Starting my first internship with the Taubman Museum of Art has been very interesting, I’ve gotten to work with students from Roanoke as well as schools like Virginia Tech and Radford. I was a little nervous since this was my first internship but I learned relatively quickly. It is great to do your own research and have group members (we were mostly split into groups of three) to bounce off ideas from. Not only are Ms.Beckner and Ms.King very nice but each day we have gotten to do interviews with various Museum staff and hear their stories of how they started to work at the Museum and what they do. On day two we did a Zoom meeting with the Museums volunteer group and got to make collages together, which was a nice break from constantly looking a a computer for research and typing up notes into a group google document.
I have really enjoyed the internship thus far as the focus of my research includes art conservation more precisely the conservation and upkeep of tapestries. This is my first time doing work with any form of embroidery or fiber art which is particularly fascinating in how these pieces are unkempt and prevented from any form of further damage. These tapestries are usually repaired and delicately washed before being hung for viewers. Everyone I have worked with both inside and outside of my group known as the “ Periwinkles” have been very enthusiastic and excited to know more about the tapestries meaning, history and conservation. The students that I am working with are not limited to History or Art History in fact there are fine arts students and even STEM students working with us . I am very excited to learn as much as I can about this tapestry: The Virtues of Charity and Prudence.
Internships Blog
Fifth Internship Blog Post
Hi All! This post marks both the end of the Spring 2020 semester and the end of my internship duties. Despite the difficulties of this semester, I can truly say that I was able to finish my internship strong and that I produced an educational resource that will be used by the Center for Teaching the Rule of Law to teach about (you guessed it!) the rule of law. I have learned a lot during this semester especially about Magna Carta and the rule of law, but also about communication and carrying out research. My final project turned out to be a massive PowerPoint detailing the importance of Magna Carta in relation to the British Government, the United States Government, and the rule of law. This PowerPoint will be posted on the Center for Teaching the Rule of Law’s website and it will be used by both the Center and other educators as an educational resource to teach college-age and above students.
Similar to how Magna Carta states that the king is not above the law, the rule of law implies that everyone is bound by the law. The rule of law continues to teach this principle that everyone must be held accountable for their actions that was originally set forth in Magna Carta. Magna Carta was important because it was the first legal document to establish that everyone, including the king, must obey the law. Today this idea is carried out by teaching and upholding the rule of law. It is essential that everyone respect and obey the law and by teaching this concept to students it helps ensure that they will hold governmental figures accountable. Magna Carta and the rule of law both imply that everyone is bound by the law and by teaching these two principles together the importance of them is doubly enforced.
Fourth Internship Blog Post
Hi all! This week I have been researching Magna Carta’s influence on the American government. It has been argued that Magna Carta had an even more monumental influence on the United States’ founding documents than it has had on the British government. Most of Magna Carta’s importance to the U.S is its assertion that individual citizens have fundamental rights that cannot be infringed upon by the government. The U.S. Bill of Rights asserts this importance as do many of the U.S. state constitutions which incorporate declarations of citizen’s fundamental rights. Some of the guarantees in these documents that descended from Magna Carta include a citizen’s right to a jury trial and freedom from unlawful searches.
This past couple of weeks I have started finishing up this project. I have been condensing my research and adding it together and have started putting it into a PowerPoint. I am planning on making a short informational video with a condensed version of my research as well as a more thorough and complete PowerPoint. These will give a brief overview of the history of Magna Carta, the importance of Magna Carta to the British government, the importance of Magna Carta to the U.S. government, as well as a section detailing how the rule of law connects to Magna Carta. Both of these will be used as educational resources by the Center for Teaching the Rule of Law.
Third Internship Blog Post
Hi all! Today I am posting from my makeshift desk in my truck, as you can see from the above picture! With Roanoke College’s move to online classes in response to the COVID19 pandemic, I have had to improvise and adapt my internship as well. I live in the middle of nowhere and WIFI at my home is not very reliable, so right now I am sitting in the parking lot of a closed coffee shop connecting to their internet. With everywhere closing and everyone practicing social distancing everyone has to make changes for the safety of all, that being said this is not how I was planning on finishing my Senior year, but we must persist!
This change has been somewhat difficult for my internship, but I am hoping to still be able to finish my Magna Carta project adequately. While the past couple of weeks have been challenging I have tried to continue my research without interruption as much as possible. In my last post, I discussed how I was researching how Magna Carta influenced the British government. I have continued that research and also started researching how Magna Carta has influenced the United States Government. I hope to wrap up my project within the next few weeks and create a finished product that I am proud of!
Second Internship Post
Since my last blog post, I have been doing a lot of research on Magna Carta. Magna Carta is a charter that was drafted in 1215 by Britain’s King John in response to a group of barons asking for their rights to be documented in a legal form. Since then Magna Carta has influenced many governmental systems and documents around the world, including the United States Bill of Rights. The charter was not incredibly influential when it was first written, but since then it has become the basis for many important documents.
This week I have mainly been reading a lot of books and articles on the history of Magna Carta, but I have also started researching how Magna Carta has influenced the British government. Magna Carta’s influence on the British government was not as monumental as its influence on the founding of the United States government. This idea is going to form the base of my PowerPoint in which I plan to compare and contrast how and why these two differ. I have also been considering, and speaking with the director of the Center, about looking into how Magna Carta influenced other governments that had once been under English control; I think it will be interesting to see how Magna Carta influenced other English colonized countries.
First Internship Post
This is the first of many posts I will make regarding my current internship and as such, it may be just a little bit lengthy. I am interning at the Center for Teaching the Rule of Law which is an on-campus group that, as you can gather from the title, teaches the rule of law and provides resources to teachers on the subject. While interning here I am going to be working on compiling and creating just such a resource. My primary task at the Center is to create a PowerPoint presentation detailing how Magna Carta influenced the United States constitution. I am also going to explore why/how Magna Carta has influenced the American government more so than the British Government and also how it has influenced the constitutions of other countries governing documents.
For the past week, my internship duties have been mainly researching and becoming familiar with the rule of law and Magna Carta. The director of the center has given me plenty of reading to do and it has occupied most of my time. I have mainly been reading research papers on the rule of law by Brian Tamanaha, as well as The Rule of Law by Tom Bingham (who are both experts on the topic). I have also done quite a bit of research on Magna Carta. One thing I found very interesting and helpful was a lecture by A.E. Howard about Magna Carta on the Virginia Museum of History and Culture’s website; I am also reading a book by Howard about Magna Carta that I think will be very useful in relating Magna Carta to the individual governmental documents. For my PowerPoint, I think I would mainly like to focus on how Magna Carta influenced the U.S. constitution and why/how Magna Carta has influenced the American government more so than the British Government. I think the best way to organize the PowerPoint would be to have several sections addressing the different topics. So as a tentative starting point it could look something like 1. What is Magna Carta/history of Magna Carta, 2. How Magna Carta influenced the American government (this would probably be the biggest section and would need its own subsections), 3. Influence, or lack of, Magna Carta on English government and why this differs from America, 4. Why this is important/conclusion. As I get further into the research I will probably add a few more sections to this.
Time to Move on
My internship has finally ended. After four months, I’ve finally finished working at the Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation. It has been a wild ride with mountains of work and the chaos of summer classes. I spent the last few days of my internship working on the Endangered sites list and did nothing for the Greenbooks sites. I can safely say the most important thing I learned from this internship is any historical preservation foundation has a lot of work that needs to be done and few hands to do it. The second most important thing I learned from this internship is the colloquial language of the historical preservation field.
I didn’t add many sites to the list. Instead, I went back to the old listings and filled in the blanks I still had. The status of each site is the most common update I did to most listings. The sites were either listed as saved, lost, or endangered. The Greenbooks project would have had me go the Roanoke City Main Library and look at their records to figure out the locations of old Greenbook sites. I was also supposed to contact the Salem Museum for assistance. From the list RVPF gave me, there was tourist homes, restaurants, and attractions for traveling African Americans of the time. I was never able to make it the library due to other projects for the internship, summer vacation, summer classes, and family. With school in session, I need to start focusing on my last semester and say goodbye to the RVPF. I’m thankful for the opportunity they gave me and I hope I’ll run into them in the future.
the LAST week at the Salem Museum
One of the most important things when you design exhibitions is understanding the new visitors’ perspectives. For 6 weeks, I had looked around all the exhibitions whenever I have free time, and I could understand them deeply and see the mutual relationships among the exhibitions. However, it is hard to expect that new audiences could get that kind of sound understanding of exhibitions.
After interns had come here, the exhibitions improved a lot in terms of participatory. Compare to before, I believe that a broader age group can enjoy the exhibition. (I know this is totally off-topic, but I always wonder why the physically-engaged experience booths are only for kids. I want to know if elderly are really not interested in that kind of thing or they are.)
As basic information about the Salem museum had already updated on the Salem museum website, I tried to give visitors more delicate and detailed stories than that. But at the same time, I hoped that people would not pass by them because of the overwhelming amount of information. (Also, it was hard to find what is the right amount of the signs because I only could use the two walls for my own exhibitions. Also, the wall was located beside the stairs. *_*…) Anyway, I wanted to let visitors understand the big context of the history of the house at least, so I added subtitles for it.
Also, It was uneasy to picking the right pictures and artworks for the small exhibition. I had to compromise to myself and the process helped me to figure out the most effective way to make up the exhibitions. Thanks to Alex, I could hang a high-quality picture for my small exhibition.
I know that it is a scarce chance to have experience in a local museum as an undergraduate student. And it helped me a lot to decide my career. As interested in gentrification and urban revitalization, it was happy to read all the stories of how the old building could survive with the spontaneous efforts of the local people.
Working in the Salem Museum was not always perfectly happy and joyful, but I can say that I learned a lot. I could feel that my supervisor tried to figure out what I am interested in and docents and other interns tried to help me and considerate the uneasiness that I had to confront all the time because of my English. Everyone in the museum was so kind and ready to give me practical and useful advice. For these reasons, if you are hesitating to work in the museum, I highly recommend you to do an internship at the Salem Museum!
p.s. if you have any hard time with making signs with glue spray, try to use glue stick!
Finishing Touches and the Scavenger Hunt to End All Scavenger Hunts
At this point in the internship the focus was set on getting all the finishing touches laid out and completed for the fire exhibit. Most of the pictures and signs were already up so what was left was mostly cleaning and last minute touches. All of the display cases were wiped down, the floor was swept (though I wasn’t the one who did that, not trying to take un-due credit), and my boss jokingly threatened to make me wear a smokey bear costume for the entire opening day. While all of this was taking place, I also got what was probably the most fun assignment I received while I was working. I was told to create a scavenger hunt for museum. I was given free reign to use whatever I wanted for it, so I enjoyed myself. It only took me around an hour to make, but as I said it was a good time. There were a few gimme questions, but there were a couple that were particularly difficult. In one case we have a picture of a man named Abraham Hupp on every single floor of the museum and part of the hunt was to find all of them. Without too much of a history lesson, Hupp was a tinsmith, inventor, and he organized the Salem Flying Artillery, who fired the last shot of the civil war, though Hupp died before then. One of Hupp’s more notable creations was the first “fire truck” Salem ever had, even though it was a push cart with a hand operated pump. Anyway, the scavenger hunt had all sorts of questions on it and when I looked through the ones people filled out I was quite pleased. Not a single person completed completely correctly. The closes were a couple kids who missed on question about how many paintings by Grace Smyth there were on the first floor.
Nearly Done
My internship is finally about to end. I’ve spent the past month buried in paperwork. I haven’t been able to work on the Greenbooks project due to the amount of work needed for the Endangered Sites list. The RVPF basically wants me to turn decades of records into one Excel spreadsheet. They even told me I was never expected to finish the project due to how much work there is. At least I don’t have to do research for the “interpretive markers” now.
This project has been anything but bad. It’s a lot of work but beats doing nothing in a museum for hours on end. Here is what I need to use to make my spreadsheet: 20+ emails, a couple folders full of old records, hand written documents that have faded, and old reports from the 90s and early 2000s. If that sounds lot, that’s because it is! According to my spreadsheet, I’m only at 171 historical sites and almost all of that comes from the emails. By the time of I need to turn the assignment in, maybe I’ll get to the first page in one of the folders.