Humanities Interns Explore GSO Button by Button

Visit the museum’s Connection Point in summer 2025, and you’ll find something new: buttons!

GHM collections is home to hundreds of pinback buttons, badges, membership pins, and more dating from the late 1800s all the way to today. We’re a little closer to a better view of those buttons’ histories and representations thanks to the work of five UNC Greensboro undergraduates who were part of the inaugural cohort of the university’s Humanities at Work program.

Humanities at Work is supported by a $5 million grant to UNCG’s College of Arts & Sciences from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The multiyear effort aims to provide 650 paid internships over five years to students majoring in English; history; philosophy; ancient Mediterranean studies; international and global studies; languages, literatures, and cultures; religious studies; women’s, gender, and sexuality studies; and African American and African diaspora studies. The Greensboro History Museum was one of three sites for the pilot semester. The student interns worked 5 hours a week in addition to taking a collaborative and experiential class.

The five students learn about object handling, research, nomenclature, and exhibit development. After spending several weeks reviewing some of the buttons and providing additional research to update the museum catalog records, they began to work on a display of what they found interesting in the collection. The display, GSO Button by Button, showcases some of what they found. It also highlights communities and perspectives the students felt were underrepresented among the items they had inventoried. Visit it, and add your own button design, next time you’re at the museum.