mestaton

11/9

After putting all of the objects from the Gen. Guy Denit exhibit back into the archives. I started my work on object placement and adjusting the size for the signage. Nothing is set in stone yet but I am liking the current progress in these photos. I am looking into some digital interaction as well although on a very small scale. Not only am I working on this exhibit but I also made a video with Mr. Alex Burke for the Salem Museum’s White Glove Wednesday where I got to talk about Flapper Dresses in the 1920s and how they are a fashion choice based on new social and economic reforms for women. I was very nervous of the idea that my face would be on the museums Facebook page for all to see, but it helped me with communication and oral presentation, so there’s a silver lining to that.

11/11

The Grace Smyth Exhibit is almost complete, finishing up the signage and getting everything onto the wall properly is all that’s really left. I am pretty proud in how this turned out. Although I had two weeks to complete this one rather than nearly two months, I really wanted to show off everything Grace Smyth has done for Salem. I feel that she deserves it being an amazing natural artistic and educator for many years, more and more locals have come in telling me brief stories about how they were in her classes.

 

After finishing my small exhibit on Victorian mourning attire, Mr. Burke wanted me to gain more experience in exhibition design, since it seemed to interest me as a future career. I was told that I could really chose any topic I wanted, and after volunteering for the annual Ghost Tour, I decided to present my topic on Grace Smyth. Grace Smyth was a local artist, naturalist and education who taught children from her own home as one of Salem’s first museums. I felt that she was someone who deserved more recognition for her talents and kind deeds for the city of Salem. Her art mainly focuses around nature in the form of paintings, sketches and sculptures.

As a student who is interested in Art History and Public History, I found that it was a great way to practice some of my skills in sort of both ways. I also know that her home being Salem’s first museum is also as important to Salem’s History, although not too much is known about her outside of her art and education backgrounds, the more I learn the more of a interesting women she seemed to be. I wish that I had the chance to meet such a person, sadly I was nowhere to being born in 1994.

 

In working with the Salem Museum I have come to appreciate everything I have been working on both big and small. After completing my exhibit, Mr. Burke is allowing me to put in some recently donated objects into the Past Perfect database for listing accession numbers, writing descriptions and other necessary information into the software and sorting things in the archives. Luckily of me my first group of items were art related. The donor gave us some artwork by Grace Smyth, a local Salem artist. We were given a few paintings and small animal sculptures, my personal favorite being the larger frog sculpture.  It just amazes me how someone can transform clay into something so lifelike. I hope to learn more about her as the semester progresses and to maybe do some personal research around her art.  I have a very love-hate relationship with Past Perfect as the software is defiantly useful but also very slow, becoming more and more slow as new artifacts are add to the database. I wish that were able to add more photographs but to my understanding that would make the software run even less efficiently. Some people might not be as fond of this process as I am but I find it fairly enjoyable.

 

In light of 2020, the Salem Museum needed to make some changes as to its presentation of its annual Ghost Walk. Rather than having its normal tour along the cemeteries of Salem the museum decided that it would be safer to have the Ghost Walk in the form of a play. My supervisor Alex Burke, played himself as he introduced local historical figures as if they were ghosts coming up to the world of the living for an annual get together. This year was not only the annual Ghost Walk, but also the 300th Birthday of local Salem celebrate General Andrew Lewis. The overall plot of the performance was the celebration of General Lewis’ birthday by means of other local figures presenting him with gifts as he told his life story. Other “Ghosts” also gave some historical insight to Salem as early as the 1700’s to as recent as the 1930’s.

I helped set up the location and hand out tickets along with other volunteers. A few of my friends even came to the performance and I think overall it was both enjoyable for the audience and a successful event.

 

Even though the exhibit is very small I am still learning a lot about exhibit design. Mr. Burke and I are going back and forth on how objects can be placed and how images can be sized to fit and be laid out properly.Sometimes things are moved around the display case, sometimes things are put in other times things are best removed all together. My signs where textual information is displayed are also being proofread. It is a very interesting experience for sure.  My topic of mourning in both the Victorian Era and the Civil war ties in perfectly with the upcoming Ghost Walk performance. Getting to see images of beautiful black gowns is has been very enjoyably as well as handling various collars, veils and shawls from the archive. To think that one funeral started a majority of western funeral culture and possibly Gothic fashion as a whole.

As an intern, I still get a certain amount of busywork to offset the more fun actives. I can’t complain. I cut up information cards and put them into ornament boxes for this years Christmas ornament about General Andrew Lewis after Ms.Frances looked over them. There were two large boxes and it took the majority of my time today. Sometimes busy work that doesn’t take a lot of brain power can be relaxing to me, so I didn’t mind at all to take out my frustrations out onto info. cards and ornament boxes.

In working with the Salem Museum both remotely and in person, I have worked on small tasks and  continuing to work on larger scaled projects. I finished up doing research from the 1955 issues of The Roanoke Times , taking my notes on everything I could find and typing them up for Mr. Burke to look over. I also started to work on writing the information card for the Salem Museum’s annual Christmas ornament. The figure represented this year was General Andrew Lewis. Since I am not a Salem local it was interesting to see how he and his family impacted so much of Salem and Virginia history. General Lewis served in both the Revolutionary War and the French and Indian War. His father founded the town of Staunton Virginia and both he and his brother founded what is now Washington and Lee University.

As for larger projects, Mr. Burke is allowing me to make my own small scale-exhibition. This project has really excited me as I am learning for myself how objects are placed and how exhibitions are laid out. Being in ta more spooky mood, I decided to do my exhibition on mourning attire in the Victorian Era to the late Civil War as the museum had some fabrics, accessories and garments to work with. I also thought this exhibit would complement the upcoming Ghost Tour on October 16th. Depending on the choices of space and not overcrowding topics I was thinking about adding information on the local graveyards and ghost stories.