CART projects usually involve 10 weeks of in-person archival processing on a specific collection, then a subsequent collaborative curation of a physical exhibit based on that collection.
In 2020-2021, students completed projects that were able to be worked on remotely. These projects often included more creative and personal pursuits using collection materials, and fellows created digital exhibits presenting their work.
Read more below about current and past CART projects.
1 fellow
One fellow will process the photographs of Ingeborg Gerdes (1938-2020). Ingeborg was a photographer and educator born in Germany, who later moved to California where she taught photography at UC Santa Cruz from 1981 to 2006, as well as the San Francisco Art Institute, Stanford University, and Cabrillo College. Gerdes created photographs on her many travels, including across Mexico and several countries in Europe and Asia, and she developed a keen fascination for the American West in particular. She captured moments of everyday life from the Mission District of San Francisco to Berlin, Germany, and participated in photographic survey projects supported by the National Endowment for the Arts in Baja California and Eastern Washington.
The CART fellow will re-house, preserve, and describe 71 boxes of the photographs and papers of Ingeborg Gerdes, following the artist’s original organization of her own work. Photographic formats in the collection vary, and include exhibition prints, work prints, color and black & white negatives, slides, contact sheets, and some digital files. Papers in the collection include announcements and press about Gerdes's art shows, artist’s statements, correspondence, publications, teaching files and student work, information on galleries and exhibitions, other ephemera, and printing records showing her photographic processes.
After processing the materials in the Gerdes collection, the CART fellow will collaboratively curate an exhibit with the CART Archivist and the Outreach & Exhibits Librarian during Spring 2023.
Visit Ingeborg Gerdes's personal website for more information about her and examples of her artwork:
CART fellowships are open to all graduate students. For this project, students interested in fine art photography, photographic processes and technologies, art education, history of the American West in the 1970s onward, and 20th century material culture are particularly encouraged to apply.
4 fellows
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Four fellows will work with collections on the topics of agriculture, labor, and community in Santa Cruz County. The fellows will survey, arrange, organize, and describe the materials in the four collections, and will then collaboratively curate an exhibit in Spring 2023 with one another, the CART Archivist, and the Outreach & Exhibits Librarian.
2 fellows
Two CART fellows will process the papers of William Friedland (1923-2018), sociologist, labor activist, and founder of the Community Studies program at UC Santa Cruz.
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Friedland was an active labor organizer for the United Auto Workers and Congress of Industrial Organizations after working in automobile factories in Detroit. Returning to academia, he received degrees from Wayne State University and UC Berkeley, then taught at Cornell University where he established the Migrant Labor Project, which engaged undergraduate students with advanced field study practices. In 1969, Friedland joined the faculty at UC Santa Cruz and founded the Community Studies department. He also helped establish UCSC’s College Eight (now Rachel Carson College) as Social Sciences Dean.
Friedland’s papers include teaching files; research on migrant labor, agriculture of various crops, agribusiness, and sociology; manuscripts and publication drafts; field notes on migrant labor and farming; correspondence; labor and political songs; administrative files related to UCSC Community Studies; and field notes and interviews conducted by students regarding migrant farm labor. Also represented are materials connected to his work with UCSC’s Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS), now known as the Center for Agroecology.
The two fellows processing the Friedland papers will collaboratively curate an exhibition on agriculture, labor, and community studies in Santa Cruz County, along with the fellows processing the papers of Florence Wyckoff, William MacKenzie, and the California Farm Reporter records.
More information on William Friedland can be found in his oral history, Community Studies and Research for Change: An Oral History with William Friedland, available online via eScholarship.
1 fellow
The records of the California Farm Reporter includes 12 boxes of journal issues, memos, correspondence, agendas, meeting minutes, and memos of the California Farm Research and Legislative Committee from the 1940s to 1970s. Main players in the records include Grace McDonald, the executive secretary for the California Farm Research and Legislative Committee and editor and publisher of the California Farm Reporter, and Helen Hosmer, the director of the research committee for the California Farm Reporter.
The fellow processing the California Farm Reporter records will collaboratively curate an exhibition on agriculture, labor, and community studies in Santa Cruz County, along with the fellows processing the papers of Florence Wyckoff, William MacKenzie, and William Friedland.
1 fellow
One fellow will process the papers of Florence Wyckoff and of William MacKenzie, two local activists involved in the MAIA Foundation (Migration and Adaptation in the Americas), an organization formed in 1979 to support education, health, and housing initiatives benefiting the families of farmworkers in the Pajaro Valley area.
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Florence Wyckoff (1905-2000) was a social activist and advocate of migrant farmworkers and children. She was active throughout the 20th century pursuing grassroots, democratic, community-building efforts in the service of improving public health standards and providing health care, education, and housing for migrant families. Her advocacy efforts were integral in the passage of the California Migrant Health Act and Federal Migrant Health Act in 1962, which established family health clinics for the families who follow the crops along both the eastern and western migrant agricultural streams.
The fellow will organize and describe 15 boxes of Wyckoff's unprocessed papers to add to the existing collection guide for Florence Wyckoff papers. The papers include correspondence, research materials, government publications, and ephemera related to Florence Wyckoff's activism in the fields of health, housing, social work, cultural affairs, education, and the welfare of migrant farmworkers. Materials related to Wyckoff's involvement in organizations such as MAIA and The Environmental Community Housing Organization, Inc. (TECHO) in Watsonville are also included.
More information on Florence Wyckoff can be found in her oral history, Fifty Years of Grassroots Social Activism, available online via eScholarship.
William MacKenzie's papers contain clippings, research material, meeting minutes, correspondence and organizational documents related to the activities of the MAIA Foundation (Migration and Adaptation in the Americas), which he helped establish along with Hubert Wyckoff. MacKenzie worked closely with students in his community through MAIA to prepare them for college, and kept in touch with them throughout their education. He conducted outreach and kept in contact with professors, scholars, activists, and politicians on the cause of increasing educational opportunities for young families of migrant farmworkers, advocating for the initiatives of MAIA and keeping research files on related topics and organizations. This correspondence and research makes up a significant portion of his papers.
More information about the history of the MAIA Foundation can be found on their website: www.maia-foundation.org/history
The fellow processing the Wyckoff and MacKenzie papers will collaboratively curate an exhibition on agriculture, labor, and community studies in Santa Cruz County, along with the fellows processing the papers of William Friedland and the California Farm Reporter records.
CART fellowships are open to all graduate students. For these projects on the theme of agriculture, labor, and community, students interested in migrant labor, immigration policy in the mid-to-late 20th century, local history of Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties, UCSC history, political engagement and activism, agriculture, and community studies are particularly encouraged to apply.
The land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma.
The land acknowledgement used at UC Santa Cruz was developed in partnership with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band Chairman and the Amah Mutsun Relearning Program at the UCSC Arboretum.