kjallen

I recently finished up my internship at the Salem Museum, and it was a very sad time for me.  I achieved the goals that I wanted to achieve, and learned a lot about what it is like to do museum work.  I took on this internship because I wanted to explore the idea of this being a possible career for me.  This internship has made it my #1 goal to do museum work after I graduate college do to the outstanding experience I had.  I realized how much I had learned in my time working with Alex when I was making my own exhibit during my final days at the museum.  Of course Tyler and other museum staff were there to help, but I felt confident in my skills to do research, use past perfect, and make a presentable exhibit.  I really feel like I came along distance in my abilities to operate in a professional setting and the various different aspects needed in doing museum work, and it all came back to me while making the exhibit.  It makes me feel sad that my time at the museum is ending, because going to my internship was my favorite part of the semester, so I hope that soon I can be back doing work in a museum.

This is my Exhibit on Mt. Regis as it neared completion.

My internship at the Salem museum has been going well.  We have mostly been working on planning and implementing the museum wide christmas toys exhibit.  There has been a lot of help from the community, with donations of old toys streaming in.  Me and Tyler personally did the boys toys case and having been spent a lot of time building tinker toys into some of the designs on the manual.  I never expected to spend this much time playing with toys while working at the museum, and i’m not going to complain about it.  It has been super interesting to see old versions of toys that i grew up playing with, like a monopoly game styled off of the local area, or old toy soldiers that were hand made from wood and then lovingly painted.  We also spent a lot of time working on a model train set that normally would be placed under a tree, but this year will be located in the museum.  I am super excited for the exhibit to be done, because we have already had some kids come and play with the toys.  I think that museums often lack interactivity and care more about preservation than sharing the knowledge gathered.  I think the  event is going to be popular and attract a lot of visitors in, where they will not only learn about toys but about the rest of the history stored inside.  On a side note, I am no longer accessioning things (something I do not hate or really enjoy) so that the future intern can focus on their curatorial skills.

Cool Decorative doorknob donated to the museum.

I had meant to do this post before the break but never got around to actually finishing it due to all the craziness surrounding midterms.  A large part of our time at the museum the weeks before break involved us preparing for the extremely popular Ghost walk event.  Luminaries had to made, costumes be found and deep storage, and parts of the museum rearranged for the community weekend. I also helped get some members of the historical society at Roanoke involved to get some much needed volunteer work at the event. Unfortunately I was not able to participate because I left early Friday and did not return to late Sunday during East hills ghost walk, and was at home during the performance at Sherwood.  Our next big project is the Christmas toys exhibit, which will be a an event that sees the entire museum turned into a interactive experience about Christmas’ past.

I have been having a lot of fun working at the museum this semester, I honestly look forward to going in every Wednesday.  People in the community can be very passionate about local history and it feels great to share it with them.  It has surprised me how lively the museum is, from the outside the seem like silent stuffy places, but the constant stream of community involvement and friendly people makes every day special and fun.  There is also a lot of satisfaction gained when the events go well, which they all have since I have started. I am also becoming more and more comfortable with using past perfect and finding things within the museum collection.  Its not my favorite task, but Accessioning items into the collection is something I am now comfortable doing on my own. (most of the time)

While prepping for the next exhibit we decided that a Hoop and Stick was a good representation of  pre 1900’s toys, naturally we had to figure out how to actually play with it.

My first few weeks at the Salem Museum have been a great experience.  We have constantly been preparing for new exhibits and events, making signs and putting new display cases together.  The Roanoke College exhibit was exciting to work on because of the sheer amount of information that I have learned about my school while working.  There is a lot of History and interesting archive pictures that I knew nothing about.  I have also been able to meet a few Roanoke college Alums who were more than happy to share the crazy college stories they had in their youth.  The Proudest moment for me was the Sports case that me and Tyler helped put together.  We spent a lot of time trying to make the perfect design and in the end I was really happy with how the case, and exhibit as a whole, turned out.

The Roanoke Sports Display case right after we finished getting everything just right.