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.

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!

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.

Preparing for Adult Tours

I lied last week about having very few tours this week. I had three student tours. They went well. Jillian and I decided to spice things up a little and change our works for our last tour on Friday. We toured “Chicago Specials,” so works that have specific history or relevance to Chicago. Since the Hyperlinks show was ending soon, I decided to tour Shade. It’s probably one of my favorite pieces in the collection. I also chose the Ando gallery itself (image to the left) by Tadao Ando–and the America Windows by Chagall (image at bottom right). I had thought that everything was going pretty well, but evidently the students’ teacher didn’t think so. When we got our evaluation back from her she had said that the kids were lost the whole time we were in the Ando gallery. They seemed pretty engaged to me…the evaluation also requested that next time we start with the America Windows. You know what? You can’t please everyone. I think the kids left the museum with a good experience, so I’m not unhappy with how it went. I’ll just try to take it as a learning experience and try to take it into account as I’m planning for my solo tours next week.

I’m nervous about touring alone, but I’m mostly just stressed as I try to prepare 5 new works to tour. I want to make sure that I push myself, but I also want to make sure that the kids have a large overview of the works here at the AIC. Right now I’m thinking about keeping the Ando gallery, but then also teaching the current exhibition within it–the baskets by Fujinuma Noboru. Noboru is a contemporary Japanese artist who works with bamboo to create the coolest baskets in the traditional Japanese method. My favorite is pictured at the bottom right, called Fortune (Fuku).

I’m doing furious research on Monet’s Grainstacks series, since I have my first adult tour with senior lecturer, Annie, next Wednesday. Our tour is an express (so only 30 minutes) titled “The More the Merrier.” Evidently it’s going to be about art in multiples. Annie will be talking about the Karttikeya, God of War, Seated on a Peacock and the collection of ancient glass in the ancient galleries. Simply because it took me so darn long to find the name of the darn sculpture, I’m going to include an image. I found it, so I’m going to show you it. It’s the image to the bottom left.

At the risk of sounding like a whiner, I really should have planned when I signed up for adult tours better. I’m going massive amounts of research on Monet and his Grainstacks at the same time as I try to prepare for touring 5 works by myself for solo student touring. Man oh man. I’m not getting much sleep lately. I feel pretty confident about touring Monet, though. I know Impressionism pretty well and I figure that as long as I try to get all of the basic information down about his life (these works were painted during the middle of his career to try to elevate his status through his perseverance, patience, technique, etc, he developed cataracts during his lily pond series, he never went blind, etc, etc, etc) I’ll be just fine. That and I figure that once Annie says that I’m an intern, I’ll probably get some credit for being new to the whole touring-for-adults thing. And I can’t forget to say that they are part of a series not a set. Annie and I were joking around that if I say ‘set,’ it implies that “you can trade them with your friends! Collect them all! Coming to a museum near you!” So I’ve been repeating ‘series, series, series’ under my breath all week to try to drive it home!

I’m sure I’ll do just fine, and I know I’m stressing over nothing. I’ll just be over here, with my nose in a stack of books preparing for next week–don’t mind me!

 

It’s the sixth week already??

So here I am, writing my blog post a few days late and am shocked at the fact that we only have two weeks left!  This internship has absolutely flown by.  Before I get too far into reminiscing, I’m going to start recapping the sixth week.

Best part of last week, by far, was our trip to the conservation department.  Two museum seminars are built into our internship each week and over the course of the last few weeks, we’ve had the opportunity to talk with Operations, Packing, the Teacher Resource Center, Communications, the conservator of African Art, and of course, the Conservation Department.

Walking into the room was similar to what I imagine a kid walking into a candy store feels like.  We stopped in painting conservation first, where paintings were just hanging out, out of the frame, for us to walk around and examine.  The conservator was, of course, a little nervous about our wandering, so we were carefully herded throughout the space. She gave us a crash-course in conservation, during which she discussed materials and processes and took us on a tour of the x-ray room.  We got a chance to see what the machines look like and examined the multiple images taken of a Monet painting.  The Art Institute is working with the Getty to create an online resource that displays images of the under-paintings as seen by x-ray and infrared technology.  The few images we got to see were super interesting, so I can imagine an entire collection to be quite amazing.

After we got our fill of painting conservation, we were brought to object and sculpture conservation where we were greeted by a giant statue on wheels.  The conservators gave us a tour of their current projects, including Greek vases, pieces of furniture and architectural models.  It was amazing to see these objects in such a personal context.  The conservators did a great job of explaining the ins and outs of the work they do and I was amazed as they touched objects and moved parts of furniture with ease.  I’m not sure any of us noticed the time passing and were sad to leave.

Unfortunately, I did not bring my camera on this adventure, so I don’t have any pictures to share.  Our final museum seminars take us to the Publication Department, Prints and Drawings, and Photography.  I’m looking forward to the next week but am sad to see the end of the internship so near!

Around the Gallery: Bowditch’s Alphabet by Danh Vo

I chose to research and tour this artwork the first week I arrived at this internship. I wanted to tour with all different groups in the Contemporary galleries, not only because of my personal interest in the area, but also since many contemporary artists address issues that are extremely timely yet can be difficult to approach for the uninitiated viewer. The difficult part was choosing an artwork and figuring out a way to engage the concepts evoked through “looking  closely.” I was stumped until I turned the corner and saw Danh Vo’s Bowditch’s Alphabet (the above picture does not do the work justice). I knew the scale and installation of the work would fascinate a variety of audiences.

Since I had a hard time finding any critical writing on the artwork or the artist apart from the wall label, I leaned heavily on my own interpretations. I approached my lesson by focusing on the work’s installation and juxtaposition of materials. I have toured the piece with students numerous times and the response has ranged from curiosity to confusion. Each time I discuss the work with a new group more insights and questions come to the surface. Throughout the past few weeks, I continue to discover new meanings and return to it often to unravel its complexity. The juxtaposition of such incongruous materials–gold leaf applied to cardboard boxes used to ship condensed milk to Thailand– and the reference in the alphabet to a 19th-century system of navigation evoke the shipment of commodities between ports in the West and East, the commodification of cultural others, and the ways that these exchanges relate to historically colonial relations, all while reclaiming gold, often used in art-making to gild religious objects and temples, as a form of capital.

In relation to the artist’s biography, the work becomes even richer. As a child, after the Vietnam-American War, Danh Vo escaped Vietnam with his family on a humble craft made by his father. They were rescued at sea by a Dutch cargo ship which took them to Europe where they remained. Vo crossed the ocean to a new life on a ship that likely used the 19th-century system of navigation that he represents here. His personal experience of war, immigration, and cultural difference adds a layer to the work that combines commodity and immigrant in an unsettling way. The more time I spend with this artwork, the more its complex meanings unfold.

Marissa’s Fifth Week: What do you feel that makes you say that?

In the fifth week, a few of us had the opportunity to tour with a group of visually-impaired students. In preparing the tour, we wanted to focus activities on discovery in the same way we would with sighted students. This presented challenges but also opportunities to rethink how someone might use their other senses to experience art. The most direct experience came through touch.

Islands by Izumi Masatoshi

We received special permission to touch a sculpture by Izumi Masatoshi, a large installation piece of three pieces of Japanese Tohoku Basalt stone. The work is an arrangement of basalt rock that the artist . Though some students were initially hesitant to explore a rock (how boring!), once they began to follow the surface with their hands they found a mix of rough and sharp textures, cracks to follow to larger breaks in the rock, and smoother surfaces were the artist cut the rock. By following the crevice between they discovered that two parts of the sculpture fit together like puzzle pieces and concluded that they had once been the same rock.

The process of discovery was no different for them than for our sighted visitors. In experiencing the work, the students were encouraged to spend the time to explore and reflect on what they discovered and from the conversation with the group.

Ando Gallery

Visiting the Ando Gallery extended the exploration through touch to include their spatial sense. The gallery is designed by architect Tadao Ando. He designed the gallery based on traditional Japanese entryways. Sixteen oak pillars form a grid upon entering–the students explored their arrangement and texture by moving among them and feeling their texture. Immediately upon entering the gallery they noticed the dimmed light, the echo of my voice in the room, and the cooler temperature. The contrast from the other galleries in the museum was noticeable, and the different mood prompted reflection on the nature of the museum’s different spaces.

As a lover of visual art, I found developing a lesson for visually-impaired students challenging. However, it revealed to me how the the predominance of the visual can foreclose other types of sensual experiences that are available to all of us.

Movies in the Park!

Danielle, Jillian and Emily enjoying Grease!

Some of the interns took a break from planning tours and decided to attend the city of Chicago’s Movies in the Park!  We enjoyed some fresh air while belting out all the songs to Grease (it’s the word).

Kris and Mikey singing along.