NCMA – CA Work Experience Program

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.

Day 8: Y’ALL I GOT TO RIDE THE LIFT

My final day at NCMA started with leading Dr. McElreath in through the staff entrance, which was vaguely reminiscent of my first day at the museum when Ms. White met me outside and guided me to said entrance. I have come full circle. The student has become the teacher.

Anyways, Dr. McElreath and I watched as the art handlers installed a new textile in the African gallery. The picture below does not do it justice–its a super pretty piece (you should go see it).

After that, I went back to translating my paper floor plan revisions to digital, which I managed to finish, even though there was some trouble locating the files I was supposed to be revising.

Revised floor plan for the Egyptian gallery

After lunch, I got to peel vinyl stickers off the wall for, like, an hour, which is a lot more fun than it sounds. I took off the Georgia O’Keefe labels so that they could be replaced in preparation for the Frida Kahlo show.

After that (and after I had sat through a meeting that went on way longer than it was supposed to), I went with Ollie to install supports (I think they were for lights but I could be wrong) in the ceiling. And remember on Friday when I said I was sad I couldn’t ride the lift? Guys, I got to drive the lift. It was great and only a little bit terrifying.

I had a great time at NCMA–I got to do interesting work, I got to look at pretty art, and everyone was super friendly.

The design team (and their loyal intern)

Day 7: Back to the Museum

My 7th day of work experience (and 5th day of working at NCMA) started with helping make new signs for some of the outdoor pieces, as the previous ones had gotten damaged. After that, I reviewed more floor plans, this time of the African gallery. I also started to type up my floor plan revisions from last week so that nobody would have to struggle to read my terrible handwriting.

Just as I was getting bored of the floor plans, I was stopped to help get the vinyl stickers off an old sign and reprint it with new lettering, which is actually a pretty interesting process.

NCMA Day 4

My fourth day started with Kathryn, who showed me the museum’s Wim Botha exhibition and helped to elucidate the planning process museum workers have to go through to prepare for an exhibition. They have to think about lighting (certain pieces require more or less lighting depending on how fragile they are), layout (especially for sculptures/objects like in the Wim Botha exhibition), preservation (some pieces have safety railings or barriers), and comprehensibility (panels have to be close enough to the artwork to make it clear which piece they are talking about). On top of all that, artists themselves tend to have a lot of opinions as to how their work should be displayed and laid out in a gallery–opinions that often conflict with those of the exhibition design team. Despite these challenges, the Wim Botha gallery looks great. (Y’all should check it out.)

After lunch, I helped move cases and displays out of the Ancient America gallery, which the design team had started to clear out on Tuesday. We were able to finish getting everything out of the room in preparation for the new exhibition.

Before:

After:

I also got to tear down a mural (basically a big sticker) from the wall. The design team had to get out a lift to tear down the top of it since it didn’t all come off in one piece. Tragically, I wasn’t able to ride the lift because of “liability concerns”. Whatever.

Tearing down the mural:

NCMA Day 3

To start off my third day at the North Carolina Museum of Art, I finished checking floor plans for the galleries I hadn’t gotten to yesterday, a task that only took about half an hour. After that, I spent my day bouncing between different members of the design team, helping with odd jobs and tasks. I helped Rand and David move display cases, moved furniture out of Gallery 4 with Clare, and put up labels for artwork with Sean.

I was able to get a tour of the conservation department, whose current big project is a marble statue called Bacchus. His torso and head are ancient Roman, his legs and one of his arms are from the Renaissance, and his other arm is being built by the museum now in order to display the full statue. I was also able to walk around the African galleries, parts of which are being rearranged next week.