Trombly\u2019s voice brightens and lifts as she ends her monologue, explaining why she is so passionate about the painting.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of all, I love this piece because of its unapologetic femininity \u2013 the colors, the stylistic freedom and the softness, all bring me a joy I can only express by saying, \u2018It\u2019s pink!\u2019,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Trombly\u2019s recorded soliloquy is a part of the Mills College Art Museum\u2019s new free digital guide on the Bloomberg Connects app, which features guides to hundreds of museums, galleries, sculpture parks, gardens, and cultural spaces. It is now accessible by anyone in the Northeastern global community and beyond, from anywhere in the world. <\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/neu_bz61hv65m.jpg\")
12\/02\/21 \u2013 OAKLAND, CA: Stephanie Hanor, Director of the Mills College Art Museum, poses for a portrait on December 2, 2021. Photo by Ruby Wallau for Northeastern University<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/010825_RW_NUOakland_024.jpg\")
01\/08\/25 \u2013 OAKLAND, CA: Yulia Pinkusevich, associate professor in the College of Arts, Media and Design, poses for a portrait in her studio on Jan. 08, 2025 in Oakland, California. Photo by Ruby Wallau for Northeastern University
\nStephanie Hanor, director of the Mills College Art Museum, left, and Yulia Pinkusevich, associate professor of art and design at Northeastern Oakland. Photos by Ruby Wallau for Northeastern University<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I love about the app is you don\u2019t have to be at the museum in order to get all of that content,\u201d said Stephanie Hanor, director of the museum. \u201cIt\u2019s a way for us to be able to bring in curatorial voices, artists and students talking about work.\u201d<\/p>\n
With more than 12,000 works of art from a diverse range of cultures and time periods, the Mills College Art Museum has one of the largest permanent collections of any liberal arts college on the West Coast, including prints and drawings, photography, ceramics, textiles, Native American items and early 20th-century California paintings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bloomberg Connects was interested in adding the Mills College Art Museum to their platform because academic museums can produce a certain type of content that other types of museums can\u2019t, Hanor said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMainly that\u2019s really putting forth and centering student voices within the guide itself,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The guide launched mid-January as the museum continues to celebrate its 100th anniversary with the \u201c100 Years of Creative Visions\u201d exhibition. Several student gallery assistants recorded audio responses about their favorite pieces currently on display.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a great time researching each of the artworks before writing about them,\u201d Trombly, who studies biochemistry and astrophysics at Northeastern, said in an interview with Northeastern Global News. \u201cLearning about the artist and the history of the artwork before making a script about it gave it a lot more context.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/neu_4f18f319t.jpg\")
11\/17\/22 \u2013 OAKLAND, CA: Director Stephanie Hanor views a Native American basket in the holding rooms at The Mills College Art Museum on Nov. 17, 2022 in Oakland, California. Photo by Ruby Wallau for Northeastern University<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/neu_4f18f3509.jpg\")
11\/17\/22 \u2013 OAKLAND, CA: Psychology student Doings Landaverry looks at work in the Mills College Art Museum on Nov. 17, 2022 in Oakland, California. Photo by Ruby Wallau for Northeastern University
\nThe Mills College Art Museum collection includes prints and drawings, photography, ceramics, textiles, Native American items and early 20th-century California paintings.\u00a0Photos by Matthew Modoono\/Northeastern University<\/p>\n
The guide also includes the museum\u2019s history, current and past exhibitions and collection highlights.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an educator, as an artist, I think it\u2019s wonderful to have access to that history, to be able to see the images, to have sometimes curatorial or other texts that accompany the works and place them into historical context,\u201d said Yulia Pinkusevich, Northeastern\u2019s associate professor of art and design in Oakland. \u201cThat all really enriches the viewing experience and gives everyone a much deeper understanding of each artwork.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pinkusevich said she often uses the platform for research to view exhibitions from museums across the world or those that happened years ago.<\/p>\n
Other digital access tools successfully introduced by the museum include a digital collection library<\/a>; 3D tours<\/a>, that are interactive digital replicas of physical spaces created with specialized cameras; and virtual reality tours, which require the use of a headset to become immersed in a 360-degree environment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were serving one campus, and now we\u2019re part of a global network of campuses, wanting to make sure that the digital assets that we have and that we\u2019re producing are more accessible across Northeastern,\u201d Hanor said. \u201cThey can be used by researchers, by faculty for classes and developing curriculum and by students \u2026 who might want to see an exhibition or work with our collection in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n The museum\u2019s collection has been used by a wide range of faculty, she said, including professors of ethics, philosophy, international business and computer science.\u00a0<\/p>\n For example, students in an international business class have been looking at the museum this semester through the digital business initiatives lens, testing out and giving recommendations on the use of its digital assets.<\/p>\n \u201cThey get to think of us as a business entity in a way, understand what a non-profit museum does, what our goals are and how we might be able to reach visitors more using technology,\u201d Hanor said.<\/p>\n Students in a computer science practicum have partnered with the museum to analyze and catalog its digitized artworks using AI. They are developing tools that can identify visual content in the images and map those elements to the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus, a standard for cataloguing art, architecture and material culture. The resulting keywords will enhance the museum\u2019s database, significantly improving online search and research capabilities for an institution that lacks in-house technical staff, Hanor said.<\/p>\n Pinkusevich also uses both the digital and physical collection of the museum to teach and inspire students.\u00a0<\/p>\n This semester, she asked students to browse the museum\u2019s digital collection and select two to four works that are not currently on view but that they would like to see in person.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kaiya Alger, a Northeastern business administration and design student, said she explored the digital collection extensively for this assignment and had fun applying different filters and looking at various pieces.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI found it fairly easy to sort through, and there\u2019s a lot of different options for filters,\u201d she said. \u201cI personally really enjoy sorting based on where the art pieces were created and seeing how the different mediums and styles differ between the countries in Europe versus the Americas or Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n After spring break, the students will go to see their selections in person and work on a range of projects, including analyzing artists\u2019 visual language, methodologies and specific choices, as well as creating original artwork inspired by the pieces.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are freshmen students. They\u2019re just trying to figure out who they are, what they want to talk about,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is a nice way to look at people who\u2019ve been doing this their entire life and engage deeply in art scholarship.\u201d<\/p>\n Alger chose two pieces titled \u201cEarth birth<\/a>\u201d by Judy Chicago, a screen print of a female figure on black paper exuding blue, yellow, orange and green waves, and \u201cA poet\u2019s cloud<\/a>\u201d by Katherine Porter, an abstract etching of concentric circles and lines.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you have the opportunity to look at it in person or in the digital collection, you can see all the details, all the brushstrokes and everything that goes into this art piece that makes it look the way it is,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the audio begins to play, Josselyn Trombly\u2019s soft yet animated voice starts floating through what seems like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[2820,91910,33340,143,145,144,91911,26136],"class_list":["post-197494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-app","tag-digital-library","tag-mills-college-art-museum","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-student-voice","tag-virtual-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}