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!