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Sarah Spinner

Biography

Sarah Spinner credits many fine teachers in the Canadian City of Hamilton, Ontario - where she and her twin brother and three more siblings grew up - for stimulating her mind and creativity and encouraging her to pursue her goals.

"I remember my French teacher staying ever day after school with me to prepare me for a national French contest." She won the top prize in the region. During her high school years, Sarah involved herself in many student groups - Debate Team, History Club, and Students for Political Action, competed in and won many academic championships, and volunteered at the local library, nursing home, and primary school for disadvantaged children.

After delivering her class valedictory address about "reaching for the stars through hard work," Sarah says she "set off for Hopkins to pursue my own stars," where she has "explored my diverse interests.and studied under the close guidance and mentorship of a world-class faculty."

She also spent some time being a peer counselor at Hopkins. "I felt grateful to be able to use such a simple skill - that of listening - to help other students cope with the various stresses of college and personal life."

During her two internships at the Commission for Art Recovery in New York, Sarah researched claims for art looted during the Holocaust and also identified missing manuscripts looted during

the war. She has spent four summers working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. For the past two summers, she researched the collection histories of art objects in the Department of Medieval Art, with a focus on possible looted and/or restituted works of art.

Curator Barbara Boehm mentored Sarah in learning about "the art of advanced research" - and particularly about art restitution, a subject in which Sarah has developed a deep interest. She has a "firm commitment to make public.the important, unsung contributions of the American men and women" of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section of the American military government in Germany. She has completed a B.A./M.A. thesis on the subject, for which she conducted advanced researched in seven archives in Germany. She also interned last summer at the new Jewish Museum in Berlin, where she "built a research archive of worldwide German Judaica."

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