knsteele

For my last week I research some more and finally completed my two exhibts. I researched the salem fire and police stations, the Municipal building, and Mount Regis center. Unfortunetly I could not find a much on the fire and police stations. However, the other two where very easy to research. I found out the the Municipal is the modern day Admissions building for Roanoke College and was used as a place for the town concil to meet. Mount Regis was a center for rehabilitating people with drug and alcohol addiction. It unfortunetly burned down in 2016.

The two exhibts I was working on throught out my internship were the Courthouse and the yearbooks from the 60’s. On my two last days I put the finishing touches on both of those. For the Courthouse I scaned the pictures and learned house to glue and cut out the pictures and the plaque. For the yearbook one I scanned the picture and plased them in the case. Unfortunetly, I did not have enough time to print out the plaque I wrote for that exhibt, but it should be put up in the next few days. Overall, this internship has taught me how a museum works. I relized that a job like this is one I could see myself doing in the future.

This week I set up my exhibt. For the first few days I was still looking for artifacts and researching the Old Salem Courthouse’s history. After I did that I went looking for the actual artifacts. I ended up finding an old oil painting, a picture of a group of men outside the side enterance of the building, and invatation from Roanoke College inviting people to the opening of the courthouse as an academic building and a bunch of postcards of it. I then started setting up my case.

I did this with out any help and I found it quite fun. I got to be creative with my placements and the story I decided to tell with my plaque. I set up the case with the oil painting and the plack in the back and then having the group picture on an elevated surface aswell as the post cards. I then put the invatation flat on the table. This make the case more 3 dimentional and more intreginig to look at.

This week we finaly started on setting up the new exhibit. This exhibit is showcasing a lot of the historcal spots around Salem this include the parks, the tannery, the pharmacys, and many more places. I also finished looking for more artifacts from places like Dixie Caverns and Point Pleasant house to put in their. I also started doing research for my own case that I get to currate by myself. I desided to do it on the Old Salem Courhouse which is now West Hall at Roanoke College today. I am also am still looking through yearbooks when I have spare time and helped with a field trip again.

One thing I learned while researching my own topic is that it is hard to find one with enough content and artifactes to use. I searched historical buildings for a while until I settled on the Old Salem Courthouse. Still there is not much their on that building either. But, I’m glad I researched it because most of my classes are in that building and I wanted to find out everything that happened their.

The past two weeks I have been looking through the archive of the museum to help set up for a new exibit they are curating. I looked for artifacts on the old Tannery, local pharmacys, old castle, Salem bicentennial, and plaseant grove. I also helped out with a field trip that came to the museum. Doing all this research on salems historical bulidings is super interesting to me and is further developing my reserch skills.

I have also been doing some light research on women in the gilded age. The director of the museum is wanting to revamp one of the exihibits that shows what a room in the brown house, which is where the museum is located, would have looked like in that time period. In the gilded age at least two of the daughters in the house would have been off courting age. She asked me to look into what their dating lives would have been like. She also asked me to look thought some of the local highschool’s and Roanoke College’s year books from the 60s to get a sence of their style and to mark pages that desplayed that. I am going to put these pages in the lobby to show Salem in the 60s

This week I just learned about the inner workings of a museum. On the first day I went through a tour of the museum. I walked through all the exhibits and archives rooms. I picked out what I did and did not like about the exhibits. This was done to teach me to see what looks good and what doesen’t the the casual veiwer.

After that I started some research on the salem greenway, Longwood, Lake Spring, and Greenhill park. After I finished up this research I worked on condensing the information into 100 words or less to practive putting it on plaques. These will be used later in the new exhibit that are making. It was also done to teach me how to summarize all this information and become better and making the plaques. Next, I learned how to log items into the archive system and look them up. Overall this frist week has gotten me excited for whats coming in the next 5 weeks.