Consulting Services

Interdisciplinary scholar and tattoo historian Anna Felicity Friedman can fulfill your tattoo-history (and general tattoo) consulting needs! Her background in research, project management, writing, and publication make her the ideal all-purpose consultant. Contact her at tattoohistorian@gmail.com or by phone at 1 773 307-2753 if you are interested in engaging her for any of the following services. Her consulting rates vary depending on the scope of the particular project, but start at $50 an hour for simple text review or basic research:

Text review:
Would you like editorial feedback on something you wrote prior to publication? Dr. Friedman can help flag any areas that scholars would find potentially problematic. Are you a student working on a dissertation or master’s thesis but find that none of the professors at your school know anything about tattooing? Dr. Friedman can act as an external advisor (note: often universities have funds available to students to hire external advisors, check with your department admins).

Image consulting:
Need a historical tattoo image for a product, ad, book, etc. or even as inspiration for a contemporary tattoo? Wondering if there might be cultural sensitivity issues with respect to the use of a particular image or related problems? Dr. Friedman can help with identifying an appropriate image, sourcing a digital version of it in the resolution you need, and obtaining proper permissions if they are necessary (many historical images are out of copyright, and she has a large selection of images available that fit these parameters).

Legal aid/expert witness opinions:
Have you or one of your legal clients been the victim of discrimination due to tattoos?  Do tattoos factor into your legal case in some other way? Dr. Friedman has worked as an expert witness to provide testimony about tattoos. She can conduct research and draft legal opinions on many aspects of tattoo culture, including whether a tattoo might represent gang symbolism (an unfortunately common reason for immigration problems).

Collection assessment:
Worried about your personal collection? Many historical tattoo artifacts are fragile and subject to damage by common home-owner storage practices. Dr. Friedman’s nearly two decades of working in museums as a curator and collections assistant and as an independent curator have given her many skills in identifying objects at risk, advising as to proper storage/display parameters, and creating housings for artifacts. She can either visit your collection in person to survey/advise or work with you remotely. (Obviously a collection visit offers better assessment, but even a remote assessment can be beneficial.)

Collections management:
Looking for that particular artifact but can’t find it among the boxes? Showing off a wonderful piece but can’t remember the date or artist? Dr. Friedman has experience in designing collections management databases and creating organizational systems. She can work with you and your collection to come up with the optimal storage/housing solution and to create a database, spreadsheet, or finding aid that tracks each artifact for easy location and recall of specific information about it.

Tattoo-history books/websites:
Want to showcase your collection? Have a family member who was a famous tattooer or tattooed person? Dr. Friedman can work with your archival collection and mine public and private archives/collections for additional material to create a book and/or website. She can work with you as the author or you can hire her to write the text. She can arrange professional photography of your artifacts and oversee the process to ensure that they are handled correctly while being photographed. Her many years as a default publications manager for a major museum and work on other publications exposed her to all aspects of book production including writing, copyediting, design, printing, distribution, and marketing.

General research:
Have a project that involves tattoo history but you are not a trained historian? As an interdisciplinary scholar with a PhD in the History of Culture, Dr. Friedman can conduct research on most aspects of tattoo history. Note that if your request falls outside of the many areas in which she can conduct research, she can help coordinate putting you in touch with another scholar who might be able to fulfill your request or who can work in collaboration with her.

If you are interested in the details of museum and book projects she worked on in the past, see her CV and for an overview of some of her project management background see her LinkedIn page.