This past week I was tasked with creating two scavenger hunts for the upcoming Memorial Day ceremony. Both scavenger hunts were centered around the 5 display cases in the Education Q-Hut on the site. The above image is a watch that was used in both scavenger hunts. The first one was solely a photo-based scavenger hunt where elementary-aged students are asked to match the picture with the artifact. The second version is meant for middle school-aged children who were given statements and needed to match the statement to the artifact (for example with the above watch: This would be great for a soldier to have on him so he can know what TIME it is.)
Internships Blog
Salem Museum
At this point in the culmination of all the research that Alex and I have done, it has finally come to putting the finishing touches on our exhibit. Alex let me take a whole cabinet (seen as attached) and put artifacts in it as a saw fit. I went for the souvenir theme that we had. I included items that were brought home from the war. I found things such as a Nazi dagger, Nazi helmet, and pamphlets that showed the way for soldiers around the town.
As Alex and I finished putting all the cases together, we began putting together our signs that we typed up. We have been going through and gluing the cardstock signs to foam core to mount them. I also have been finishing up the labels for the smaller items that visitors may not be able to identify. At the end of this week we should have everything put together and ready to open at the beginning of next week.
Salem Museum
The last few weeks I have spent working on an exhibit based on souvenirs that were brought back from World War II. I have done multiple days of research in local newspapers between 1945 and 1950. I have organized events that were going on in Salem and Roanoke into a timeline that I have submitted into Alex Burke, who is the assistant director of the museum, to look over. While he was checking my timeline out, I was combing through the museum software, past perfect, for photos that we can use for the exhibit. Also, I began to go through physical photo catalogues that were left over from some local history books.
After Alex was able to approve my work with the local timeline, I got to work finalizing the timeline and labeling what he thought were the most important facts I had found into a final timeline. While I was working on that, I was also typing up the original articles that the major information came from. We are shooting to finish this up and have it ready in a few weeks.
The National D-Day Memorial: Massive Book Sale Fundraiser
This past week at the National D-Day Memorial our biggest task was to help prepare and carry out a large book sale. The sale included hundreds of books that were donated to the Memorial by a long time donor and due to a need for more storage, the book sale was created. My part in helping prepare for the book sale was ensuring that each book was in its correct location (ex. D-Day, Axis Nations, Allied Nations, miscellaneous etc.) During the coming days of the book sale, I met many donors and board members, as well as interact with a handful of patrons who were seemingly just visiting to tour the Memorial but ended up purchasing a book or tow as well. All books were marked down and all funds went directly to the Memorial.
Salem Museum Post 2
During these last two weeks, Alex Burke and I have collaborated on going through newspapers to give an idea on what was going on back home in Salem and Roanoke during World War II. At this point today, we have finished the research from the newspapers and are beginning to look how to frame this information in a concise but informative manner. Since there is a lot of information we gathered from these newspapers, the biggest challenge we face is keeping the write ups for the exhibit short. We also want to avoid cutting out important events too, so this has been a tough task for us so far.
With the write ups being planned and put together, I have been working on using the museum’s software to look in the archives for artifacts that I feel would make sense to be used in the exhibit. I have mainly focused on local items that tie Salem in with World War II. These consist of pamphlets of high school football games that have a mention of it, or just slice of life items that shows where people of the time’s heads were at. Next, the plan is to start accessioning these items, which I will be learning here shortly.
The National D-Day Memorial: Robert “Bob” Slaughter Exhibit
My first three weeks as an intern at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia have gone quite well and I have already had my hands on a plethora of different things. This semester I will be doing a multitude small projects as well as one large project for the memorial. Smaller projects will consist of working on research questions, learning how to give tours, and other miscellaneous projects. The larger project is helping the staff put together a commemorative video that will be about 40 minutes long as it is the memorial’s 20 year anniversary this year.
Below is a photo of an exhibit I helped finalize this past week. The exhibit is in honor of Robert “Bob” Slaughter who was a D-Day veteran himself from Roanoke, Virginia and helped spring the Memorial into action. Putting together the exhibit consisted of finding photographs from the archives, as well as artifacts such as Bob’s blazer and hard hat, and creating caption cards for each artifact/picture. I feel very fortunate and honored to have created this exhibit as Bob sadly passed away in 2012.
Salem Museum Internship
During my first week at the museum I spent time going through all the exhibits there with Mr. Burke and talking about what worked with them and what did not. We discussed lighting and the flow of the exhibits. We also addressed how to funnel people through the exhibits to keep people moving along. We payed special attention to the Biggs exhibit. I had felt that it was the best put together one with the proper amount of lighting and flow that made sense. Mr. Burke had also told me that they had recently repainted the room to so it really warmed the room up a little bit. So, the first two weeks were spent learning about exhibits and how we feel they should be setup.
The first two weeks helped me transition into my current project that I am working on with Mr. Burke. We are currently doing research on World War 2 souvenirs. We are going to create a large exhibit on the souvenirs that the soldiers brought back as well as a timeline of things that were going on here in Salem and Roanoke from 1945-1950. The photo I have included on this post is one of the newspapers that I am looking at for the chronology. I am going month by month and picking out interesting events to put on the timeline we are creating. Soon, we will be looking to identify souvenirs that the museum may have to put out for this exhibit.
Taubman Museum of Art Post 5
I have finished my internship with the Taubman and it has been a wonderful experience over the last two weeks. I didn’t realize how much went into the organizational side to museum work and all of the jobs that are generated from those needed roles. I’m excited to witness how the work I have contributed is used in future exhibitions particularly in the George Washington spotlight and the Goode exhibition that will be installed in January-February.
To finish up my internship I placed the finishing touches and edits on all my writing and made sure that every artist I was working on had a length bio to accompany it. When all my writing was edited I uploaded it to a google doc folder to be sent out to be printed and displayed on the gallery walls.
Taubman Museum of Art Post 4
Today has been my final day of my internship at the Taubman. Recently most of my time has been spent working on the educational resources for use by the institution. Due to COVID local schools are not going to be going to the museum physically to participate in these learning activities. Therefore, the resources that I had to develop involved sending the resources to do the educational art making at home.
I spent a majority of my time combing through the various SOLs for Virginia schools to see what I could use to base my program around. Eventually I ended up using a piece titled Other Rooms, by Jacob Lawrence as the source material. The educational resource I created then involved students choosing a period from history and like Lawrence (who used 1940s Harlem) create a street scene from that period. To do so they could add figures either in a collage style, by cutting and pasting or if they rather they could draw figures in their historical street-scene.
Taubman Museum of Art Post 3
Finalizing last weeks work on the George Washington exhibition I was joined this week by a fellow intern. Together we began the research process on an upcoming gallery that was to house works from prominent African American artists. The two artists that the museum asked us to conduct research on were Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence. I received Lawrence as my artist to research and began the research project.
The gallery, when it opens, will be showing two pieces by Lawrence specifically, The Prayer and Other Rooms. To begin my research I had to write an extensive biography on the life, influences, and artistic/historical culture that helped to mold Lawrence. Following the biography I had to round up books written by artists and researchers on Lawrence and add them to an artist’s document. Next I took the two pieces that were slated to be displayed and wrote descriptions for them, so that the gallery has a more user-friendly option for those who are visually impaired.