From Plant Press, Vol. 23, No. 1, January 2020.
Alice Tangerini hosted Jacquelyn McPeck, an intern acquired through the Smithsonian’s Office of Fellowships and Internships’ (OFI) partnership with Whitworth University, for the fall semester September 13 through December 13, 2019. Though McPeck’s major is Biology, she has an interest in Horticulture and two-dimensional art media. She came highly recommended.
McPeck expressed an interest and had knowledge of working in Adobe Photoshop and came at just the opportune time to work on a project for Harold Robinson involving Edith Scott, former Research Associate in the Botany Department.
McPeck’s first project was to scan and rework the photographs, diagrams, and maps for Scott’s dissertation on “The Protosalvinia from Kentucky,” a paper on Devonian fossils originally submitted to George Washington University in 1980. Scott’s major professor was Francis Huber, former Paleobiology Curator at the National Museum of Natural History. The dissertation had never been published online. McPeck scanned and enhanced the old faded photographs and redrew maps using online models and old photocopies of Scott’s maps. McPeck finished this project in record time, impressing even Robinson.
McPeck followed up the initial project and continued by scanning a series of old botanical drawings that were waiting to be inventoried. One of these included a 1922 oil painting of a Ferocactus (discovered in the herbarium) covered with dust spots and stains which required removal in the scan. She also rescanned all of the Funk Werneria drawings at a higher resolution for optimum publication, and meticulously rehoused the illustrations in archival folders.
McPeck was actively working on an illustration of a species of Perityle for Botany researcher, Isaac Marck, during her last week at the museum.
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