Delaney B- North Carolina Museum of History

Blog post #1: 5/25/22

My task today was to work with the Education staff at the museum. I worked with Mrs. Kathleen Gleditsch, a senior education curator. Her jobs included giving tours of the museum to school groups, creating “carts” (portable desks, placed in exhibits, stocked with artifacts that visitors can touch and ask questions about), and community outreach work through newsletters and social media. The first task I completed was to write a biography of Millie Dunn Veasey, a Black postal worker serving overseas in WWII with the 6888th postal battalion. This was very interesting, because I didn’t know that the military, even today, needs whole battalions to deal with mail. My short biography will appear in the Museum’s staff newsletter. My next task was to shadow one of the docents as she used the cart to answer visitors’ questions about the “Story of North Carolina” exhibit. The cart was centered around antebellum yeoman farm life, and included things like tobacco seeds, farm implements, and a model butter churn. I enjoyed working with the docent as she interacted with visitors. I was also given tours on that day of the parts of the museum that only staff get to see- like the offices and storage facilities. Lastly, I was able to meet Mr. Ken Howard, the director of the museum, and discuss the museum’s upcoming renovation.

 

 

Blog post #2: 5/26/22

Today, I worked with the Curatorial staff at the museum. I worked with Ms. Ayla Amon, the curator of Political and Cultural History at the museum. The museum has 11 curators, all responsible for a different part of the Museum’s collection. Ms. Amon oversaw artifacts relating to government, protest, and popular culture. With her help, I was introduced to the Museum’s artifact database, called Proficio. With the software’s help, the database of thousands of artifacts can be easily searched. This is important because the museum receives 4-5 new artifacts every week. When new artifacts come into the museum, an “acquisition form” must be completed, where the source, history, and significance of the artifact must be listed. I competed two acquisition forms- one for a “Krazy Ikes” toy from the 1950’s, and another for a “Galvanic Healing Medal” from the 1890’s. I did research on each of these objects and created a profile about their historical significance. My next task was to help Ms. Amon conduct an interview. She was interviewing a person whose area of expertise was African-American brewers in North Carolina, a topic that the Museum might cover in a new exhibit. Lastly, I was able to tour more storage areas in the Museum.

 

Blog post #3: 5/31/22

Today, I worked with Ms. Ayla Amon, and continued my work in the Curatorial section of the museum. I was also tasked with distributing and answering a survey about what young people want to see in the Museum in its newest renovation. I was happy to give insights on what I think the museum should tell more stories about, and what exhibits in the past have been exemplary. I was also able to meet with Mr. Bryan Bolduc, the Exhibit Installation Designer at the museum, whose job was to create cases for artifacts, and help with the graphic design of the museum’s exhibits. I was very interested to see how different skills like woodworking and interior and graphic design come together to create a visually appealing exhibit.

Blog post #4: 6/1/22

On my last day at the museum, I was able to work again with Ms. Ayla Amon, and also meet the artifact conservation staff. I was also tasked with helping choose which out of a series of protest buttons would convey best the story of the fight for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. I took into consideration factors like color, size, relevance, condition, and continuity. Through this task, I was able to be a part of decisions that both exhibit designers and curators have to make often. When meeting with the conservation staff, I was able to see many interesting artifacts like an iron lung, a permanent wave machine, and an x-ray machine from the mid-20th– century. I also learned about the different ways materials can be conserved, and how textiles can differ from solid materials like wood or iron in terms of methods of conservation. I was very interested to see all of the tools and chemistry knowledge that goes into artifact conservation.

 

 

Conclusion

Overall, I was able to learn many techniques and see many artifacts that I thought I never would get the chance to. I have visited the North Carolina Museum of History since I was very young, so being able to see the work that gets put in to create the exhibits was very interesting. This Work Experience has inspired me to find a summer internship at another historical site in the Raleigh area.

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.

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.

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