Week 4:
African American Historical Museum and Cultural Center of Iowa

June 18, 2013

Monday: A staff meeting is implemented by our new director Michael. We use this time to catch up with everyone working, to see where they are in their projects, what kind of events the museum might be hosting this week, etc. Afterwards, I return to the back and get to work redoing all the work I’d done the Friday before. It’s a long day, but I power through uploading everything that was done before and converting every video to a pretty universally friendly format too. It’s a good day, productivity wise!

Tuesday: It’s the really cool project that I couldn’t wait to tell you all about! Realistically, everything is cool, but it had been a bit since I had any of the exhibition and label writing skills segment of my internship, so this kind of ‘break’ felt more exciting, I suppose. I worked on the display case in the front lobby of the museum, where we would be showcasing something new. The new piece to be put out was actually seven pieces, seven  busts that were a part of The Old Taylor Distillery Company bourbon whisky promotion campaign from the late 1960s-1970s. For $5 you could buy a sculptured  bust of an ingenious American. They belonged to Mrs. Gerolyn Banks, a  teacher who used them as instructional tools in her classroom. I spent a good part of the day playing detective and finding as much about the company, the promotion, and notable figures themselves as possible. I also continued working through the Powell Collection photos.

Wednesday: My research on the Old Taylor busts comes to fruition! My site mentor and curator Lynn help me move out all the old display case materials, as well as preparing the case for the new display. You have to clean everything, cut a new placemat, and secure it, then begin organization.

The actual organization of this case is one of the most stressful things I’ve done during my internship. Fun fact! As with much else in life, sometimes you just have to MacGyver it. The goal is to make your vision as simply, quickly, and effectively as possible. So I try many different arrangements to make sure each bust can be seen clearly from as many angles as possible in an aesthetically pleasing manner, while leaving room for my write up on the busts and their history, as well as exhibit labels.

I end up being unhappy with this layout, seek help from Lynn (Curator) and Michelle (Education), and they find me more materials to play with until I have a much better idea of what I’m looking for.

Thursday and Friday: I return to setting up the display case, and settle on a layout! All the busts are placed, though with no write up yet, and I return to the Virgil Powell Collection photos to continue sorting. When I thought that digitizing and putting the photos into sleeves was time consuming, this process is even more so. As I noted in the last blog entry, the lack of natural order and sheer volume and breadth of the collection makes the task a little daunting. The collection photos range from the late 1800s to about 1989. Over 100 years of history seems like a drop in the bucket when you’re looking from a historical perspective, as I was, before becoming much more acquainted with archival procedure, but it really is immense, even when a collection is just from one man. I feel like when still at the beginning of this process, the sorting of the collection, I didn’t understand why sorting couldn’t take place during digitization. It seemed more efficient. With Felicite’s guidance I quickly realized that if you don’t take ‘small’ steps first, when working with any collection, the work can quickly become overbearing, and you can burn out quickly.