Eileen Owens, Class of 2010

 

Eileen Owens, Gilman Winner

Eileen Owens (Class of 2010, Art History and English) was awarded the Gilman scholarship, which earned her $5000 dollars towards a study abroad program.  She will study at Temple Rome.

When I think about 'who-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up' and the people I've admired throughout my life, they've all been really well-traveled individuals, who can relate their own culture to other people's customs. I want to be able to have an inherent understanding of other people's ways of life, and really the only way to do that is to live in that country for a little bit. I look at growing up in Ireland as the beginning of that experience for me. Even now in Philadelphia, I use that different culture as a learning tool to be more aware of the similarities and differences people have all over the world.

I can't say I know what exactly I want to do when I graduate, but whatever it is, I hope to continue to travel. I'm becoming more and more interested in curatorial and museum studies, so I'm hoping that going to Rome will sort of give me an opportunity to find out more about those paths of study. I definitely want to work with art, preferably in a museum, because it will combine a lot of what I want to do: like, I'd love to be able to travel on behalf of a museum, collecting art for exhibitions or something similar.  

I took my first art history class in high school, and it was just a basic overview of western art. But of course, we spent a lot of time on Renaissance art, which began my excitement about traveling to see everything we were learning about. There's no place else you could go to see such a concentrated amount of prolific art.  

Honestly, for some reason, sitting in that class I never really thought I would get to see those things. In a way, they all seemed sort of far away. My parents don't travel that much or have a great interest in art, so I sort of automatically resigned myself to never getting to see inside all of these museums. The fact that I actually made this happen, and that I'm going to Rome for three and a half months is pretty ridiculously cool. 

I'm excited to travel Europe too, but it's important to me to stay in Rome for the majority of the trip and really get to know it. Art aside, there is so much of Rome to discover and appreciate. It'll be really awesome to finish class for the day and walk around an ancient city that's so far removed from anything in the U.S.

Check out Eileens Blog, which documents her travels in Rome.