Shifting for the next semester

While I am a long ways away from the end of my internship, I will be transitioning to my new schedule this week. Thursday is the last day of the museums summer programs, so starting next week the educational department will be shifting their attention to events promoting the reopening of the museum.  I will now be assisting community lead and teachers that were recently hired on. One of the new hires is my old classmate, Asami. I look forward to getting to work with her. With the new community programs going on there has unfortunately been a little bit of tension. Some of the organizations/individuals that the museum partners up with can be more difficult then others to work with and there is always an issue of various departments failing to communicate internally with each other. On a positive note, I am getting a clearer idea of what I want my final project will be. The museum recently partnered up with a private school for low income students and African-American owned businesses in Forth Worth. I am interested in seeing if I can come up with a program for either the school or the businesses. I asked my supervisor for a list of the schools and businesses and the programs they were interested in holding. It is not a done deal, but it is an idea to get me started. I have really wanted to try to create programs that might reach African-American kids as I feel they are a little underserved by most museums. Especially since the museum is holding a great retrospective on Gorden Parks this semester so there will actually be artwork that depicts black subjects. Before the exhibition went up there was one one artwork on view of an African-American which is a little disappointing for me. While the museum has wonderful works of art in their collection, it nice to see artwork that depicts a group which I feel is underrepresented in museum collections in the metroplex. It would be great if I could center my program around art where African-Americans are actually represented. It always bothered as a kid that so much of the images and art that I looked at didn't look like me or my family. Now as an adult I try to consciously include art in my programs that depicts a diverse body of people. The museum has been making their own efforts to reach people that typically do not go to the museum by connecting with the Tartant County Black historical society so I am not going off the beaten path. My time so far at the museum has been a blast and I learned a bit about how the institution operates and the work and planning that goes into one program. I go to meetings just figure which artwork will be included into the tour programs, the language of the flyers for the  girl scout programs, and what supplies will or will not be ordered each month. It is nuts the amount of work that goes into just the planning of the next semesters programs.