. Charlotte has an M.S. in Historic Preservation from the University of Vermont and a Certificate in Museum Studies from Tufts University. At the Center she is working on developing a guide to “Researching Your Old House” and assists with inquiries and a variety of archival collections projects.

Margaret Clerkin grew up in upstate New York and earned her BA from Syracuse University in English Literature. She has lived in Vermont since 1981 where she worked for Middlebury College Starr Library and for the Elderly Services. While at the library, she attended workshops in repairing and preserving books and conservation. She has also audited the Middlebury College German Summer Language School and enjoys reading in German and English. At the Research Center, she is working on a project reviewing, cataloging, and creating photo documentation of its historic and family Bibles, 1497-1900s. "It's exciting to be handling objects that clearly meant so much to some of their owner's, and it's interesting to read what was written in and about each Bible. It's given me a clearer picture of who was living in Addison County a hundred years ago, and even how they were perceived by the community.”

Lucinda Cockrell began volunteering in the Sheldon’s Research Center in 2015, soon after she retired from a 30 –year career in museums and archives and moved to Vermont. She joined the Sheldon’s Board of Trustees in 2017. Lucinda is originally from Tennessee and has a Master’s Degree in museum studies from the College of William & Mary in Virginia. She recently co-authored with E.H. Dow the book How to Weed Your Attic: Getting Rid of Junk Without Destroying History (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). She enjoys working in the Center on various projects, especially the ephemera collection and digitization.

Silvia Gonzalez grew up in Cordoba, Argentina, and moved to Middlebury with her husband and young boys 20 years ago. She received a Master’s Degree in liberal studies from Duke University. Silvia has been helping with special projects at the Research Center since 2012. Most recently she assisted with the installation of “Conjuring the Dead: Spirit Art in the Age of Radical Reform.” Silvia joined the Board of Trustees of the Henry Sheldon Museum in 2018.

Ron Rucker holds Master’s Degrees in musicology and librarianship. He served as College Librarian at Middlebury College from 1976 to 2001. Since 2017, he has volunteered at the Research Center, assisting in processing and organizing collections. He also serves on the Building Committee of the Museum.

Research Center Advisory Committee

Lucinda Cockrell (chair)

Eva Garcelon-Hart (staff)

Glenn Andres

Polly Darnell

Travis Jacobs

Ellery Foutch

Ethan Mitchell