My internship at the Salem museum has been going well. We have mostly been working on planning and implementing the museum wide christmas toys exhibit. There has been a lot of help from the community, with donations of old toys streaming in. Me and Tyler personally did the boys toys case and having been spent a lot of time building tinker toys into some of the designs on the manual. I never expected to spend this much time playing with toys while working at the museum, and i’m not going to complain about it. It has been super interesting to see old versions of toys that i grew up playing with, like a monopoly game styled off of the local area, or old toy soldiers that were hand made from wood and then lovingly painted. We also spent a lot of time working on a model train set that normally would be placed under a tree, but this year will be located in the museum. I am super excited for the exhibit to be done, because we have already had some kids come and play with the toys. I think that museums often lack interactivity and care more about preservation than sharing the knowledge gathered. I think the event is going to be popular and attract a lot of visitors in, where they will not only learn about toys but about the rest of the history stored inside. On a side note, I am no longer accessioning things (something I do not hate or really enjoy) so that the future intern can focus on their curatorial skills.
Cool Decorative doorknob donated to the museum.