David Choberka is the Mellon Academic Coordinator at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Choberka first joined UMMA’s staff as a curatorial research assistant while pursing his PhD (2002) in Germanic Languages and Literatures. He later returned to the museum in 2011 for his current fulltime position in the educational division. As the lead academic coordinator, Choberka brings in thousands of students each month for a closer look at the museum’s vibrant collections. Although Choberka was trained in Western Intellectual History, he works with a wide range of courses from across LSA. The key to working in this interdisciplinary mode is getting students to forget what they know and first engage visually. Although he often has classes that return each semester, Choberka stresses that they’re rarely programmatic, because it’s a matter of translating the material anew.

For Choberka, translation—as adaptation, as intermediation—is part and parcel to his work at the museum. During the Translation Theme Semester (2012), he put together this Guide to Translation using UMMA’s collections.