Today was the second day of the Alzheimer’s symposium. I got to the Nasher a lot earlier since the Keynote speech for that day was at 9:45 am. The woman speaking today was from MOMA. MOMA pioneered the Alzheimer’s and demensia programs for museums. They even wrote a book! After the speech I continued to do busy work and set up many many many chairs for the different activities. I’m so sad it’s ending tomorrow.
Author: chloec608
Day 6: Day 1 of the Symposium
Today we started out by unfolding a lot of chairs and setting everything up for Day 1 of the 2017 Dementia & Museums Symposium at the Nasher. The Keynote speaker was incredibly compelling. His name is Damon McLeese and he works a lot with people who have disabilities and diseases that prevent them from getting normal jobs. He uses art to unlock the person they are behind the disability or disease that society only sees. It was inspiring to watch somebody so passionate be here in North Carolina at this museum in Durham. It made me feel confidant. That if these people can succeed so can I. I am so thankful to be experiencing this during my work experience. 
Day 5: Busy and Boring
Since the museum is closed on Monday I didn’t get to go into work. That just meant that today was 2 times the amount of normal cutting. For the Symposium that the Nasher is hosting we decided to get creative with our folders and used cereal boxes as the covers. This meant we had to cut up 100’s of cereal boxes. The perk was getting to eat the cereal. Here is the final product. We also arranged all the name tags alphabetically which is harder than it sounds. Singing your ABC’s over and over again is annoying. 
Day 4: Am I touring or am I the tour itself?
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Today I helped one of the people I work with, Ryan, lead a tour with the visiting Cary Academy Art DT. It was very weird to help with the tour but also be apart of it myself since I haven’t had much gallery time. Brent Shelton was on this Art DT and took the video linked with this blog post of me handing out clipboards to do the interactive gallery activities on. The rest of the day was pretty boring so the highlight was the tour today. I really enjoyed seeing the tour from two different view points. The tour also made me appreciate Ryan a lot more.
Day 3: I’m Only 17!
Today I had to write directions for the new activities, cut out name tags, and do a lot of other things. But today, I was put in charge of organizing the Nasher snapchat. Seems easy right? Wrong. I have to meet with marketing people and education area members and I’m just some 17 year old! I don’t know what I’m doing! I have to get approval of everything. They think someone will hack the snapchat of an art museum. I can’t tell if they’re being paranoid or not. Here are some images of the calming board room so I can calm down as well.
The view of the inside is just as nice as the view outside.
Day 2: My Own Weird Room
I can’t believe it’s already Wednesday! Today I did a lot of cutting things out. Thankfully no paper cuts. I got my own weird room to sit and cut in. The best part of the day was working with the head gallery attendant, Ruth. She asked for my advice on new activities for kids to do at the teen party on Saturday and she was really happy with what I came up with. There is a sculpture of a sound suit in the West gallery and I came up with the idea of having boxes of different items and kids have to shake to guess the objects by their weight and sound. Don’t get me wrong this wasn’t round breaking but if I was a kid I’d want to make as much noise as possible.
These are the outside and inside views of my room.
Day 1: Commuting is Awful
I didn’t realize commuting would be such a struggle. I needed to get to work at 9 and it’s about a 30 minute drive from my house to Durham so I left around 8:10 am. I got to the museum at 9:15 am. It took me an hour! I went to the main staff meeting which was very interesting and made me want to go to more. I came in late and was already nervous. I awkwardly was introduced during a “what does this month look like” circle. It was a little mortifying being put on the spot in front of very passionate, intelligent, and hardworking individuals who are all much older than me. Then I worked on the Education budget’s excel spreadsheet for quite some time managing random things and writing comments on certain allocations of money. At 2:00 pm is another meeting for just the Education branch and I’m excited for that. I’ve already met a lot of people who do a lot of different things and it’s making me think about the future. The head curator seems to travel all the time which is a job I’d probably want. The person in charge of organizing how the art is curated and organized actually builds models of the rooms and hangs up tiny versions of the paintings where he thinks they should go. It was very cool. I think that the next meeting will be even a deeper look in.
The Prologue
I am excited to start my interning at the NASHER. I think I will learn a lot.