The Kelsey Museum is pleased to welcome three new individuals to the team starting in January. Todd Berenz will serve as our exhibitions coordinator, while graduate students Laurel Fricker and Abigail Staub will be Rackham fellows in the Conservation and Education Departments, respectively.
Todd Berenz will begin work at the Kelsey on January 12, bringing with him many years of experience in mountmaking, exhibition design, and installation. This new position marks a career milestone, as he will now have served across all three major University of Michigan museums. Todd is eager to continue to learn and adapt toward a complementary design practice for the museum. Grounded in a studio art degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, his professional work spans exhibiting library special collections, contemporary and modern art, natural history, and ancient art and artifacts. Todd particularly enjoys the process of creative problem-solving and puzzling out design solutions. He looks forward to collaborating with the entire Kelsey staff and engaging with the collections—and for nostalgic memories of his study in Italy to resurface!
Laurel Fricker is a PhD Candidate in IPAMAA, where she is writing her dissertation on children and childhood in ancient Greek houses. She earned her BA in classical civilizations, classical archaeology, and German with high honors from the University of Michigan and her MA in classics (classical archaeology emphasis) from the University of Arizona. Since 2021, Laurel has worked as a research assistant with the Kelsey Conservation Lab, helping research color on objects within the collections—and she is excited to expand upon her skills as a Rackham doctoral intern there during the winter 2026 term. In the internship, she will learn more about conservation treatments, help prepare objects for display in the upcoming Crossroads of Culture gallery, and suggest new objects that can enter the rotation for object handling by university classes.
Abigail Staub, a doctoral candidate in IPAMAA, specializes in Roman amulets, apotropaia, and personal ritual—with a particular interest in their cognitive and psychological role in mitigating perceived risk. Her dissertation investigates remnants of ritual around the mouth of the bread oven in Roman Imperial bakeries, considering the vernacular, creative interventions visible in object assemblages and architectural remains. She contextualizes remains in the multisensorial context of the bakery, taking into consideration occupational realities. More broadly, she has a passion for social history, materiality studies, public pedagogy, and sustainable “museum archaeology.” As the Education Department’s fellow in object-based learning, Abigail is particularly excited to help the public connect with the museum’s collection materially, challenging them to think dynamically about how each object might have been used and experienced in different contexts.
