Ben N – NC Museum of Art & Artist Damien Stamer

NC Museum of Art day 8

Today was my final day working at the museum. I worked today to create small “paintings” as part of a virtual tactile program. The goal is to help people experience the artwork through other senses. The point of these little paintings is for people to be able to feel the paint without actually touching the paintings. I actually found this to be a really thoughtful program on the side of the museum. While the museum strives to be accessible for everyone, the main way to experience almost all the art there is to see it. For those who are visually impaired, it might prove much more difficult to enjoy the art. That’s why I felt that not only was this a creative way to include these individuals in experiencing art, but also an incredibly thoughtful program that went beyond the expectations of a museum.

NC Museum of Art day 7

Today I sat in on two meetings which were again preparing for the reopening of the Museum when the permenant collection is redone. Similarly to the other ones, these meetings were mainly to discuss very specfic details with people all across different departments. After attending all these meetings the last two weeks, it became clear to me that not only does the museum attempt to display art that is accessable to everyone who wishes to see it, but also to enhance the experience as much as possible. I now feel as though I understand a lot more that goes on to create an experience that is enjoyable for everyone. Things like certain frequencies causing issues with hearing aids, having space for wheelchair users to do a complete turn, planning for people with processing disorders or sensory issues are all things that while one person can have knowledge of, might not be possible to consider all the time. That’s why having all these groups of people come together to share their concerns and ideas is such a crucial part of the Museum experience.

NC Museum of Art Day 6

Today was a super exciting day! We traveled to the North Carolina Zoo to film some of the animals there. I think this day was definitely the most surprising to me. In October the NCMA will be reopening with a new permanent collection, one of which being the ancient American collection. In this collection are lots of clay animal figures, so we went to the zoo to film those specific animals for an interactive display that will be at the exhibit. I thought this was a super creative approach that the museum was taking to enhance the experience of viewing artwork. They tied it to another area of interest for a lot of people, and I think this will be a really fascinating interactive activity for people.

NC Museum of Art Day 5

Today I attended another set of meetings around the upcoming museum events. These ones were focused on some of the smaller details and communication between departments. This was similar to some of the previous meetings and discussed things like paint colors or the particular sizing of certain aspects. Again I found myself surprised by how much thought went into everything. Even for something like labels for an exhibit, there would be an entire meeting with people from 5-10 different departments discussing who they needed to communicate with and considering the reality of requests. There were lots of requests that other people outside of these departments made, and I found it very interesting to watch all of them discuss how feasible things were. At times they would come to conclusions that things weren’t possible and then talked about who they would need to communicate that to and try to balance out the importance of different requests. As I mentioned in previous entries, I was surprised by how many people were behind every single detail. Working at the museum proved to be far more than just putting up paintings, and that was actually only the job of very few people working there.

Meeting with Damian Stamer Day 4

Today I met with Damian Stamer, who’s currently an independently working painter. Since I’m considering going into the art field in the future, I had the opportunity to ask him a lot of questions I had about his journey to where he is. We talked a lot about the expectations to follow a particular route in order to be successful, and valuing the artwork you create. One thing he mentioned was that he’s always a little skeptical when he encounters an artist who says they have everything figured out haha. Honestly, this stuck with me a lot. Obviously, there’s a degree of uncertainty that comes with being an artist, but I think hearing that from someone who was making that their career made me feel a bit more confident. I’m still uncertain about where I want to go in the future, but even just talking to Damian for a few hours left me feeling more okay with that, and I feel very grateful to have had the opportunity to speak with him

NC Museum of Art Day 3

Today I attended a few different meetings regarding the upcoming redesign of the Museum. I found it really interesting how much detail went into a very small task. For designing plaques they would discuss things like font, and sizing and how that would impact its accessibility. They even put a gray bar at the top of any writing so it would be easier to identify for people who are visually impaired and use a font that’s the most accessible. During the second meeting, they discussed a game they were developing to make the art-viewing experience more interactive. I had an idea about how much work went into designing any kind of game, but I was really surprised to see a museum beginning to implement that type of technology into their viewing. During my time at the museum so far I’ve been really surprised by the amount of tech that was going into all of their projects.

NC Museum of Art Day 2

Today I attended a couple different meetings during the day. The Museum is currently working on redoing all of the exhibits inside the buildings, and I got to see a model of the museum they use to plan out where all of the paintings and other pieces will go (photographed above). They discussed issues like wheelchair accessibility and spent a lot of time rearranging certain exhibits. For the second meeting, I went to the Raleigh Wetlands center where directors in accessibility met to plan a function. There was someone from the North Carolina Symphony, Marbles Museum, The Nasher Museum, and many other organizations. They worked to plan a conference where they would all be giving presentations on accessibility to other organizations in hopes of educating the NC art community on their respective areas of focus.

NC Museum of Art Day 1

Today was my first day at the NCMA. I met with Felicia Ingram in the morning and she gave me a tour of the East and West buildings at the museum. After introducing me to some of the departments she works with, we discussed our backgrounds and her work at the museum. Because Felicia focuses on accessibility and curation, I attended a couple meetings she had related to that. We met with one of the IT directors about an interactive display that visitors could interact with and its development. Felicia showed me the process of figuring out where to set up artwork and we went to check on some of the new exhibits that are being put up. Felicia’s work includes the accessibility of labels, space between displays, and the amount of artwork put up in a particular exhibit. While being introduced to the entire museum was definitely a lot for one day, I couldn’t be happier with my placement at the NCMA and I’m looking forward to the rest of my time working with Felicia and the other employees!