rapeabody

My final project at the museum was to make my own exhibit, mine was about cookbooks. Exciting, I know. But when we got an old cookbook, The New Dixie Cook-Book, I felt connected to (who as far as we know) the original owner. I came with recipes written on scrap paper and newspaper clippings of recipes from columnist Mrs. Dull. After picking my theme I was given an older version in the Dixie Cook-Book series, The Unrivaled Dixie Cook-Book. I researched both books and Mrs. Dull, transcribed one of the hand written recipes, one of Mrs. Dull’s recipes, and a recipe from each of the books. I printed out copies of the later three for people to take with them to try and cook at home.

I made signs for each book with a brief description of both and a sign about Mrs. Dull. To make the table more pleasing I also used old cooking utensils and put a table cloth down that fit with the southern home cooking theme of the exhibit. To show the viewers what made the cookbook interesting to me in the first place I hung the hand written recipes and newspaper recipes on the wall. I named my exhibit “Southern Home Cooking.”

A box of letters from the 1918 were donated to the museum. My job was to go read them and pull out certain ones that were interesting. The letters originally belonged to the Whitescarver family; a family native to Salem. Their son Rob was stationed in France during WWI. During his time away from home he wrote letters to his mother, father, and three sisters. He died shortly before the war ended, but his friends in his unit continued to write his family and inform them, as much as they could, about Rob’s accident. Some of the boys even formed close friendships with Rob’s mother. So I read all of the letters and put them into multiple different groups (as you can see in the picture below). I pulled aside letters Rob wrote to his parents, letters Rob’s friends wrote to his mother, letters the army sent to the Whitescarver family, and letters of condolence sent to the family after Rob’s death.

The letter will be transcribed by another person, who can read cursive better than I can, and will be used in a future exhibit in the museum. I really did enjoy going through the letters and getting a superficial connection to this family. I felt a lot of different emotions while reading the letters that I didn’t expect. Especially after reading the army letters describing how Rob died and after I did further research on Rob and the rest of the Whitescarver family; he was so close to coming home and was the first of fifteen Salem boys to die during the war.

I finished making the signs for the Courthouse Portraits this week. This included cutting them down, gluing them on foam board, cutting the foam board, and finally putting up the finished signs. My least favorite step was cutting the foam board, I was given the a lot of freedom when it came to the design and layout of the signs; this freedom included deciding if I wanted to use foam board backing. In the end I did use the foam board because the signs looked better on it than they did just stuck to the wall alone. This was an annoying process because I was terrible at cutting the foam board out and had to reprint, re-cut and re-glue six of the signs on to the foam board and then re-cut the foam board. But after my second attempt I was finally ready to hang all of the signs up.                   Hanging the sings was the best and most rewarding part of this entire process, I used sticky tack to attach the signs to the wall and got to chose where the signs were put. The best part was fitting the signs between the two portraits pictured. Because of the closeness of the two portraits I was not left with much room to place the signs at a level that would be pleasing to viewers.  Putting the signs in between the portraits worked out better than I previously thought when I was planning out the sign layout before I printed the signs.

 

For the past few weeks I have been working on making new signs for the Courthouse pictures hanging in the third floor stair way. This has been a learning experience, the process has thus far included doing a lot of research on the 1910 Roanoke County Courthouse (which is now our campus’ West build) and the people in the portraits that were commissioned for it’s opening. After my research was complete and fact checked by one of the directors, Fran, I began typing up short bios on the men and a brief introduction of the 1910 Courthouse. This is where most of my struggles began, for when making sign for a museum is not like writing a research paper. You have to pick information that describes the subject enough for viewers to be able to understand its relevance, while at the same time not putting too much information which may bore them. After more checks from Fran I was finally able to design what the signs would look like, this was a process in it self but was fun to put my own spin on the layout of the signs.

Pictured below is a rough draft of one of my designs, it is not very flashy but I didn’t want to put too much and distract viewers from the actual exhibit. In the future the signs will have a cream colored background. And once they get the final okay from Fran I will begin the final process of hanging up the signs!     

My first full week of interning at the museum was mind opening; I would like to work in a museum after I graduate so I was really excited to find that I truly do enjoy the occupation. My first day I was asked to go threw each exhibit and take notes on what I liked and what I would change. And after I was done I was asked about my opinions, this made me think about how exhibits should be set up and how important having a good flow to the room was. You want to make sure that people go around and look at the exhibit in the right way so people will understand what you were trying to put across when you put it together.
My second day consisted of more of behind the scenes work, I spent most of my day in the archives looking through folders of old newspapers, books, and articles and was taught about accessioning items for the museum. One of the things I found most interesting was the book about female diseases written in the in the 1820’s. I also was shown how to wrap each item in a specific type of paper and how to box them up and then where to the item after it it was wrapped up. I was also taught how to use past perfect and spent the majority of my third day putting the items in the system.