Monday, January 14, 2019
New Year, New Internship
As you could gather from my title, the new year has brought in a lot of new internship opportunities for everyone - myself included. To be honest, I have already started my internship at the Kimbell Art Museum in the education department! My first day was January 3rd so I have been interning there for a couple days now. However, that doesn't mean that I know everything there is to it! My internship schedule is Monday and Thursday 9:30-4:00 with select days that I will be helping work events like over spring break. The early mornings are a definite shift from the late night graduate courses but I've been doing well waking up early!
Through this internship, I really hope to gain a more in-depth understanding of the multiple roles within the museum education department as well as throughout the other departments. One thing that surprised me from day one is that there are underground tunnels that run throughout the museum! I feel like I should have known this fact sooner, especially given how museums would transport artworks otherwise, but it felt like such a shock to actually be able to walk through them with a staff badge.
I have been working mostly with the Education Manager Conni and the Community Engagement Coordinator Alli preparing for an upcoming sample tour for people with low-vision and blindness. I've been involved in meetings, taking general minutes, and helping to do smaller tasks that are important to the overall goal of the project. Lately, I have been gathering sensory objects like scented bottles and tactile objects like straw hats and weathered wood to draw upon the essential components of the selected artworks without relying on visuals. One project that I worked on today was creating DIY tactile drawings for the tour; this entailed printing out 11x17in size artworks and 'drawing' over the outlines with a raised puffy paint so that the objects could be made out when rubbed. Some areas are marked with patterns to denote colors or textures located in a legend at the bottom of the page. It's a slow moving project but one that I really enjoy so far.
I'm excited to write about how the sample tour goes in my next entry as well as smaller projects that I have worked on or will be approaching soon.
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Happy new year, Brandan, and welcome to the blog! Thanks for kicking things off with the first post of 2019!
ReplyDeleteI love the underground tunnels of museums! I have been through the Kimbell ones and I always get so spun around in there. I feel like it would be a great place to roller skate :)
The blind and low-vision tour preparation sounds like a lot of fun and I am excited to hear how it goes!
Hi Brandan,
ReplyDeleteIts great that we both are interns at the Kimbell. I keep reading your name or hearing it throughout the day but I haven't met you yet. I think we'll meet on spring break, yay! I was also fascinated by the underground tunnels, however, I still can't navigate through them, I hope that I can learn soon and stop going in circles. Also, I am looking forward to the see how the tour and focused group session went, and I hope that it was great.
Enjoy the internship and I hope that we meet soon.
I keep seeing sticky notes with your name on them so I understand the situation! I'm excited to be able to meet you whenever our schedules overlap - it'll be great to work with you! I've gotten very lucky that I have been able to walk with some of the other employees in the morning so that I don't get lost but it's definitely a struggle to learn where everything is! Best of luck on your navigation :)
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