Week 2:
Quirks and Perks

June 24, 2016

June 23, 2016

With the end of another week in sight, I’m happy to say that I now feel completely comfortable at the African American Museum. Though I haven’t been there long, I’ve observed a few things about the museum that I believe are boosting my learning experience. I’m calling these the quirks and perks!

Quirks

• The museum is so small that it only has 3-5 full time employees. Everyone else is part-time or volunteer.
• Most of the artifacts for the museum are donated, not purchased or loaned.
• The majority of the construction work that needs to be done in the gallery is not outsourced. Every one gets to pitch in to make it great!
• The museum is largely community centered, so they host a lot of events aimed at locals.
• Everyone takes on a large amount of work to keep the place up and running, even if it’s not their department.

Perks

• Due to the small museum size, I get to do a lot more hands on work than I expected.
• The artifacts come from far and wide! A lot of things are local, but they do have objects from Africa.
• I get to interact with pretty much every department in the museum on a daily basis. This is nice because I’m getting “the bigger picture” on how museums are run, not just on how collections is run.
• Everyone is more than happy to help out where help is needed. It’s great to see teamwork in action!
• I actually love my random workload. The unpredictibility of whether I will be cataloging, working with artifacts, or researching excites me!

Basically, I’ve really come to appreciate the work that is put into small museums. In a way, I think they are much harder to run than, say, the Smithsonian. Everyone takes on extra work, and everyone pitches in. As an out-of-state student, the museum has been teaching me more about Iowa and surrounding counties than any textbook or internet search could.

I had time to reflect on these attributes of the museum while I was finishing up some research and script writing. This time I was focusing on African American fiction writers during the Reconstruction and the Harlem Renaissance. It’s pretty amazing how accomplished these writers were in a time when the country was still torn apart.

This week I was also able to help remove artifacts from the exhibit. Removal is a precaution to ensure they are not damaged during construction, and due to the exhibit updates, some of them are going back into the vault for use at a later time.

Removing artifacts is a very delicate process. First, we have to unscrew the glass display lid, which we then lift up with suction cups. Gloves and extreme care are used in order to get to objects back to the collections room. Then we start the process of updating the computer system and tagging every object before putting them away. Sometimes we have to make boxes specifically for an object, which is a pretty big task when regular packing boxes are confusing to you. And since a lot of these objects have been on display for 7 or 8 years, their old spot has been taken over by the growing collection, so we have to find new places for them.

Speaking of the exhibit, the work in there is moving right along! This is good news since it is scheduled to reopen on June 30. Earlier this week a small crew from Split Rock Construction in St. Paul, Minnesota arrived. The team that is there has worked with museums several times before, so they definitely know what they’re doing. I’ve been able to take sneak peaks as work progresses, and the exhibit is going to look amazing!

I’ve really been enjoying all the behind the scenes work, and I really appreciate every member of the staff. It has been wonderful walking into an internship with such warm and supportive people to meet me at the door. I cannot wait to see what the next few weeks have in store!