Week 4:
Attack of the Shelving Unit (and some other museum business)

June 23, 2021

Tying up Loose Ends

This was a week of primarily finishing up and continuing work on old projects. I spent this week continuing to edit the History Adventure video and continuing research for the upcoming exhibit. It was nice to finally have a final product for the video that I and the other intern have been working on for the last couple of weeks. Editing involved a lot of trial and error, so it felt great to see the finalized version. The topic Juneteenth is one that I had fairly limited knowledge of before so it was great that I was able to learn more about the holiday and also continue to educate others as well. It felt fitting that just a day after this video was made public to the AAMI community, Juneteenth was finally declared a national holiday. Although this was a very short step in favor of racial relations, it still is a step in the right direction. 

My day in person was spent finishing the small display exhibit that I have been working on for the last several weeks. Again, it was really encouraging to see the cumulation of all my research and work into a tangible product that a lot of people who go through the museum are going to see. Most of what I had to do was format and print photos, find copyright information, and look through the museum’s catalog to see if there was anything to include in the exhibit. Other than that, I did a few miscellaneous tasks with another new intern that I met for the first time.

(Surprise) More Research!

And of course, I spent the majority of the week continuing to do research for an upcoming exhibit for the museum. This is definitely the biggest project that I will be working on and has already been how I have spent most of my time, and will continue to do so. I was feeling a bit stuck on where to continue with the research at the start of the week and was given advice by my supervisor. Overall I am feeling a lot better about this and have a good idea of how I will continue to research over the next few weeks. 

Little Parts for the Big Picture

As of late the majority of my time for this fellowship has been spent just doing research and small various tasks. I do enjoy doing this type of work, but the work overall is definitely slower than I had expected. Mainly because there are just so many little steps that go into everything. For just the small display I did, there was lots of research, finding photos, getting copyright access to those photos, finding objects in the museum’s collection, and setting up the display itself. Being able to do every step of this progress has definitely given me a new appreciation for all the work that goes into the museum. So even when I feel like the work is a little slow, I know that it is a contribution to the big picture.