Nostos Algos

By Sabrina Oliveros

For the past half year, I’ve been an intern at the Daniel E. Koshland San Francisco History Center (SFHC), which houses a formidable research and archival collection at the San Francisco Public Library. I’ve been assisting a small curatorial team in finding stories from the center’s collections to build an exhibit on the 1915 World’s Fair in San Francisco. It’s an internship that’s further shown me what curatorial work is and how it can be done—and, more importantly, through one particularly resonant story, why it must be done.

The reading room of the Daniel E. Koshland San Francisco History Center.

By virtue of the SFHC’s location alone, I see a setting where exhibitions can originate and thrive outside of museums. The SFHC is a hybrid of public library, archive, and gallery. With exhibit spaces open to the public at extended hours, free of charge, the SFHC’s…