Loose Endings

Today was a day of tying up loose ends and endings. I started the day with retrieving my keys and going up to the galleries to look around, on my own, behind locked doors, one more time. I went through each gallery, recognizing many of the pieces and knowing their histories now from my label writing stint, looking at some of my favorites. But mainly it was to bookend my experiences, and take advantage of a privilege I hope to have in the future, but probably will not for some time.

The rest of my time was spent in finishing up the research on trade and cleaning up my findings so that they were actually intelligible. In the end, I had information on the anthropological categorizations of trade, general patterns (mainly direct and indirect), and separate histories of lapis lazuli and the Silk Road. I sorted out my other documents and research, went through some of it, and sent all of my work from Winterim to Adam for him to look at. Hopefully, this will not be the last that I see of that work and the museum, but it is still an ending, at least until January when I will potentially start an internship up and continue work on Global|Local. 

The experiences I've had and the skills I've learned, not to mention the ability and opportunity I've had to produce my own work, has made this a fantastic Winterim experience. Not only was I able to experience, on a very small scale of course, the workings and life of an art museum, and the duties and obligations of an art historian working in such an institution. I not only had a fantastic time within the boundaries of the three weeks, but also will likely continue work outside of Winterim, and so make it a lasting and comprehensive project not limited to the wonderful time window we have in November. 

Penultimate

I spent the first hour of this morning doing more research on trade background, more so on there anthropology of it and it's patterns and less about specific items like lapis lazuli that I did yesterday. At 10 I met with Mr. Griffith and Adam to go over my independent study, just to make sure that both sides of my supervision connected and could communicate. After discussing my performance, we spoke a little bit about Winterim as a program, what could be improved, and how to make a lasting relationship between TMA and MV through Winterim and beyond. I think that my experience at TMA has been very valuable and might be counted as a successful Independent Study due to my fulfillment of a tangible project with  applicable goals that have assisted in a broader sense in my education, along with giving my the opportunity to explore a field I am theoretically interested in working in in the future. Overall, I think I managed to have the luck to find a situation that I could make into an experience that fit my needs with a level of involvement and experience suited to my situation and interest.

Now, this also leads into the fact that I could potentially continue work on Global|Local outside of Winterim, as a rather non-intensive internship with TMA throughout next semester. Now, I hope that I will be able to balance that out and work with it, and I am very excited by the prospect, but it also leads into another aspect of Winterim in that, however amazing the experience is, and I do think it is fantastic, it is by nature very insular and almost always limited to a 3 week experience. Though a wonderful life event perhaps, three weeks, at least in the Independent Study I have done, does not give a huge range of time for improvement. Yes, I have done so in the scope of things, but not nearly as much as I potentially could due to temporal limitations. So, more food for thought I suppose. 

After that meeting, I went to Visitor Engagement. Adam is the current head, but more as an interim who will step down once a permanent head may be found. As a result, today's meeting was focused on outlining what the group wants and does not want in a new head, particularly in regards to Adam's own performance, though there was not nearly as much direct commentary as he seemed to invite. It seems this lack of criticism might be a Midwestern thing, but I have not tested this hypothesis, just an observation. Anyways, it was interesting to hear what people wanted in a leader, and although pretty standard, there were some ideas, such as experience in museums, that sparked a slight interest because of how those present held the museum to be a different entity. I suppose to a certain extent this is true of any group, and can be seen even at MV. 

I spent the rest of the day researching trade, finally blocking out much of the stock jargon that had cluttered up my search yesterday through focusing on the anthropological study of trade. This yielded some interesting results, but if haven't done it in a clean version yet and only have my rather haphazard notes, so I'll have to make all of that pretty tomorrow. 

Regurgitated and Spewed

Today I transitioned out of straight writing for the exhibit and dabbled a little bit in more research and history aspects of huge exhibit. I'm still on trade, so likely will not branch out to any other sections of the exhibit in the next two days before my time is up. Today, since I finished the physical/artistic descriptions yesterday, I studied the history of trade, different types, and how certain commodities, like lapis lazuli, were transported from one place to another. I'm not sure where this will factor in, but it provides background information for the show. Now, I've done my fair share of research and paper writing, and thought myself fairly adept at combing through the internet for pertinent, and reliable, information. However, the problem that I ran into with types of trade was that it all wanted to focus on modern day trading and things like stock exchange, which isn't really want I'm interested in at all. In the end, I couldn't even find a source that would outline the differences of types of trading, like down-zither-line vs. direct, both of which I have a fairly sound idea of, let alone outline different and less common terms. All in all, decidedly rather frustrating and a bit of a time drain. In the end, I simply researched the history of lapis lazuli, and finding a few mentions of it traveling on the Silk Road (the only mentions of methods of trade I could find), also did some research on that. I'll probably continue tomorrow, but it was rather frustrating due to the lack of information. The internet is obviously a wonderful resource, but I often have a love hate relationship with it similar to this occasion. It's immensely difficult to find detailed information on even mildly obscure topics, and often all of the sites seem to have copied one another because each yields very little new information. For me, much of the internet is useful, but rarely have I found it capable of replacing the thoroughness of books in less well known areas, whether that be the Federal Writers' Project I the Great Depression for APUSH last year or lapis lazuli and ancient trade patterns today. 

Although looking for the background information today was interesting, it was a little bit more frustrating and disheartening than most of the work I had done so far. Obviously every job has its own less than pleasant aspects, that's only to be expected. However, I think that today only proved how important art is because it gives a first person peak into events, culture, and ideas in the past rather than relying on the regurgitated and spewed information that encounters many attempts to work with history today. Not to say history isn't lovely, I still adore it, but it does seem to lack a little bit of the flair of working with art, though first person documents might help and obviously I'm working with some very low level stuff here. Hopefully I'll have better luck next time. 

Routine

Becoming accustomed to something is a curious thing. When I first came to the museum, I never thought I would lose my wonder at being there, but with two and a half weeks patterns form and routines fall into place. I seem to start a lot of my blog posts with this morning, and so a routine becomes visible. Turning on my computer in the morning, fetching and flipping through doc files, saying "Good morning, how are you?" to others working in the office: it's all a part of the world I have entered. 

So, to keep that pattern alive, this morning I wrote a few more physical descriptions, then attended the weekly curatorial meeting. The items discussed included elevator decoration, a possible series called Encounters that focuses on the juxtapositions of pieces that would not generally be seen together, and the acquisition of a set of Japanese screens. Now these screens  caused some slight hilarity to those present, and I'm not sure this is in the minutes so this might be the only record, but there are some aspects of these screens that will likely not be emphasized with the general public. For instance, one shows a male brothel/tea house, which might cause some slight controversy. The other shows a theatre that also runs a female prostitution business. So  a little bit more racy than art at TMA might generally lean towards, but interesting nonetheless. Although the nature of the screens is certainly am using, their function as an addition to the collection is rather more instructional in that they will rotate with and Sistine screen to decrease damage from light, something the head of conservation has been hounding the curators about. 

On that note of preservation, I will also admit to wandering up to the Fresh Impressions exhibit after I had finished my work for the afternoon. This show is very unique because all of the pieces but five of them are from the permanent collection, but the majority have not been displayed since the 1930s due to their nature as prints. Pieces on paper are particularly susceptible to damage by light, so they can not remain on display for long, and the vividness of these Japanese woodcut prints show how brilliantly well preserved prints can shine eve a century later. They focus on the shin hanga movement, a new wave of Japanese print making in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The prints were gorgeous, many displaying an interesting mixture of western influence but still clinging to traditional Japanese design. This including more overt sensuality and modern landscapes, but also focused on traditional theatre characters as subjects. It really is an amazing show, and as something rarely accessible to the. Public (and free), I would urge you, who ever is out there, to go. You truly have no excuse not to. It's a round until January 1. It was interesting to see an exhibit now with the backstage knowledge I have of their production and planning, and I certainly saw the labels In a rather new light. 

Three more days and counting until the routine is broken.  

The Way I See It

This morning started out with talking to Adam about my labels, not to sound like a broken record or anything, and I think they're ready to be sent off to the head editor. Mainly there were some nitpicky and grammar mistakes, things about terminology and awkward phrasing. 

Now on to the next item of business, in which is hall be writing physical descriptions of objects. One problems with doing an academic show is that the labels tend to discuss less of the composition and   the appearance of the piece, and more about the importance of its form and materials, and how those illustrate the point we're trying to make. As a result, my next job is to write paragraphs on how the symbolism and composition of the objects do affect the meaning, such as why Lord Amherst looms over the Canton harbor in his portrait, which is likely to show the power that the British saw themselves as wielding over ther other nations, and their greater importance. This should take me through about Wednesday, and then I don't know what I'll be doing for the two remaining days. 

It's interesting to have met with such success on my first attempt at label writing because it holds the potential to inflate my belief in my abilities. That sounds a bit egotistical, but still entirely true. However, the other side of the coin is that is that even when just discussing mundane points of the exhibit, philosophical theories such as Cosmopolitanism come up, which I have little to no exposure to, or else cultural theories and history that I am faintly aware of but does not lend itself to the high school history text book, and so I am not well acquainted with it. This mixture of experiences has left me with the distinct impression of having much to learn, obviously, but even having conversations today feels easier, and I feel more informed, than I did two weeks ago. Obviously, I have not even approached becoming a true art historian, but that's what college is for, right? The way I see it, I have started a process of thinking like an art historian, if only ever so slightly, and had a taste of my future. A glimpse that leaves me ready for more. 

Oz

Today was a relatively calm day at the office, though I suppose things don't every really get crazy in regards to label writing. I went through the labels very carefully today, and will discuss all of them in detail with Adam on Tuesday.

In the afternoon, I had run out of things to do so I asked another curator, Tom Loeffler, the curator of paper pieces and books, if I could assist with anything. He gave me a list of objects to look up, which I spent the rest of my afternoon with. I haven't worked with prints or other paper pieces as much yet outside of the Liber Chronicarum, or Nuremberg Chronicle, that's included in the trade line as a book that includes a world "history" from creation to 1493, and so involves some fairly accurate prints of foreign cities. Although not pertaining to globalization in the least, these pieces will be going up in an exhibit that corresponds to the Tuileries exhibit scheduled to open in February. I have done a tiny bit of work for him before, and the interesting things is trying to see how patterns, methods, and subject matter in prints and etchings correspond to cultural movements and other artistic trends.

With the second week at an end, the feeling of time flying too quickly has only increased, and made me realize I am on the other side of the hump in regards to this project. Of course, I look forward to resuming normal classes, and Thanksgiving before that, but it feels slightly reminiscent of Dorothy waking up to realize it was all a dream, though of course that comes with the potential benefit of realizing "there's nowhere like home," or my routine life, as well. Sorry the post is so short, but I didn't have enough today to fill a long one.

The Trials of Success

Let's bask in these words for a few moments: all twenty labels are written.

Of course, what that leaves out is that they still need to be torn apart by Paula Reich, through whose skilled hands every label passes, generally leaving with more than a little red ink, but nonetheless, it feels like a mile stone. I still have work, and an overwhelming amount to learn that can never be accomplished in these three weeks, but it's a step. I looked over 6-8 with Adam today, who tore them apart a little bit, though happily not wide open, and he said I was on the right track, so hopefully the others won't face a gory death either.

Other than the slight excitement of labels, I also attended a Visitor Engagement meeting today, during which the discussion focused mainly on job description and communication within the museum. Although not necessarily pertaining to art history, it certainly shows an important facet of how the museum works, the behind the scenes that result in beautiful art in pristine galleries, and seamless, enjoyable exhibits for visitors to see. One concern raised was that those involved in projects would be volunteered without their knowledge, and so end up with much more work than they could handle, which obviously presents a valid concern. It seems that in the past (and possibly in the present), communication within the museum has been a problem. The museum has been transparent with the public, practically to fault (to quote someone else), yet, as always, people working together feel little desire to hurt each other's feelings or rock the boat. These are natural, human feelings, that almost anyone has fallen prey to, myself very much so included. However, that silence is at the expense of the institution at times, which presents the question of how to deal with these issues as they come up. These problems are practically universal: in almost any human situation, you must interact with social awareness and care, finding the line between overcompensating and rash disregard. In this way, the museum is like any other institution, a network of individuals who must work together in set positions, yet with a little bit of muddling, regardless of whether they're crunching baseball statistics or transporting and displaying priceless pieces of art. This also presents a difference between the museum world and academic art history world, where I would guess the power structure and goals are considerably different, though that is obviously simple conjecture and guess with little basis in reality.

All in all, today was a day like any other: one where I sat in a building with an elegant marble facade, beneath rooms that, in places, have more worth per square foot monetarily than Fort Knox, and more cultural capital than one could ever put a number on. So I would venture to say it was a success.

Ruminations

My day started out pretty quiet this morning, since everyone had left for an all staff meeting fifteen minutes before I was supposed to start work. Since I didn't have to go, I had the office to myself for the first hour or so of the day. Pretty much all I did today was research and write labels, which sounds fairly boring, but only because I've already told so much about it. I worked on two seascapes today, one Dutch and one French, a rather vanitas leaning Dutch still-life (though not officially vanitas, and that isn't the reason it's in the exhibit), and a portrait of a Dutch civil servant.

So far, the information I have needed for the labels has all been in the doc files, and I haven't needed to do outside research except in order to brush up on some of the concepts and occurrences referenced by the files. One of the interesting debates I followed through correspondence today was that of the identity of the man in the Dutch portrait. It was fairly well settled that he came from the Hanneman family due to the coat of arms on the back of the image; however, his wife in the corresponding portrait that makes up the pair could not be identified and the specific Hanneman was not identified. How this manifested in the label was particularly interesting, seeing as the museum wants to be so certain of what they display that Hanneman is not even mentioned because although, according to the doc file, there had been enough back and forth to narrow the identity down to about two people, there was nothing other than an ancestral tradition to determine its truth.

As of today, I have four more labels to write rough drafts, and I am officially half way through my time at the museum. Obviously, that does not mean that the nostalgia and ennui ought to start pouring in immediately--there's still way too much left for that. When talking about my Winterim, a lot of people say, placatingly, "That sounds nice," their eyes immediately shifting off to the distance as the fidget. Obviously, this isn't fun, or interesting, or desirable for a lot of people, and I may still be an impressionable young 17-year-old, and I suspect that I will change my mind countless times once I go to college, but in this moment, I am happy with art history. So far, this Winterim has allowed me to explore a hunch that has bloomed into a full-blown awareness of the interest I take in this subject, and regardless of where that leads me in the future, I believe (at least currently) that it will always hold an allure for me.

Patterns

Keeping up my routine of starting out every day with a few labels, I started one of a portrait of Lord Amherst and another of a watercolor of Akbar II holding court over the Mughal Empire in Delhi, both showing different views of trade interactions with the rest of the world. In Lord Amherst's portrait, he standst all and imposing in front of Western warehouses in Canton, an image commemorating his visit to Chine during which he refused to show deference to the emperor unless the same deferencew as given to a portrait of the British king, which Chinese officials refused to do. Alternatively, the Mughal image shows the British Resident, Sir Ochterlony, as subservient  and below the emperor and his blood, even if that was not politically true at that point in time. 

Every Tuesday the curators have a meeting, but much to everyone's surprise there was a media meeting going on in the normal room, which many of the curatorial meeting attendees were also attending, so we were displaced and also met with a few obstacles in people not attending. I suppose this happens in a larger institution sometimes though. At the meeting, we discussed the head curator's recent visit to London and some potential acquisitions in Japanese and Indian art she saw there, what to do with an entire exhibit worth of art abandoned for twenty years that was just finding its way back to its owner, and a few other odds and ends required to keep the museum going from a curatorial perspective. After the meeting, I continued to work on labels and research, broke for lunch, and then continued to do so in the afternoon, which was a bit monotonous, true, but still very interesting. The doc files are full of correspondence and history of the piece, one of the most interesting aspects of which is tracing the paper trail left behind by attempting to date the piece or figure out who is in it. This involves contacting many experts and museums from all over the world, tracing the piece back to its origin to discover its history. 

All in all, not a terribly eventful day, yet certainly none the less interesting because of it. At this point, I have written 14 labels, with 6 more objects left in the trade timeline. Granted, none of them have been picked apart and edited yet, so I certainly have more work today. However, this shows a potential for starting on more pieces for the show, which would expend my breadth into more parts of the show and give me a better understanding of the show than the slight cursory overview I have at the moment. 

The Long and Winding Road

And so the second week begins.

After picking up and starting some of the research I left off at last week, Adam came by and took me to the Visitor Engagement meeting that happens every Monday morning, which is ostensibly business but seems like an excuse for donuts, bagels, and conversation more than anything else, not that I'm complaining. After that, I went back to working and wrote two more rough drafts of labels. I haven't gone over the labels in any detail with Adam yet, but hopefully that will happen tomorrow since today sort of got away without it.

In order to talk about the work I have done so far, we ate lunch together downtown, where we went over some of the de-accessioning activities I had observed on Friday with Christie's. He asked my opinion on whether or not each piece was valuable to the collection (this included a marble statue of Apollo, a marble ram that had been on display as a "touching" piece in the 70s, two rather strange terra cotta pieces, and two mosaics, if I didn't list them previously), and so I sort of stumbled through, guessing prices that they had been appraised for as well at his prompting. It seems like the main things taken into consideration include the quality of the pieces, if they fit into the collection cohesively, if there's space for them, and whether or not the collection could be improved with the price the piece would fetch more so than what the piece contributes to it. So rather than telling me all that outright, Adam led me through the reasoning process, and though I did end up feeling rather clumsy, it helped me to understand the mind set and process of a museum much more. We then discussed the Visitor Engagement meeting I had gone to on Thursday and some of the opportunities that the museum has for making decisions as to marketing, including a more data-driven approach. As with any institution, the Toledo Museum seems slow to change, which is obviously not immediately negative, but might lead them to lose out on opportunities to grow and improve in the modern age. Although he didn't think I had entirely missed the point with my labels, there was a mention of editing that implied some rather heavy work, so I am by no means done with any of the labels I drafted, which I am certainly not surprised at.

After returning to the museum, there was a post moratorium meeting for the Fresh Impressions exhibit of Japanese art, mainly prints, that I could have attended, but I managed to lose track of time while reading the doc file and entirely missed it. I don't believe it was a grievous mistake since I would have simply been there to observe and no one was really expecting me, but hopefully something I can avoid in the future. One more mistake to add to the growing list. As of this afternoon, I have drafted 10 labels that I will now revise (probably very heavily), and in pretty much the pairings I had come up with, since Adam approved them. Now I will go through again and add pertinent information that couldn't quite fit within the 75 word limit (though some of mine have turned out to be 75 or so...) which will hopefully be involved in an audio or some other sort of multimedia guide for the exhibit to increase visitor engagement.

Today served very much to solidify the experiences I have had this past week into cohesive thoughts that form more of an understanding of the museum through what I have seen of it. So far, this has enabled me to see the thought process behind exhibitions and visitor engagement, both vital parts of museum functioning which, depending on their execution, very much so determine the quality of the experience and the museum as a whole, since if it does not appeal to the general public and draw them in, then it is not fulfilling its job as a cultural resource to the general public, especially somewhere with free admission like TMA. This includes appealing to the wider populous, not just the small member base that is extremely loyal and dedicated, which in general appears as a pattern throughout Toledo's arts venues. As someone who has traveled through them due to my own interests and socioeconomic status, I consistently run into the same people who attend all of the arts events, myself being one of them, a small fraction of Toledo supporting a vibrant arts scene that the entirety of the city should be aware of and take advantage of. It is not enough to simply have the resources available if we do not reach out and ensure that their value is made known to everyone in the community, not just the choice few who were born and bred with that value in mind.

Two By Two

·     After arriving at the museum this morning, I started finalizing the pairs for the exhibit. The purpose of presenting pieces paired together is to demonstrate how globalization has occurred throughout history as cultures interact and influence each other through trade. This means, for example, pairing two rhyta (plural of rhyton, or drinking horns) together, even though they are separated by about 500 years, one was made in Persia out of silver in the shape of a zebu (a wild, hump-backed bull), and the other has distinctly Greek style reminiscent of the terra cotta and black slip amphora you might have scene in the Ancient Gallery at TMA. This proves that cultural homogenization occurs through trade in a very visual manner, seeing two pieces that are entirely similar in shape and style yet each with their own regional flair. 

The two rhyta I was speaking of (Courtesy of Toledo Museum of Art).

After writing two labels, I went to meet up with Adam who was showing around some people from Christie's, an art business and auction house, who had come to review a few pieces the museum is thinking of deaccessioning. After chasing after them to meet up in the galleries, Adam introduced me and then we went down to the vaults where the art in storage is kept. After passing through two tightly locked doors, we arrived in a room with panel after sliding panel of paintings, practically another museum kept in the basement, and after wending our way through found the statues that we had come to look at. At this point, I also met the Director of the museum, Brian, for the first time. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to make the evaluations public, though I don't see any problem with it, so I shan't, but suffice it to say the expertise and attention to detail everyone in the room displayed was highly impressive, and I left with a better idea of how art is evaluated through my own observations.

My little adventure over, I returned to my desk, ate lunch (first time at the museum's cafe, and it was lovely), and then continued reading doc files and writing labels. I am a little bit suspicious of the progress I've made since it is much more rapid than Adam predicted, seeing as I finished rough drafts of six labels today, but unless I'm missing a drastic step, I think I'm on track. Hopefully Monday I'll be able to find out whether Adam's estimation was off, or I'm a little dense and missed more than a few nuances or processes. 

Below, I've included the notes I took on and the label I wrote for the zebu rhyton pictured above, so enjoy and if it turns out I'm doing this terribly wrong, please just assume that by Monday it will be fixed and I shall update you on the progress then, so bear with me on this learning curve. 

• Gallery 2 1988.23 Rhyton with the Forepart of a Zebu: Seleucid from Persia. 200-100 BCE, Ancient Greek, Etruscan, and Roman, used at ancient banquets for wine, which streams from the spout at front and is passed along until empty. The zebu is a hump backed wild bull that reflects Persian influence, the foliage depicted is Greek, reflects Alexander the Great’s conquest of the near east. 
• Larger, richly decorated, front half Persian back half more Greek, very refined workmanship. Made in Persia, new than the other Rhyton, which would suggest that Alexander’s conquest brought it and shows the homogenization of cultures through gloablization. 

Questions:

• What is the purpose of this piece?

• What animal is on the front?

• What is its origin?

• Why is it significant?

Label: 

At ancient banquets, revelers passed around horns named “rhyta” (from Greek “to flow”) full of wine until the vessels emptied. Following the death of Alexander the Great, the Persian Seleucid court tried to follow his lavish lifestyle and that of conquered Persian kings, resulting in this rhyton that presents a fusion of Persian and Greek styles, with the hump-backed wild bull (called a zebu) and shape reflecting Persian influence, while the foliage adorning the horn is Greek in origin.

Second Time's the Charm?

Today started out with a tour around the galleries, all by myself of course, retracing my steps to find the objects that I was supposed to be working on. The image started to come into focus as these pieces fit together, a much more coherent group than what I had been working on, which were random and had left me more than a little confused as to the relationships they held. Well, at least now I know I wasn't crazy, just wrong. I managed to get almost all of them before heading back down to my desk, missing the one piece in the Glass Pavilion, then I attended the Visitor Engagement meeting, which Adam runs. We had a pretty somber opening, but as they began to discuss all of the changes happening in the museum and the new tools they were using to track interest, everything perked up a little bit. I'm beginning to recognize more faces and connect their names and what they do, which in turn helps me to form a larger picture of the workings of the museum. Evidently there has been a lot of rearrangement in the management, but my favorite part of the meeting was seeing a software program they had just begun using. It tracked the members of their email list and members of the museum to see what emails they open, what they delete, what purchases they make, and so on and so forth. Furthermore, with the museum's app they can even track movement of people through galleries to see how they experience it, where they linger, and how many times they come. Although a museum's facade seems rather unchanging and placid, it's astounding to see how much thought and work is put into where things are positioned, and the amount of energy put into targeting specific people for donations and attendance. Definitely a little bit Big Brother, but I can't really begrudge a museum that has no admission fee its advantages, although that is always how it starts in the books, isn't it?

After that meeting, I finished up looking at the objects and typed up my notes about them, only to be rather startled by an alert for another meeting I had practically forgotten. This one was about the Tuileries exhibit they're getting ready to open in February, in a collaboration with the Louvre. They had a floor plan of the layout and discussed the objects, how they would be moved, the little sticking points they were finding with the Louvre on this and that, and other things like graphics and educational materials. To hear everything that goes into an exhibit is rather overwhelming, though I can't say entirely surprising. I think the most interesting part was when they discussed the aesthetics of the exhibit and the experience they wanted to create for the viewer, which was very specifically geared towards a mimicry of the gardens themselves almost, yet I'm sure that when visitors come the experience will be so seamless that they never realized that was such an integral part of their visit, yet without it their experience would have been missing an important piece.

I finished up my day with thinking up pairs that would do well together in the trade timeline, so that their juxtaposition would create a point and add to the argument that globalization is by no means a new process. So far, I have some tentative plans, but so many of the pieces would do well in so many different pairing that it will likely prove difficult to decide. I hope I'm up to the challenge!

Well, my first week at the museum is almost up, only one more day left. My but the time does fly.

C'est la Vie

I arrived at the museum sufficiently early for my poor heart to manage, and settled down at my desk very pleased with myself for being 10 minutes early. Congratulations for meeting expectations, Julia. Today was rather short on work since my supervisor's schedule was jam-packed with meetings that wouldn't interest me in the least, so I sort of bummed around for most of it. I did manage to color code and fill out my notes for the 20 objects, and finished looking around the galleries for additional pieces to add to the trade timeline. I ran across Ms. Posta and the metal-working Winterim in the ancient art gallery, and so received the opportunity to flash my shiny new badge and jangle my keys, just to make sure everyone knew I am sufficiently important. I hope I can stop bragging about it soon, but I'll try to contain myself. 

I sat for the rest of the day at my desk, going through Doc files and researching this or that. To explain doc files, they're the large Manila folders in which everything about a piece of art is kept, and a re organized in three gigantic sliding shelves by accession number (or the year that the object was acquired  and the number object it was within that year). These include old curatorial reports on the piece's condition, correspondence that happened when it was bought (this is where a lot of the juicy stuff can get pulledf from), and any articles or other references made to it in either academic works or references about its style deemed useful. One very interesting piece I found, and which will now (fingers crossed) be added to the exhibition was a box made of ivory from the 1450, yet with secular images rather than religious ones, which in and of its self is highly unusual for that time and material. Yet even more interesting is that the scenes depicted tell the story of (if I remember correctly) a Spanish Muslim prince and his lover, even getting quite erotic in some oft he scenes. Well, this makes this piece highly interesting not only for its sensationalism, but because the ivory it is made of likely came from Africa (if elephant ivory), yet the story is Spanish and Muslim, with the final puzzle piece falling into place with it's production in either Northern France or Flanders (modern day Belgium). So, this piece, one could say, and i will, is quite the mixture of astounding elements. 

The gods of today deemed that enough excitement for me, so nothing really happened much until Adam stopped by around 3 to talk about my notes on the 20 objects, which were evidently acceptable much to my surprise, but apparently about entirely the wrong 20... One step forward two steps back, right? I mean, at least I got the practice, which is what I'll tell myself as I try to not resent the twisted mind of technology and more specifically the Museum's operating system. It appeared that I had not been  able to open the correct list, so the first 20 for me had been entirely different from Adam's first 20. You win some you lose some, I guess. With the last thirty minutes of my day, I started work on the new (and true) trade timeline, whose pieces actually made sense, whereas I must admit the former false list had left me quite befuddled as to what connections I could draw between all the pieces. 

Well, no great insights for a rather humdrum day, but I suppose that in itself is a learning experience. To finish off my round of idioms (things are supposed to come in threes, no?) life is just a box of chocolates, and today I got the weird sort of strawberry tasting one that is edible but just a little bit sickening and overpowering. Hopefully tomorrow will bring something far more appetizing. 

Slipping and Sliding

I felt slightly frazzled as I half walked half ran into the museum, 10 minutes late because of a slight slow down with my mother wanting to vote. However, I made it with nothing severely amiss other than my nerves, and soon calmed down with a walk through the museum, still empty 45 minutes before opening time. My quest, which I had started yesterday before becoming slightly turned around, was to find all 20 objects and study them for five minutes in a purely visual context, unaffected by any former researchor insights of others. Of course, this was slightly difficult since I had read about all of them on the museum database, but I sweat I tried my best to find objectivity. 

After spending  an hour up there, I went back down to he curatorial offices, sat typing up my no test or a while, and then headed over to the weekly curatorial meeting. After feeling slightly like a lost puppy yet again (a state I've been experiencing slightly too often for my liking these days, but I guess that's what comes with trying something new, right?), I finally found my way to the Red Room where the meeting was to be held. As I eased open the heavy wooden door, its hinges sighing slightly, I looked up to see every set of eyes in the entire curatorial staff trained upon me. Suffice it to say I had mysteriously become five minutes late while wandering, and now managed to make quite an entrance as the new, and probably apparently slightly daft, intern. However, they welcomed me in and I pulled up a chair, introducing myself as an intern from MV before sitting back to hear about what was going on in their world this week. Although much of it was very administorial, and so interesting but not quite fascinating, the most important piece of the meeting to me was the first discussion in which they were brainstorming for a new series they're thinking about called (I think) Encounters, in which different pieces of art that have at least one thing in common are juxtapositioned to exemplify the differences  and similarities in art across the world and across cultures. 

After attending the meeting, I went back to my office and started work on my notes  again. Adam stopped by briefly to check in, but due to what appears to be an overwhelmingly schedule, did not stay much longer than it took to ensure I was still on my way and had not entirely screwed up. The rest of my day was spent with these notes, helping the curator of paper objects with a task, and then wandering the museum looking for more potential objects for the trade timeline I am working on in the exhibit. 

My major lesson from today may be that I strongly dislike being late, but more so I was able to begin to explore the process of research a little bit more, alongside some further exposure to other art forms, mainly paper. The object I research for that was a Qu'ran with a lacquered cover, which I discovered pictured the gul-o bulbul theme of a nightingale and rose, or the "perfect" lover and beloved. Turns out the Prophet Muhammad is often pictures as a rose, which is why this design make sense, so look I'm learning something new everyday! Or at least that's the goal. Tomorrow I will begin more intense research on the objects I choose so that ought to be fairly exciting. My one thought from walking through the empty museum today was not that of awe though, I just admit, but rather an inspiration that it would be thrilling to slide down its long expanses of polished wood flooring in stocking feet. But don't worry, I'm pretty sure I can convince myself that is one experiment that can remain a hypothetical. 

The Keys to the Kingdom

The Main Gallery at the Toledo Museum of Art

The sliding door thuds into place as I close it behind me, turning off the lights and leaving the gallery. The Toledo Museum of Art closes its doors on Mondays, allowing time for those who work behind the scenes to get everything in order for the week ahead. But I wandered the halls all on my own, on a hunt for the 20 pieces that I have been assigned to look into, which I will narrow down to 6-8 that have related themes for my actual research. But for now, I have the keys to the museum. Granted, I couldn't necessarily access the museum with impunity, and walking its halls on a Monday should be no different from a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, but a feeling of elation swells in my chest anyways. Its the freedom, the sensation of being on the inside, behind the scenes where the magic happens. I've been visiting museums all my life and can't count the number of times I've visited TMA even with all my fingers and toes, but this experience is entirely new. This is the last part of my first day at the museum, beginning my three week internship during which I will be working on an exhibit called Global | Local scheduled to open Fall 2014.

So lets back up a little bit to the start of my day. After wandering around like a lost puppy, I latched onto another woman in the curatorial office who took me up to Adam Levine's office so that he could teach me the ropes. First we visited the desk in the curatorial office that will be my home for the next three weeks, then went to a breakfast meeting. Afterwards, I took my picture for my ID, got my keys, then sat down at said desk for an hour so that I could begin looking through the 108 objects that will be in the exhibit. Adam gave me a schedule of his meetings and pointed out the ones he thought would be interesting for me to attend, then I got back to work, this time narrowing in on the 20 pieces that I will be working from. At 2, I went to a meeting with Marketing about Global | Local with Adam, and afterwards I embarked on my great adventure: wandering the galleries on my own.

So far, I have met some really interesting people, though I probably don't remember half their names from the whirlwind of introductions, and started work on some very interesting things. Walking through the halls that I have roamed so often before, my keys jingling in my hand, thousands of years of history surrounding me, I began to feel as if I had finally made it to the other side, and might have a chance of discovering what I had come in search of, whatever that was.