A letter to my future self

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Dear Whitney of the future,

In the past few months that you have been at the DMA I hope you have learned a lot, worked hard, made new friends, and that you have had fun all along the way. There are a few things that I hope you accomplish by the time your internship is over.

These things are:

- Learn how a museum works!—who is in charge of what? How do the different departments interact with one another? How do departments vary in different museums? Do all museums have education programs, and if so how are they similar or different from the DMA’s program?

-Discover and hone your museum education skills—how is teaching in a museum different than teaching in a classroom or at camp? What are good teaching tools? What/how can kids learn differently in the museum that they could not elsewhere? How can you use these things to your advantage/employ these things for the benefit of the kids visit?

-Learn how to write lesson plans/programming and write some!

-Create good relationships with co-workers and visitors of the museum—learn from the wisdom around you.

- Understand and appreciate the different jobs within the museum.

-Ultimately, establish a few positions within the museum that you would certainly like to hold in the future. Know where those people have come from and how they got to where they are. How could you get there in the near or distant future?

Throughout the summer, make sure to blog about these different goals. Perhaps include answers to questions, helpful experiences you have had, as well as progress on your goals for the summer.

Xo,

Whit

"Recipe for Art" Tour

Yesterday Belt Line Elementary School brought sixty of their students for a visit to the DMA!  The group was split into three, with talented full-time educators at the DMA heading each tour.  I got to work with Danielle to give the Recipe for Art tour.  The students were brought to three different artworks in the galleries, and at each one they learned about a different "ingredient" used to make an artwork.

For example, at The Divers by Fernand Leger (above), Danielle introduced the kids to line.  We talked about wiggly lines, loopy lines, straight lines, and zigzag lines.  They used their fingers to makes lines in the air to show what each line looked like and then told the educator what kinds of lines they saw in the artwork.  After the group discussion, each student pulled out their recipe book - a small notebook with a few pages - to make a drawing focusing on line.  At the other two artworks students learned about color and shape, and they make corresponding drawings on different pages of their book.

As a new intern, the unexpected thing that I learned on this tour was the importance of knowing where all of the bathrooms are in a museum.  Since the students were quite young, several of them needed to go during the tour.  I was very familiar with the bathrooms by my computer, but I had not thought to locate all of them in the galleries.  After the tour, I went to the visitors services desk, grabbed a map, and practiced getting from different places in the galleries to the bathrooms.  As simple and silly as this is, I'm glad I will have that information for the future!

Internship Goals

I will be interning at the Dallas Museum of Art in their education department. There I will be working with the Family, Access, Schools, and Teachers (FAST) cluster.

For this internship, I hope to gain more experience with access programs. As access for people of all abilities and levels of experience is a priority for institutions like museums, I look forward to working more closely with the planning of these programs. I have learned a bit about the Meaningful Moments program for people with early stage dementia and their care providers, and I hope to observe and help out with that!

Additionally, I would like to evaluate a program and suggest or implement changes based on that evaluation. While I have some experience designing and implementing programs, I have never had the opportunity to reflect on something that is already in place. I know a lot of museums are understaffed or don’t have the resources to evaluate what already exists, so that I will both have to opportunity to learn how to do that and be able to provide that service to the DMA would be great!

I am most excited to learn from the staff in the education department. In my previous experience working with in art education, I have always gotten the most from working closely with people who have been in the field for a while. Being able to pick their brains and watch them at work can sometimes offer learning opportunities that don’t come from reading books or trying things on your own. I have heard really wonderful things about the talents of the people in the DMA education department, and I look forward to seeing the kinds of questions they ask, the ways the facilitate conversations with other departments, and how they approach creating programs and materials.

What To Expect

This summer I will be researching, (re)writing and adding to the UNT Art Path brochure. UNT Art Path is a guided walking tour featuring works of art in public spaces all over the the UNT campus and throughout various buildings, celebrating the UNT Art Collections. Before I dive in with my hopes, dreams and expectations for my internship I must share a little background story…

In the 2010-2011 school year, I worked as a research assistant in the UNT Art Gallery where my main focus was to research the Art in Public Places collection. I was three out of four years in to my undergraduate career, working on my BA in Art History, when I found myself presented with this wonderful opportunity. I spent 10-20 hours per week researching the art and artists included in the APP collection and soaking up the experience like a sponge. The research that I gathered was compiled and included in the UNT Art Path brochure that is still being used today.

Fast forward a few years later to the Fall of 2013: After working for two and half years in the education department of a museum in Dallas, I decided it was time to come back to UNT to get my MA in Art Education. Around this same time, I was hired as the Manager of Programming for the UNT Art Galleries.  When discussing my options for internship credits with my supervisor, she mentioned the plans to re-vamp and expand the UNT Art Path, asking if that would be something I was interested in. Call me corny, but it felt like the universe had placed me in the exact right spot at the exact right time—I would get to continue the work I started as a wee-baby research assistant and once again leave my mark on the UNT Art Path.

What do I expect for my internship? I expect to be humbled by the research I presented in the past. I imagine when I open those files that it will feel similar to seeing an artwork that you created for your parents when you were 8 still hanging proudly in the office—not exactly a bad feeling, just something to put you in your place a little. I am excited to pull from my experiences working in the museum world and what I have practiced in my graduate program to enhance the brochure. I feel very fortunate to work for a team that trusts me and encourages me to use my knowledge and expertise to create a brochure/walking tour that will serve not only the UNT campus but the broader community as well.

I am not sure what challenges or experiences lay ahead, but I do know that I can’t wait to get started and continue my work!

-Katy Stewart

Great News!

       First, my apologies for posting again so quickly, but perhaps you will all be forgiving when you see the reason for more verbiage from me. My posts will relate retrospective thoughts about Frisco Arts (as I said before), but also experiences from an internship at the UT Southwestern Medical Center! Today I received confirmation that I was selected for this exciting opportunity to help catalog and research the extensive art collection (approximately 5,000 pieces of art) displayed in the buildings of the large complex in Dallas! Dr. Evans was so supportive and encouraging (as always) and agreed that I should include this new circumstance in my communication with you all.

       My expectations are that I will learn about the process of registering and organizing a collection, have the chance to view lots of art (probably high quality), and share information with the community about what is usually only seen by a handful of people. There are some recognizable artists in the collection (more about that later), but that doesn’t matter to me so much as the art itself. I’ve always been a fan of under-represented artists! Perhaps I will be able to promote some of them further.

       June 9 is my first day, so I’ll be checking in again around the middle of June.

Good luck to everyone in your own exciting adventures!

Linda East

First Thoughts

This summer, I will start my first educator experience outside the classroom and in the museum. For the last two years I have been amazed by the theories and approaches I learned relating to museum education. And now I will try to put them into action!

My internship will be at the Greater Denton Arts Council and will be focused on one specific exhibition, American Brides: Inspiration and Ingenuity, which shows selected gowns from the Texas Fashion Collection.  It will be a great reason to be at GDAC. I am so excited about this opportunity, which connects with so many things I love: jewelry and fashion, museums, hands-on activities for kids, and fancy ladies evenings ;) And who knows, I may create a new series of jewelry based on this great experience and exhibition!

I was given a full freedom - and responsibility - to create two kinds of programs, one of which is a program for adults, particularly women.  This will include a presentation followed by discussion and a short gallery walk.  For the last three weeks I have been gathering information about wedding jewelry and traditions in different cultures. I will build a lecture for adult ladies, which I will present at GDAC. I am so exited for the experience of presenting, but I am also concerned. I have relatively high levels of stress when talking in front of people, so it usually sounds like confused mumbling in the first seconds no matter how prepared I am. I hope this will be the opportunity to overcome my fear.

The other program will be hands-on activities for kids and their favorite adults related to exhibition. The challenging parts will be clearly communicating in English and trying to understand the kids. I also hope to create balance between the activities and the gallery visit. 

I am so excited for this experience, and through it I hope to understand better how things work in the museum. I know that there are advantages and disadvantages in being in a small institution. I hope to collaborate with another interns to do my programs. It will help me to really offer variety and it is always good that to have extra help to bring you the red color you forgot in the storage roomJ

Excellent summer 2014 to us,

Tamar Navama

Expectations (in retrospect) - Linda East

Linda East                                                                                                                                                  May,2014

            Because I completed my official internship time frame at Frisco Arts Friday, May 9, I will speak about the past, but will attempt to offer what I thought about as I began the venture. The first response when I was told I was selected was gratefulness and joy. It seemed that this small arts council with its in-house Art Gallery would offer an opportunity to learn more about administrative procedures in managing artistic spaces. When I discussed the responsibilities with Paige Prater, my supervisor, I realized that her primary concern was the development of an art education program. My hope was that while I was writing lesson plans and cost analyses (duties I had fulfilled regularly in my 21 years as a high school and middle school visual arts teacher in public schools), I would also see, hear, and absorb information that I could take with me to a museum career. Through hearing the experiences of former interns in other positions, I knew that tasks could include everything from the mundane to the exhilarating, so I was prepared for both. I was also looking forward to meeting new people.

            Every experience in life makes us better in one way or another, so I knew that day to day surprises and challenges would serve that purpose as I began to fulfill the criteria for the Museum Certification. I hoped that there would be challenges in aspects of discovering and exhibiting art in the gallery as well.                                                                                                           The agreed upon schedule was Mondays and Fridays with extra events as needed.       My next post will relate how there have been unexpected bonuses to this intern position!