One month down d-d-down d-d-down d-d-down down down.

Hello again everyone!! Christianna and I have officially finished our first month at the MADI, and it’s been a pretty fun and interesting month! As you all know the MADI is a very small space jam packed full of art and history (and even a couple law firms), so Christianna and I have become a tag team duo working together on almost everything. As she mentioned in her recent post I got to assist her in crafting, planning, and drafting a program for a group of Irma Rangel girls inspired by the current John Henry exhibition within the main gallery space. It turned out great and was fun both to help with planning it and with watching it unfold.

Currently, we’ve moved on to my main project for this internship, the reorganization of information pertaining to each individual art piece and the re-doing of every single wall label. So far we’ve documenting every piece currently up without a wall label, drafted a new label design, and have almost filled in all of the information for them. (For anyone curious there were 122 pieces of art hung without a wall label, this number does not include pieces that extend into the law firms or about 5 - 6 HUGE pieces hung very high up that we have no way of presently reaching to properly verify information.) As Christianna stated, this process has been eye opening for us as we’ve made the labels to include the country of origin for each artist, and it’s amazing to see how for MADI has spread. The next step for us in this process is looking into better and affordable materials to both print the labels out on and hang them up with. This is going to prove a challenge as we have to keep in mind how the museum is currently run and that we can’t make this process too expensive or difficult so that it won’t be continuously carried out after we are gone, yet we want these labels to be as durable and long-lasting as possible. Once we complete this we will move on to replace all the current wall labels up followed by creating labels for all the pieces in storage as well as all the ones tucked away in the law firm spaces. The huge pieces will be tackled last as they are the more fun portion of this project!!! Since they are hung so high up and would prove difficult to move Christianna and I plan to create unique (in shape) labels for each piece rather than just have a rectangle like all the others. Not a day passes where a piece isn’t moved to a new location in this museum so we decided a unique label design would not make the several moves over time for the majority of the pieces. (But no seriously, every day the museum changes in some way or form. Christianna and I have found ourselves several times staring at a wall because we can’t remember if a piece hung there was there the day before.)

This means that we are neck deep in all of the museum's archives (if you can call them that) and has actually lead to the reorganization and correcting of A LOT of information regarding their current and past collection.

On another note Christianna and I from time to time take our lunch break out to the park that’s just down the street and we have a mini picnic. And we have started to raise a DUCK ARMY! Also, on Saturdays we go on adventures and eat lunch out a couple blocks down the street where it is booming with several different kinds of restaurants.

First month at The Madi!!!! :)

Hello again everyone!! Megan and I have been at the The Madi for a little over a month, and so far we have done a lot!! We created our first education program for a group of students that came from Irma Rangel Young Women’s Leadership School. Because of the current John Henry exhibition we decided to utilize the artworks in it for our program. The exhibition is comprised of architectural blueprints for John Henry’s works, both small scale and life size sculptures, and photographs that document the construction of his works. For our program we had the class first go through the exhibit to see the pieces and learn about the history and process of John Henry’s work. Then the group was given materials to create a blueprint of their own John Henry inspired work. Finally the group was then able to bring that blueprint to life by creating their own small scale sculpture that they could take home. It was a lot of fun and the class really enjoyed it! 

For the rest of the summer Megan and I want to think of at least two more program ideas. The rest of the groups that will be coming this summer are comprised of kindergarten through 3^rd grade students, so I am excited to see what we come up with for this age group! One idea we have is a program focusing on Salvador Presta, a very prominent Madi artist who came out of Argentina during this movement. Many of his works are similar to mobiles, so we were thinking of creating a program where the children could make their own mobiles using 2D and 3D shapes/blocks as well as utilize specific color patterns like Presta does. This project could possibly be sensory related, mainly through sight, so I am obviously very excited to see this happen!

We have a few weeks before the next class, so in the mean time I am helping Megan with her project involving the redesign of the museum’s wall labels. We have been working on them for about a week and have got a pretty good chunk nearly finished! One of the most rewarding things that has come out of this is learning where all the artist’s come from. By working on labels we have been able to see how the influence of Madi spread from South America to Europe.

So all in all, I believe we have already seen success with the initial goals/projects we wanted to accomplish over the summer! :)

Below is a picture of Megan and I using different materials to test out the John Henry program. 

Introduction

Hello everyone!

I completed my first internship meeting and I am about to venture into the program. As a refresher.. my name is Michelle Salazar and I am working towards my MFA in Visual Arts - Fibers. My internship is with the Allen Arts Alliance. I will be developing a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, math) camp pilot program for 5th and 6th graders. It is a collaboration between the Allen Public Library and the Arts Alliance. If it is successful they will use it as a template and build up from it and expand age groups based on my recommendation report due August 10. It's exciting because I get to put the Art in STEM and it is the first time Allen has done this type of program. I have received assistance from the Onstead Institute at UNT along with the recommendation to implement Design Thinking into my program.

I can design anything I want so I plan to propose two options and the library board / advisory group will vote on one. My proposal has to be finalized and ready for marketing by the 19th so I have about four days to come up with something. I will teach the pilot with an assistant the last week of July. In between I'll be doing project management.

When I am not working on the STEAM project I will be revising the ART Sparks education program for Allen ISD grades K-6. This is organized by Allen Arts Alliance and delivered by volunteers who go to the classrooms. This will involve upgrading the documentation and revising the volunteer education packet. I will also be coming up with new ideas for incorporating objects/distance learning for artwork and museum content.

Altogether I expect this to be an amazing summer - full of new experiences.  I had concerns and questions about the way things were going with art education in my community and am now in a position to affect the change I wanted to see! I have never worked with a community art organization so I will gain a lot of insight. In my perfect life post-MFA I see myself teaching fibers part time, traveling to teach workshops, collaborating with the Onstead Institute, working in Art / STEAM education in Allen and collaborative projects between UNT and local museums. I believe this internship will be invaluable in working towards those goals.

Howdy!

Hello! My name is Alex Smith, and I am currently a graduate student on the Archival Studies and Digital Imaging path of the Information Science master’s program. I am also working on the Art Museum Education certificate. I got my bachelor of arts from UNT in Interdisciplinary Art & Design Studies and have been working in some capacity at UNT’s Willis Library for the past two and a half years.

My internship this Summer is at the library and archive of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, TX. I am starting the internship on June 14^th and feeling very excited about this experience! This is a museum I grew up with, so I’m excited to have the opportunity to work there and contribute to organizing some of the many items in their collections. I will be assisting in a number of facets to get a well-rounded archival experience. I will be helping with accession records, processing collections both digital and analog, handle archival reference queries, and assist with processing and housing a special collection of 19^th century artist’s materials (paintbrushes, palettes, etc.)

This will be my first experience working in an art museum and working in an archive, so I’m expecting that most everything I’m taught will be new and a learning experience. This will likely share some similarities to my library experience with reference assistance and finding resources, but aside from that this is an entirely new territory for me work wise. I’m hoping to get a clear idea of a museum archivist’s duties and tasks, and to gain experience that I can learn from and use in future jobs. Its both nerve racking and exciting to think about working with objects in the collection, and its what I hope to eventually do as a career. Overall, excited to see what directions this internship will take!