Throughout past weeks I’ve interacted with patrons more, maybe a more typical museum experience. Discussing things over the phone with patrons such as the exhibits that are featured within the museum, scheduling events, and referring callers to other resources. It allowed for more personal connection with people and how they interact with the museum. Especially for a small museum being able to interact well with regulars, patrons and people who are simply asking questions; allows for deeper connections with the community. The museum is for the consumption of the public and they are the greatest asset. Setting up events to make everything accessible and being aware of the communities desires. Alex and Fran have been doing extremely well with this, especially when I got patrons asking for them specifically is watching how they help others in their requests from the museum.
For the final bits of my internship I have been planning a personal exhibit to end my time at the museum. Since the last two years of my life have been centered around Covid I decided to develop an exhibit around Covid. I talked to Fran about concerns the preservation of materials that are connected to events happening now. We talked about how to preserve things for future generations. For instance the accessibility of images through digital means: that in 50 years .jpegs might be unable to be accessed. So we must think about how we present information in the past but also how we save information. Especially since everyone right now has lived through the Pandemic, how does an exhibit present current experiences? Questions to ask ourselves would be how much political commentary do we include, the emotional input, and the social impacts too; do we include these things as facts and cause controversy? It is something I will ask for guidance on how to develop this exhibit.
During my entire time at the Salem Museum I’ve accessioned many things: from lighters, books, records and now a water pipe from the 1800’s installed within Salem and donated by the City of Salem. While this is a small thing, I still think that it is interesting that it was donated by the city itself and that they had the interest to have someone save part of the pipe and bring it to the museum. I think it’s something that is interesting to save, but again this goes back to the idea of how to save things and what to save. I think that this water pipe can and will be utilized by the museum later on in an exhibit somehow. It’s interesting to feel that the artifact I accessioned will be utilized by someone else many years down the line to explain life in the 1800’s.