Internships Blog

My first three weeks as an intern at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia have gone quite well and I have already had my hands on a plethora of different things. This semester I will be doing a multitude small projects as well as one large project for the memorial. Smaller projects will consist of working on research questions, learning how to give tours, and other miscellaneous projects. The larger project is helping the staff put together a commemorative video that will be about 40 minutes long as it is the memorial’s 20 year anniversary this year.

Below is a photo of an exhibit I helped finalize this past week. The exhibit is in honor of Robert “Bob” Slaughter who was a D-Day veteran himself from Roanoke, Virginia and helped spring the Memorial into action. Putting together the exhibit consisted of finding photographs from the archives, as well as artifacts such as Bob’s blazer and hard hat, and creating caption cards for each artifact/picture. I feel very fortunate and honored to have created this exhibit as Bob sadly passed away in 2012.

 

During my first week at the museum I spent time going through all the exhibits there with Mr. Burke and talking about what worked with them and what did not. We discussed lighting and the flow of the exhibits. We also addressed how to funnel people through the exhibits to keep people moving along. We payed special attention to the Biggs exhibit. I had felt that it was the best put together one with the proper amount of lighting and flow that made sense. Mr. Burke had also told me that they had recently repainted the room to so it really warmed the room up a little bit. So, the first two weeks were spent learning about exhibits and how we feel they should be setup.

The first two weeks helped me transition into my current project that I am working on with Mr. Burke. We are currently doing research on World War 2 souvenirs. We are going to create a large exhibit on the souvenirs that the soldiers brought back as well as a timeline of things that were going on here in Salem and Roanoke from 1945-1950. The photo I have included on this post is one of the newspapers that I am looking at for the chronology. I am going month by month and picking out interesting events to put on the timeline we are creating. Soon, we will be looking to identify souvenirs that the museum may have to put out for this exhibit.

 

I have finished my internship with the Taubman and it has been a wonderful experience over the last two weeks. I didn’t realize how much went into the organizational side to museum work and all of the jobs that are generated from those needed roles. I’m excited to witness how the work I have contributed is used in future exhibitions particularly in the George Washington spotlight and the Goode exhibition that will be installed in January-February.

To finish up my internship I placed the finishing touches and edits on all my writing and made sure that every artist I was working on had a length bio to accompany it. When all my writing was edited I uploaded it to a google doc folder to be sent out to be printed and displayed on the gallery walls.

Today has been my final day of my internship at the Taubman. Recently most of my time has been spent working on the educational resources for use by the institution. Due to COVID local schools are not going to be going to the museum physically to participate in these learning activities. Therefore, the resources that I had to develop involved sending the resources to do the educational art making at home.

I spent a majority of my time combing through the various SOLs for Virginia schools to see what I could use to base my program around. Eventually I ended up using a piece titled Other Rooms, by Jacob Lawrence as the source material. The educational resource I created then involved students choosing a period from history and like Lawrence (who used 1940s Harlem) create a street scene from that period. To do so they could add figures either in a collage style, by cutting and pasting or if they rather they could draw figures in their historical street-scene.

 

 

Finalizing last weeks work on the George Washington exhibition I was joined this week by a fellow intern. Together we began the research process on an upcoming gallery that was to house works from prominent African American artists. The two artists that the museum asked us to conduct research on were Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence. I received Lawrence as my artist to research and began the research project.

The gallery, when it opens, will be showing two pieces by Lawrence specifically, The Prayer and Other Rooms. To begin my research I had to write an extensive biography on the life, influences, and artistic/historical culture that helped to mold Lawrence. Following the biography I had to round up books written by artists and researchers on Lawrence and add them to an artist’s document. Next I took the two pieces that were slated to be displayed and wrote descriptions for them, so that the gallery has a more user-friendly option for those who are visually impaired.

 

In the later half of my week working with The Taubman, I was placed in charge of two additional projects. The first of which involves the creation of a children’s activity surrounding the George Washington/Yorktown exhibit that I have been working on. This involved me combing through the museum’s prior activities to find the framework surrounding these writing and drawling activities I could work in for the exhibit.

The other part of my duties this week, alongside my main work of developing the Washington exhibit was to sift through the museum’s extensive collection of artwork and write descriptions for them (pictured below). The reasoning behind this was to assist the museum’s database in becoming more refined and accessible to those searching online. Adding these descriptions also was to help make the artwork more ADA compliant, so that those who may have a difficulty observing the artwork may have a better overall experience.

During my last week interning at the Historical Society of Western Virginia/O. Winston Museum, I spent a heavy amount of time continuing to accession items from the World War One gift as well as rearranging several rooms in the museum for aesthetic purposes as well as to make room for an upcoming exhibit on Botetourt County.

My experience at the O. Winston Link Museum has been a positive one and I have learned so much. I would say the most important lessons to draw from my time interning there is the management of the PastPerfect inventory system, conducting at home research for various projects, as well as having to manage certain aspects of exhibits and what will be displayed. It has given me much insight into what I potentially want in my career field and I am very happy to have had this experience.

For the past week, Ashley has had me rearrange and decide what frames to use on a wall exhibit in the museum, a process requiring acute and accurate measurements. I have also spent significant time continuing to accession a gift of World War One related items and have made great progress on the gift as a whole, accessioning almost the entire box.

With the progress I have made with the gift, I have also learned a great deal about two prominent families from the area: The Saunders and Flanders family. The gift contained a family tree as well as a detailed history of both families, mentioning their European origins as well as their migration to the United States. The gift contains multitudes of items related to the two families, including bank statements, checks, photographs of family members, as well as wedding invitations and other documents.

 

I have just gotten back home from my last long weekend interning with the Historical Society/ O. Winston Link Museum a few hours ago. This past weekend was more so of a week at the museum because of the available time I had due to it being finals weeks, and oh boy was it packed full. This past weekend I was able to turn my exhibit re-designing plan into reality. It took approximately a full day and a half to complete- but I am very happy with the results. When redesigning the exhibit, I had to make some changes to my actual plan. I added a few objects, had to rearrange objects around and add more visuals to tie the entire exhibit together. The crafting was probably the hardest part. Ashley had entrusted me with power tools (aka a drill) to use in order to make holes for L-shaped hooks for which we could hang objects on the wall from. The drilling part was the easiest, because power tools- but the hardest part was hand turning the L-Shaped hooks into the wall. It was by far the most tedious part of the entire project. But through the redesigning process- I was able to utilize my craftiness and critical thinking skills to make “displays” for bone instruments and needles to be hung on the wall. The secret?- Matte Board and fishing line. All in all- I am very happy with how the exhibit turned out and the experience I gained in constructing it.

 

Other than the exhibit- I continued to work on accessioning items in the collections into PastPerfect. Among these items this past weekend were a couple of quilts, a trinket box, and various pins and awards that were donated. I was also able to hang some of O. Winston Link’s photographs in the gallery- believe it or not- math is highly involved in this process. Today we actually visited the Roanoke City Cemetery for research purposes- what a fun internship excursion!  Interning at the Historical Society of Western Virginia was an experience like no other. It was a well-rounded experience at that because I was able to work with all types of objects, learning cataloging and accessioning, and was able to design an exhibit. Ashley was a wonderful mentor and I can not thank her enough for her flexibility with me, especially since I went home and during the ever-looming COVID-19 Pandemic.