Hello!
Our first of many group photos in the docent office
Introducing the Museum Education Interns for 2011!
First Row from Left: Shannon, Emily, Danielle, Michael
Second Row from Left: Clara, Jillian, Laura, Marissa, Kris
Alone
The title sounds depressing, and for the first day without the others it was a little lonely, but I was kept busy so it wasn’t too bad. My first assignment was to go through a binder on touring students with special needs (be those challenges mental, developmental, or physical) and ascertain what information could be consolidated or expanded. I was then given a grab bag of teaching props to go through. I inventoried the contents and checked how they could be used by docents on future tours based on the needs of certain students’ needs. After I briefed the department on my findings, I emptied the bag and put everything away. This took one day (Monday).
On Tuesday I was given the option to sign up for two more adult tours (yay!). I signed up for Annie’s talk on Fish Tales–a tour that Clara had given with her earlier in the summer about fish and fish-related objects in the museum–and for Kate’s talk on Oldest Objects–a tour that I had gathered to be about objects in the collection that were extremely old (pretty self-explanatory). These tours were to be on the Wednesday and Friday of my last week, respectively. I was also given an assignment to go through boxes of files given to the Museum Education department and add them to the current files. The boxes were donated by a gentleman who had worked for a number of years with the department (I was never entirely sure what his title was, but I had figured that that detail wasn’t terribly relevant to what I was doing). They had been his personal files for tours, so I was to sort through the unnecessary papers and put the relevant information into the extant files. This proved to be easier said than done. The files were sometimes relevant, and sometimes not. I also discovered early into my work that the filing cabinets in the department office were filled to capacity. I therefore began to put the files I had sorted through into a separate box to be sorted into a new filing cabinet in the future.
Terribly exciting, I know.
The rest of my free time for the last two weeks was spent researching for my tours. When Wednesday rolled around, I had decided to tour Manet’s Still Life with Fish (top left). I had originally wanted to talk about a fish-shaped kohl palette on loan from the Oriental Institute in the Egypt section, but I couldn’t find any information on it. I’m my own worst critic, so I think that I did horribly on this tour. I had planned out my line of discussion ahead of time, but as soon as I got in front of that painting, it all went straight out the window. I was stuttering, I was losing my train of thought–but as least I never said anything that was incorrect. Afterward, two different women on the tour came up to me and told me that I was doing just fine–so I think that I got some ‘aaaaaaaaw, intern!’ credit. The tour I had with Kate on Friday, however, went phenomenally. I discussed birdstones and bannerstones in the Early Americas and the alabaster vessels in the Egypt. Man did the birdstones and bannerstones discussion go well! I eventually had to cut off the questions because everyone just could not stop discussing it, they were so excited! I have to say, I was really excited to talk about it, myself. I had never heard of anything like them before. I’ll include a picture of an example of a bannerstone, but there’s no image of the only bannerstone owned by the Art Institute.
I had a great time this summer. I learned a lot. I think I’m going to miss being behind the scenes and in the museum before it opens to the public. I loved having one-on-one time with works with no one else in the gallery–not even the security officers. I loved being trusted enough that I could go anywhere with my badge. I loved visiting the other departments and learning about other aspects of how museums are run. I hope I’ll be back, Art Institute! I’d love to work there!
Last Week
Well, as the title might lead you to believe, this was the last week–for the other interns! I’m here on a slightly different program than the others. I’m at the Art Institute through a sponsored internship via my college. I go to Randolph College (formerly Randolph-Macon Woman’s College) in Lynchburg, VA, and one of our former trustees/students and her husband sponsor an internship at the Art Institute every year for a rising senior. Therefore, I am on a 10-week program, rather than an 8-week program like the other interns.
This week was rather bland for me in terms of work. I only had one students tour, which went very well. It was on Wednesday, so after it was over, I didn’t have much to do or prepare for (I hadn’t received my marching orders for the two weeks after the others had left yet). So I helped out the other interns. I returned library books, I returned files we borrowed for study from the Museum Education office and refiled them. I generally cleaned up. We all took some silly pictures (someone came up with the idea to plank around the Art Institute–I think it was Marissa), so I’ll post my picture of that. Everyone went around the museum and ‘said goodbye’ to their favorite areas and works. Pictures were taken all around of people standing with their favorites (to the left you can see Clara saying goodbye to the infamous Dorian Grey). We also went out to dinner a couple times. I finally got to experience the deliciousness that is Chicago deep-dish pizza (oh my Lord, I have been ruined for all other pizzas 
forever!), and I was introduced to the most delicious felafel I’ve ever had.
Since I’m going to be here for another two weeks, I’ll write one more post. I don’t anticipate that I’ll be doing so much that I’ll need a post per week, so I’ll consolidate into one.
A Stroll with Seurat
I was super nervous to give this tour. I was working with Margaret and we met the week before our tour to discuss the direction we wanted to take it. Boy was I shocked when we sat down and she asked me if I wanted to give the entire half hour tour by myself! I politely declined, as I didn’t think that I knew enough about either the work or how to keep my thoughts in a concise order for a tour of that length. We came to a compromise: I would introduce the work (via a fun game of ‘I Spy’), Margaret would then give a detailed background on the work, followed by an overview of symbolism and 19th Century French society by me. I would then wrap up by asking for questions or comments. This system worked fairly well. We had a HUGE group! We estimated that we’d have a minimum of 50 people–boy were we wrong! The gallery was full nearly to the far doorway by the end of the gallery talk. I’d estimate that we had around 70 people by the end of the tour. I think that the adults enjoyed our game of ‘I Spy.’ That was Margaret’s idea, and I had never thought of using a child’s game on a group of adults. For those of you who don’t know how to play ‘I Spy,’ I’ll explain: there is a person who is ‘It.’ That person then finds something in a setting (in this case, La Grande Jatte) and announces hints as to what they are looking at, usually in an “I Spy with my little eye something [insert a hint here].” The rest of the players then have to figure out what the item is that ‘It’ is looking at. Usually the person who figures out what the item is first then becomes ‘It,’ but in this case, I would then continue on to the next item. This exercise helped draw the audience into a painting that they otherwise would be fairly familiar with, noting details that they might have overlooked before. The information portion went very well, and the audience seemed to enjoy my observations about social roles within the painting (for example, there were several people who had never known what the vaguely geometric white blob with the orange circle on top was–a woman in a white dress wearing a white hat with an orange ribbon trailing down her back). At the end there were several questions that I was unable to answer, but Margaret jumped in and gave me a hand. An interesting note was that the piece is called A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, and yet there are tugboats in the background. The question was posed by an audience member, “if it’s Sunday and the working class was exempt from work, then why are there tugboats on the water?” I would like to know the answer to that question, myself, as neither I nor Margaret had an answer for that question. All in all, the tour went very well! We got cornered for a little while after the tour and pelted by questions for a bit, but it didn’t seem to be anything that we couldn’t answer.
Last Week! Top 10 & 1 Great Quote
So these past eight weeks have been amazing, stressful, fun, and exciting. In order to organize my experience as a whole, I am going to list a top ten of Chicago:
1. Honestly, coming to the Art Institute of Chicago everyday for work! Being able to visit numerous times, become more than familiar with 
works, spend time with works I may not have noticed, and having conversations with so many different people that were all centered around art.
2. Learning from everyone. Not only were we able to meet so many different people from all around the museum, but we were also given the opportunity to learn from each other. By going on others’ tours, we were able to see different styles of gallery teaching as well as get to know so many works of art.
3. Hyperlinks was probably one of the best shows I’ve seen in a while. I visited it almost everyday and loved bringing groups of all ages. The works in the show challenged and questioned common objects and daily life in ways that were not only fun to think about, but also were wonderful to look at.
4. Walking (or boating) around the streets of Chicago and always being mesmerized by Chicago’s architecture. This city is beautiful and daring in their architectural choices; it is so balanced, giving each building room to breathe. I’ve been obsessed with architecture for a long time and Chicago is the perfect city to spend time examining and experiencing buildings of all types.
5. I was fortunate enough to have some people come to Chicago for a visit. My boyfriend Dave spent a long weekend, my mom Bridget stayed for almost a week, and this week my friend Eunjung from graduate school spent time with me in the Modern wing for an afternoon.
Cot with sheet walls
6. There are so many different fun things to do in Chicago, especially in all of the different parks. We were able to see one of my favorite movies, Grease and it was a sing-along! Also, all of the great free concerts over in Millennium Park were so much fun.
7. This 4th of July was definitely the most patriotic one I’ve ever had. From a dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence to a train-full of people singing the National Anthem, my friends and I were so excited about America!
Marv enjoying the comfy cot
8. Sleeping on a cot. It may not sound glorious, but it really was!
9. I was lucky enough to have two great friends and a special cat living in Chicago. Mary, Lauren, and Marv were the best roomies while living in the beautiful Ukranian Village.
10. Public transportation offered an easy route to work and endless opportunities for people watching.
BEST QUOTE:
While looking at Philip Guston’s Bad Times, a young girl asked, “What are those two penguins doing driving that car?” 
Solo Tours and the Big Leagues
Well, the first week of solo touring went great! I was really nervous, but overall it went really well. I think I only had one hitch. I had been informed that there was a child who was a functional autistic coming on one of my tours–no biggie. When the group arrived, I was informed ten minutes before we were to leave that he also had difficulties walking–thereby wearing leg braces–and would have to use a stool to sit and the group would have to use an elevator. This ordinarily would not have been a problem…had I been warned ahead of time and planned for a no-stairs tour and had the other children understood why they were not permitted to use stools and why we were walking slowly. I think that the group had fun, overall. I hope that that little boy had fun too, even though he was inconsolably grumpy by the end of the tour.
My first adult tour went great! I was so nervous! Annie presented the Karttikeya first and then we went upstairs to talk about Monet’s Grainstacks. For those of you who haven’t visited the Art Institute–or the Impressionist galleries–the series features six paintings hung on one wall in a line. However, there is a doorway on this wall, so two are on the left, then the doorway into the neighboring gallery, then four more paintings on the left side. I had been considering having the group start off to the left of the doorway and look at those two first, then moving as I talked to the other side and standing in front of the rest of the group. I ultimately decided that this probably wasn’t a good idea, as our group turned out to be large enough that trying to fit them all into a corner was not going to work. So I just kept them to the right of the doorway in front of the larger group, and referred to the others–informing them that they were there and welcoming them to examine the paintings as I talked. I was really nervous, but the group was friendly. I tried to get them engaged by asking if any of them thought of anything in particular when they heard 
Monet’s name. A couple people answered and I addressed those answers and then I jumped right into lecturing. Annie said that my voice needed to be just a touch louder (I’ll be sure to work on that) and that I have a funny little “thinking face.” Evidently when I’m thinking or considering something I make a frowny face. She said it doesn’t look like I’m angry, per say, but that it looks like I could be puzzled or confused. I’m not sure how to work on that, I think it’s an unconscious habit. I’ll try to think about what my face is doing as I’m lecturing, I guess. At the end I tried to get the group engaged with the work personally by asking them if they had a favorite work in the series (I said ‘series’ instead of ‘set,’ by the way! Yay!) and why. No one took the bait, so I shared mine with them. I’ll include it here. The group was relatively quiet and didn’t really ask anything terribly complex. I wish they had been a bit more participatory, but at least they didn’t ask me anything that I couldn’t answer! (looking on the bright side) Annie then took us to our last stop where she discussed the collection of glassware in the ancient galleries.
Next week is another adult tour, but this time it’s only on one piece: A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by Seurat. I’ll be touring that one with Margaret and it’s another 30 minute tour. We met to discuss where we were going to go with the tour (because I had no idea how she wanted to set it up). When I got there, Margaret asked how I’d like to run the tour! She asked me if I’d like to give the entire 30 minute lecture (something I shied away from–I don’t think I have enough experience to be able to properly structure a talk for that long!) or set it up another way. We brainstormed for a while, and sent me away to go do some more research. I’ll be contacting her early next week to discuss the order of our talk. So far, it looks like I’ll be talking about the social and representative structures within the work. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Michael — The City in (Art) History
My sixth week at the Art Institute saw two exciting firsts — my first week of touring alone, and my first adult tour. While the former was very exciting in its own right, the latter may take the cake as the most exciting and nerve-racking thing I’ve done at the Art Institute yet. Let me qualify that statement: I was partnered with Margaret Farr for a talk entitled “Modern Cities.” When signing up for adult tours, I jumped on this one like a lion might jump on a gazelle; at Vassar, I minored in urban studies, often incorporating ideas of urbanism into my art historical work. Academically, I am fascinated by the ways that artists interact with and depict the city.
Of course, with great interest came great stress. While preparing for the tour, my knowledge of urban history and theory continuously pounded against the walls of my psyche, begging to be included in my presentation. But with a fairly strict time-limit of five minutes per work, editing down to bare essentials was crucial — and it would have been an injustice to the art object itself to spend the entirety of the time discussing, for example, the philosophies of Lewis Mumford. This overflow of information, coupled with my perpetual concerns over delivery — indeed, I’m known amongst the education department for my tendency to dance around while touring — made me extremely nervous.
Camille Pissarro, The Place du Havre, 1893
But — thank goodness — the tour went well! The nice thing about presenting a talk on something you’re extremely passionate about is that the passion, inevitably, comes through. My first piece was a cityscape by Camille Pissarro, depicting the Place du Havre in Paris. This piece was extremely fun to research, and to present: Pissarro is best known for his rural landscapes, usually depicting a few peasant farmers. But his urban scenes are extremely interesting, often detached from the activity of the city but watching it closely. Pissarro’s attention to detail, and especially attention to color, persists in this image — he focuses on an area where Haussmannization is particularly noticeable, where broad avenues and repeated facades serve as a backdrop to the ballet of daily life in the city.
My second piece for the tour was my old friend Shelton with Sunspots by Georgia O’Keeffe. Like Pissarro, O’Keeffe is known for her images of nature — so it’s always fun to surprise the audience with her take on the big city. The piece initiated a compelling conversation about the emergence of skyscrapers into the cityscape; in a sense, both Pissarro’s image and O’Keeffe’s deal with new additions to the physical space of the city. However, while Pissarro is undeniably interested in the human subject in space, O’Keeffe removes people from her painting entirely. In some ways, the work is solely about the Shelton, forcing the viewer into a neck-breaking relationship with the 34-story building.
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942
Because the tour was about modern cities, I felt compelled to end with Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. This piece, in my mind, sums up so much of what was going on in New York during the first half of the twentieth century. Especially in relation to O’Keeffe’s monumental depiction of the city, where the viewer enters into a near-religious exaltation of the steel-framed skyscraper, Hopper’s psychological depiction of human relationships in the city becomes all the more poignant. In the image, the figures are simultaneously together and completely isolated — this eerie portrayal of New York after-dark recreates the effect of being one person in an urban sea of strangers. And the role of the viewer, as anonymous voyeur, only amplifies this feeling.
Hopper focuses on the small details of the city: a late-night diner, a few patrons, a viewer implied to be walking alone on the street. He removes the hustle and bustle and replaces it with an intimate portrayal of the often-lonely urban experience. Interesting that, of all the myriad depictions of city life, this is the one that has become standard Americana.
Marissa: Farewell!
Touring in the African Galleries.
It has been an amazing 8 weeks and I’m sad to see my time here end. I have learned so much from the dedicated people working in the Museum Education department here at the museum, and from my new friends and colleagues–Clara, Danielle, Emily, Jillian, Kris, Laura, Mikey, and Shannon. I am indebted to their support, patience, and encouragement. Below are the top ten things I learned during the internship:
1. Children contain the potential for great insight and empathy. I became aware of this as I engaged a wide range of students in conversations surrounding artworks in the collection. I have to admit that I do not often have extended conversations with children in my daily life, and when I do it is rarely about art. And though they do not know about art historical debates or art theory (lucky them), their questions and observations lead to fascinating discoveries.
2. There is nothing that can replace the importance of viewing art firsthand. Not to be weird about it, but there is something powerful about standing in the presence of art. Walter Benjamin was right–there is an aura to the work of art.
3. Always have a back-up plan. On days when all 9 interns, plus teacher program tours and self-guided tour groups, are touring in the galleries, there is a chance you will show up to a planned stop on your tour and there is already a group there. This is especially true when touring the museum’s most famous works such as the Grand Jatte or Nighthawks. Stalling or diverting from your original plan is what we call “tap dancing.” Though this can be challenge when you are first starting out, these improvisations have become some of my favorite lessons.
4. Lunch is best enjoyed in the North Garden. Taking a break in the shade at the tables in the garden provides a quiet moment of fresh air and conversation. Even though we spent a lot of time together, lunches with the interns were abundant with reflection on the day’s events.
5. Teaching is about listening as much as talking. The richest learning happens when you synthesize new information yourself, not when someone does it for you. The procedure of a lesson should set up a situation in which learners are analyzing art themselves and drawing their own conclusions. I have learned that listening to students responses and following their line of thinking always leads to the most engaging lesson.
6. Wear flats. Its a big museum and touring requires a lot of walking.
7. It takes a village. The programs in the Museum Education department require the coordination and contributions of multiple parties. In addition to department’s staff, we were assisted by lovely teen interns from all over Chicago. The teens assisted us in greeting arriving tour groups and setting up the studios. They were more than gracious and helpful even in the most hectic moments.
8. You can’t crowd 50 people around a small work of art. The museum’s public tours can attract large groups of interested adults. On free days the groups can swell even larger. There are a lot of amazing artworks that are small, but they sadly are logistically difficult with large groups.
9. I have much more to learn. I need another 8 weeks to keep implementing and refining my lessons. To learn how to teach you have to teach. I feel that I have just started to understand how best to engage people in a museum context. This internship has certainly peaked my interest in a future in museum education.
10. The Art Institute of Chicago is awesome. Everyday I found something here that I hadn’t seen before and I wanted to know more about. I still can’t believe they actually let me come here and hang out each day.
Good-bye, Hyperlinks!
Throughout the internship experience, the Architecture and Design show Hyperlinks fascinated me and encouraged me to think of daily life and common objects in completely new and different ways. One of these works, Simon Heijdens’ Shade was certainly memorable. Every tour group that visited the kinetic work was fascinated by its ability to bring the exterior world inside. Shade became an “old friend,” a work of art that I visited daily and thought about even after leaving the museum. Seeing the work taken down was fascinating!
Taking down Shade, the kinetic window that reacts to Chicago's wind
Shannon: There’s A First Time For Everything
I know what you’re thinking: Shannon, you’re not in the sixth week of your internship! As a matter of fact, I’m not, but just as I ask of the students on my tours, let’s use our imaginations, jump in a time machine, and pretend I’m on my sixth week, because there’s a bit I’d like to recap :]
The week started off rather slowly: despite being the first week of solo tours, I only had an ABCs tour on Tuesday, which gave me the opportunity to use the first half of the week to prepare for my first-ever solo tour with an older group of students! My ABCs tour was rather interesting – just me and ten 4-year-old boys – but it thankfully gave me a confidence boost which propelled me into my tour the next morning. I spent the rest of Tuesday afternoon preparing for Wednesday, an Arts From Many Places tour for 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. Approximately thirty seconds after finalizing my tour plan for Wednesday morning – I think I was on my way over to the Chips Ahoy! cookie jar – I was told my tour had been cancelled. As it turned out, the heat wave striking Chicago made the school officials a bit wary to put their students on non-air-conditioned buses for the 30+ minute ride into the city. So I was left to wait until Friday for my first major solo tour.
Being the last of the interns to have a solo student tour, I was determined to make as much of the experience as possible. I decided on a “People of the World” theme, visiting works of art throughout the museum portraying people in unique and varied methods. I began at the Mummy and Coffin of Paankhenamun, followed by a joint visit to Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks and Archibald J. Motley Jr.’s Nightlife. I moved next to a set of Tomb Chamber Doors from the Chinese Han dynasty, before moving onto Camille Pissarro’s The Place du Havre, Paris, and finally Félix González-Torres’s Portrait of Ross in L.A. The students (all girls this time!) were excited about each of the pieces and even the others around them, which made things pretty interesting since I had no facts outside of the wall text for those. The girls we engaging and their interest in the artwork made for a great experience, particularly with Portrait of Ross in L.A., which was one of the first works from the Modern Wing that I have included. This successful tour gave me the confidence to integrate more artwork from the Modern Wing into my upcoming tours.
A beautiful day for Kaleidoscope!
While my work week at the Art Institute went by smoothly, the weekend was certainly more hectic. The museum hosted its 16th annual Kaleidoscope Family Day, a day dedicated to free (and fun!) activities throughout the museum for families in Chicago. The interns had the task of chaperoning community groups through an itinerary chosen beforehand, including a guided 30-minute gallery walk. We worked in pairs with assigned groups and I teamed up with Laura to lead Local School Council (LSC) from South Chicago. Laura began at Claude Monet’s Grainstacks series and I followed up with a presentation of Paankhenamun. Group? Check. Tour? Check. Language? Oops. As it turned out, the majority of our group spoke very limited, if any, English. Fortunately, Alejandro, a bilingual teen intern from Family Programs, joined us for the tour and in addition to my (incredibly) broken Spanish, the three of us were able to pull off six hours of bilingual supervision through the museum. And just in case anyone happens into a similar situation in the future, “grainstacks” is pajares in Spanish – it definitely would have come in handy to know the word before our tour…
Suffice to say, I was absolutely exhausted by the end of Kaleidoscope. Luckily enough, I already had plans for the rest of the weekend to ensure that I could relax. With a friend visiting, I filled my time with trips around Chicago, visits to some essential cupcake shops, and the obligatory sporting event. Without enough cash for a Cubbies game, I did manage to find tickets for a wonderful mix of American and Canadian athletics (my friend is from Toronto): a soccer game in a football stadium. Manchester United took on the Chicago Fire at Soldier Field and the stadium was absolutely filled with fans – American ones! (I didn’t even know they existed.) It was a great game – Man. U won 3-1, sorry Chicago – and a great end to a week full of firsts: my first solo tour, my first bilingual tour, and my first soccer match!
It may not appear so, but I could actually see the game from our seats....kinda
Emily’s 7th Week
The second to last week at the Art Institute was a lot less busy than the previous six-day week. With an adult highlights tour and a couple student tours, this week ended with a visit from someone very special: my mom from Virginia!
Teaming up with Margaret once again, we led an adult highlights tour centered around the theme of couples. It was very important to remember that couples come in all shapes and relationships, so we visited royal couples, twins, parents with children, and a famous couple from the collection. Coincidentally, our tour group was composed of couples of all types: 
grandparents with grandchildren, wives with husbands, best friends, and siblings. We started the tour with Olowe of Ise’s sculpted veranda post depicting the king and his senior wife. The group described the various ways that the artist connected the two figures and the variations of style used when showing the shared power of the couple. Along with other works in the gallery all from the Yoruba culture, we developed our discussion about couples further. Specifically, we discussed the culture’s high rate of twin births and the reverence that comes along with them while looking at the Twin Commemorative Figures (Ere Ibeji). These figures were created and cared for to represent a deceased twin, because two are 
present we know that in this case both children died. Connecting the relationship between mother and child, we traveled to Cow Suckling a Calf from India created during the 9th century. While focusing on the work, the group described how the artist showed the tender moment and emphasized this with the depiction and composition. The next stop was William Glackens’ At Mouquin’s, a scene that shows a more controversial couple that expands as the viewer begins to study the reflections behind. As the grand finale, we visited the most popular couple in the whole museum: Grant Wood’s American Gothic. The time spent in front of this work invited many other visitors to join and discuss. We uncovered many facets of this work together, from its inspiration and creation to its life after it was created. This work is a “greatest hit” and everyone thought it was a perfect piece to end on. 
Nan Wood and Dr. McKeeby next to American Gothic
Once my mom arrived, we spent the afternoon in the museum after a delicious lunch at Terzo Piano. My mom and I spent much time in front of American Gothic. She was surprised how much better the work is in person. The story behind its creation also fascinated her, inspiring her to use it in her classroom during the upcoming year when she teaches American Literature. The weekend was jam-packed with tourist goodness: architecture boat tour, the Museum of Science and Industry (highly recommended by my grandfather), restaurants, and more! She hadn’t been to Chicago since she was about 10; needless to say, she loves it. She didn’t want to leave downtown just because the architecture is so memorable and arresting, definitely my favorite thing about Chicago too!
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