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.