ylee

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!

It is impossible to convey every single story and fact that the exhibition designer knows into limited space. I knew this though, it was painful to diminish or delete what I knew and what I wanted to deliver to visitors. It is because, in my opinion, the exhibition should not be a kind of an encyclopedia that simply lists facts in a boring way. Rather, it should be a medium dragging public to interact with and pay attention to the stories. When I asked Alex what is the “important” or “valuable” facts that should be shown for visitors, his answer was “the stories that the visitors can be connected to or sympathize with.” It’s still abstract but gave me a new insight.

While I was looking for valuable pictures that would be used for the exhibition, I had to deal with Past Perfect again. Well, looking for artifacts and pictures through the program was much more pleasant than finding the real stuff in storages and archives. Even though I could find the accession numbers, I could not figure out where they were. Things that I was looking for were usually not in the place where Past perfect said they should be!! I was so annoyed and I’m sure I ate a bunch of dirt in the storage :D… After more than 3 hours of hiding and seek in the dusty storage, I gave up looking for things and just scanned pictures from old newspapers in the archives. Whenever I could find out the things and see and touch them, it was like digging out some treasures.

 

 

I was asked to scan and edit some of the pictures from yearbooks that I had worked through before. Simple work, no need to use my brains, at all.

Besides that, even though I was not fully charged in other exhibitions, I helped other interns work on preparing a new one. I could feel how much they take care of visual effects and flows to deliver their intentions and messages to visitors.

Writing signs is quite different from that of normal essays. Considering that visitors are not ‘very’ patient, (To be honest, I don’t even want to read more than 4 lines while looking around exhibitions) the signs should draw their attention quickly, but in a clear way. After four times of confirms and editing, I could finish my writing.

It’s not always hectic or busy to work in the museum. Whenever I got bored, I tried to have a conversation with docents and listen to what they say. They are experts in the local histories. They helped me write signs and confirmed new facts that I had dug up from archives. Also, sometimes whenever looking for some resources, they were more precise and better than looking things into Past-perfect.

From the second week to the first day of the fourth week, I have worked on making timeline and writing essays of the William-Brown house, the building of Salem Museum itself. When I was asked to work on this, I was wondering why I should do this, because it is so obvious that there should be some records or charts already had done before. Also, everyone can read some explanations on the website. Unfortunately, I heard from one of docents that prior executive director had been working on it, but Fran said she had no idea with any left data or organized records. Well, I would prefer to work on excel or visual thing that I can see the outcome directly. But It was still exciting to read through all the resources, not only articles but old ads, censure records and other things. It was thrilling when I could see the whole picture after all the separated puzzles came up together.

As the history of an “architecture” is intertwined with literally EVERYTHING, it was a demanding process. Stories of people who lived in there, who owned it, and who tried to preserve it are all linked in together. This historical local building conceives local stories. The spontaneous contribution from a society(SHS) and citizens to preserve this historical site was surprising. It was a huge project that had taken more than 20 years to make a plan out, plea against the rejection from City Council, and gathering donation for moving the building. Looking through whole phases and efforts how could the building move and be preserved, it was like getting on a time machine.

To be honest, reading and gathering new information, and organizing it in chronical order, those are not that hard process compare to writing an essay for signs. Depend on what kind of vocabs I use or which community I (subconsciously) support, the story can totally change and even one innocent individual can be shown as a villain. Sustaining objectiveness is the most demanding thing. And also, selecting what is the “important” or “necessary” thing to show to visitors is obscure. What kind of story could be less important than others?

I wish I could see the exhibition before I leave but it’s sad that I could not! I hope that my effort, time and labour would not be useless for the future exhibition. And I’m learning how to balance my effort to do works persistently. I found out that I easily lose interests if I don’t see any outcome or result soon. Haha.

On the first day, the first thing I had to do was reviewing all the exhibitions in the museum. I was asked by Alex to explain which points were good and which points were needed to be improved. Well, when you see the building from outside, the overall façade doesn’t seem that capacious though, but I’m pretty sure that anyone who has been there before will say it’s much bigger than she or he expected. I realized that there are a lot of things to learn and study. Honestly, except the first floor, the other rooms seemed to need desperate help and remodelling. It was exciting that I could help them but I worried more if I could help the museum enough as other interns do. After that, Alex explained the overall construct of the museum and the location of archives.
Then, I learned how to make “Accession.” In Salem Museum, we use a “new” system rather than the old one. It is comprised of (year number)-(collection number)-(item number). After writing the “Accession” thing, I stored some donated gifts with acid-free papers and tapes.

The second day-It was my first time to write the “accession” by myself. Except for the “description” thing, everything was…no.. I cannot say it was easy. Especially, when I was describing the donated gift, it was hard to use and apply all the descriptive adjectives. I was so embarrassed and confused when I first saw the stuffed bird doll, the mascot of Salem High school ice hockey team, wearing Spartan armaments. So I referred to some previous accessions that other interns had written before and tried to study the writing style and frequently used expressions. Sadly, I assume that Alex will not make me write the accession anymore.. hahaahha…Then, I learned how to record the accession in digital archive using Past-Perfect. Simple ctrl-C and ctrl-V, it was relaxing(?) and peaceful work.

The Third day- For a future exhibition about Championships in Salem, Alex asked me to find champion team pictures in yearbooks. I searched them of SHS, GHS, AL, covering from 19300s-2000s. At the first time, I was confused with the semester-counting system different from the Korean one. For instance, I was not used to thinking if I want to find the 1999 football championship picture, I should find it in 2000 yearbook. Moreover, every sport was played in every other season. So I asked him and other docents couple of times to make it sure. If I had not asked them, maybe I could have made a big mistake and it could have taken more time to finish it. When you are confused, don’t afraid to ASK for help. It was fun to see how all the various extra-curricular activities, especially sports, were emphasized in American school culture.