Internships Blog

I just completed the first two weeks of my internship with the Center for Studying Structures of Race. The Center is directed by Dr. Jesse Bucher and aims to examine and provoke discussion around the long history of race in the United States and in Southwest Virginia especially as it relates to Roanoke College. In only two weeks, I have already learned so much about the history of race in the Roanoke valley and at the college. Much of the college’s success in its early years relied on enslaved laborers, a reality that the college had addressed last year with the erection of plaques on the columns of the Administration Building recognizing these enslaved workers. However, the Center emphasizes that a continuous discussion about slavery and institutional racism pertaining to Roanoke College is essential.

Last week, I spent a number of hours looking through the Center’s archive which houses a great number of objects and texts from Confederate organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy as well as offensive racist imagery present in a number of everyday objects like kitchen utensils, postcards, and toys. We are working on photographing these objects to update our archive and think about ways in which we can use these things as vessels for education rather than for hate and intolerance.

I am including a picture I took of the Administration Building at Roanoke College because I have spent a lot of time this week contemplating my place in and relationship to spaces like this one; a physical environment that was built by the hands of enslaved people. How can I appropriately appreciate spaces that have been integral to my academic experience while also recognizing their tumultuous histories?

-Samantha Meyer ’22

Our final display at the Vinton History Museum featured a back to school display in the school room. This month’s display will celebrate the start of another school year. The school room on the first floor of the museum was the perfect environment for a back to school display. One of the best take-aways from working at the Vinton History Museum was using creativity to professionally show history to the public. This internship exceeded all of my expectations for a museum working experience.

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Now that my summer internship at the Vinton History Museum has come to an end, it feels bittersweet. I originally hopped on the chance of doing the internship so I would have one less class to take this upcoming school year. But the opportunity that started out as a way to elude another class turned into something much more valuable to me, both personally and professionally. The workers and volunteers I had the chance to work with were amazing at sharing their love for history and the experience they had with working at the Vinton History Museum. I was surprised at how much I could learn in such a short amount of time. At my time at the Vinton History Museum, I learned how important effective communication is, how to work with a different generation other than my own, did research, changed displays, learned how to give tours (gave a lot of them too), set up an online auction and helped brainstorm new ideas to vamp up the museum. My largest challenge throughout my internship was trying to teach Judy ( who is in charge of my internship, works for the Vinton History Museum and is old enough to be my grandmother ) how to use Instagram ( vintonhistorymuseum ) and Twitter to try to target a different, slightly younger group of people and advertise the museum. Although my internship has ended, I will never forget the skills it taught me and the new friendships I had the chance to make.

Well, I have finished up my time with the museum and I must say that this experience will definitely leave an indelible mark on myself and my prospects for future careers. The ability to meld the historical, artistical, and organizational have all proved invaluable assets as I wove through the process of becoming a team member at the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History. Overall I assisted in all facets of museum operation, such as sorting, re-accessioning, and digitizing historical records (the attached picture includes some of the documents which I have spent the past two weeks digitizing, primarily historical travel brochures from a Mrs. Beverley’s trip to Europe in the 1930s). The ability to work with the history, which is my favorite, alongside other ventures helped expand the breadth of knowledge and skills gained whilst at the museum, such as my involvement with both the Blue Muse and Wanderlove exhibitions. I was also glad to be the jack-of-all-trades around the museum, helping in any capacity which I was able. From helping to stake posts for a new banner outside the museum, to reorganizing the office’s and utility closet’s contents, to walking the Riverwalk to keep tabs on how Wanderlove was doing after its installation, anywhere I could be helpful was where I was. This internship has been a deeply enriching experience and I hope to continue helping out DMFAH when I am able as new exhibitions come, more installations are put up, and as reorganization continues in collections in order to achieve AAM-MAP certification. The experiences gained in my time there will definitely contribute to my future plans as I scope out the historical and archaeological fields, both of which intertwine splendidly with that of curatorial work and museums.

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For my last few weeks working at the Salem Museum, I mainly worked on a smaller exhibit that would go on the stairs. I decided to research a flood that hit Salem in 1985. I had no prior knowledge about this event going into it, so getting started was a challenge. However, once I got going it became much easier. Another challenge was designing the exhibit. It was a very limited space. Fitting everything, I wanted into that space proved to be difficult. After a while, I settled on a design I was happy with.

Overall, this internship was very enriching. I got to try out many different aspects of museum work. The museum staff were very informative and understanding. It also gave me a good idea of what I want to do if I ever go into museum work, and what I would do differently.

Part of my research for the Vinton History Museum was to go through old scrapbooks in the museum basement. They were collections of newspaper clippings that were cut out and placed into the scrapbooks that were found in the museum’s basement. There were clippings of people who served during the time of the newspaper’s publication from Southwest Virginia along with other national news that the local newspapers published. My job was to remove any newspaper clippings that were related to the town of Vinton. Most of the newspaper clippings were from the Second World War. Other clippings included in the scrapbooks were marriages, obituaries, economical achievements, and public events in downtown Roanoke, Vinton, and Salem. After hours of reading and removing clippings, I was able to recover a good portion of information regarding Vinton and the Vintonites who served during World War II. I created a small display of some of the Vintonites who served and died.

Though Wanderlove has ceased its production stage and has ushered in its exhibition stage, it still necessitates our attention since it exists outdoors and is subject to the elements. Daniel, an intern, and myself were required to go down to the Riverwalk and re-attach panels of yarn that had become loose and scope out any more trouble areas that may require our attention in the near future. Other duties which we have undertaken since Wanderlove’s ceasing as our primary point of focus have involved helping Annie and Mary in collections by scouring museum past-perfect records as well as saved files on computers to try and find any accessioning information on pieces of artwork whose provenances have been lost over the years. Since MAP certification has shifted to our main focus, it is paramount that we organize collections so that we have a cohesive categorization system that is easily traversed by staff and researchers alike, instead of being a haphazard space where over the years a lot of what can only be described as stuff has accumulated. Another undertaking which we oversaw was the clearing of the tables outside of the collections room that had before been plagued with dozens of green office boxes and binders filled with old museum brochures and pamphlets, newspaper clippings, and even documents from the 19th century that had simply been sitting there without having been organized and sorted; now they are in line to be scanned and digitized.

I (as well as other interns) have also been helping Sara around the office by organizing her shelves, printing new maps for guests, and copying children’s activities booklets for use in the museum. What I am most proud of though is assisting her by using her computer to format and create new name tags for the museum’s board whereas previously they were all of different formatting and inconsistent in form, so I have effectively rectified that problem (pictured below). I have also helped her in reformatting and submitting grant forms for recompense, and providing technical advice when it is within my purview. Nearing the end of my internship, I can surely say that all of the intricacies of museum functionality and the influence of internal, and external, politics have definitely surprised me. But, what I can say is that the people have definitely made the experience memorable, along with some very interesting objects which piqued my interest. Pictured also is myself on Danville’s live-streamed River City TV news with reporter Mark Aron, Wanderlove creator Calder Brannock, and Annie and Felice from the museum; all people who made the heat on that particular day bearable. I cannot wait to see what is in store as the summer begins to wind down and what other observations I will make and relate here in my last post to come.

These past few weeks at the Vinton History Museum have been very busy. The weeks have consisted of doing research on the Vinton War Memorial charter that was found, setting up the summer action and cleaning the basement to be worked on. The charter of the Vinton War Memorial (a very well known building and landmark in Vinton) was found in a spare room in the museum; we decided it would make a great addition to the military hallway. After finding it in the spare room, I decided to do some research about the building and its significance to the town before putting it on display. The charter was signed by the charter members who were mothers of those who served during the second world war. The charter members signed in order to meet the goals needed to build the Vinton War Memorial. My research indicated that construction on the building began in 1946 and was completed in 1948 and the property included a pool and baseball field that were open to the public. An article I found from 1998 (to celebrate 50 years of the building) interviewed Otto Goode, a committee member, that discussed the bonds that helped fund the War Memorial, the research of other monuments in Washington D.C, and Richmond before the War Memorial was built and how the town of Vinton wanted to do something for the veterans of the second world war before the city of Salem did. Today, the pool is closed and the baseball field is now gone, but the building still stands after many renovations and additions and now is used for events and weddings.

The summer auction is finally set up and will begin next week as a fundraiser for the Vinton History Museum. Ben, the other intern, took pictures of all 20 items, while I did some research and wrote the descriptions of them on the website. The items include Depression glass, a sweetgrass basket, crystal glasses, silver plated spoons with engravings, etc. All items were donated to the museum from those in the community. We also began cleaning out the basement of the museum because the town of Vinton will be waterproofing it soon. In the basement we found old newspapers from 1941 and 1945 from different city. One from Hawaii, Baltimore and Washington D.C. Unfortunately, the Hawaii newspaper was not in the greatest quality, but the Baltimore and Washington D.C papers were in excellent condition after being in the basement for who knows how long and exposed to the elements in the basement.

Spent most of my time this week working on accessioning a large collection of things from the early 1900s. The collection included about 70 letters that I had to sort through individually, which took a lot of time. It was satisfying to complete the whole thing after working at it for so long. I also worked on re-organizing some of the archives in the back. It was a huge undertaking, and not something I could accomplish completely in a few days. So, I decided to do what I could, and leave the rest to the next intern.

                Some of the staff was out this week, so I had to do stuff I usually did not have to. One of those things was setting up the meeting room for rentals. I also spent some time greeting guests at the front of the museum, which I was not a huge fan of, but it needed to get done. Overall a more laid-back week than previous. Preparing for the last part of the internship and working on a bigger exhibit of my own.