Hello everyone!
My name is Evan Blackwell (they/them/theirs) and I am the Meadows Museum graduate Onstead fellow.
I just completed my fifth week working at the museum's education department under the director of education, Anne Kindseth. I have three main focuses for my time at the museum: 1. a short-term goal on producing a three to five-minute gallery talk for a college night event and assisting with the event itself, 2. managing all tour requests and scheduling for the museum entirety, and 3. managing the student collective. I have also been given the side task of recording a couple of audio guides for two portraits I spoke on in my short gallery talk.
My goal with this fellowship is to gain a better understanding of the administrative side of art museum education as well as practice my educating skills through developing curriculum and providing talks and tours. I only relatively recently added art museum education to my studies, and all of my experience has been digital/remote, so I intend to build my skills with the interpersonal aspect of this type of teaching, as well as develop my ability to work in a physical setting. Through the Meadows Museum’s more specific collection of Spanish art, I want to practice operating within the limitations presented by that specificity - e.g. how to build audience connections when there are not seemingly endless subjects and/or histories to use to connect to or pique interest? Along with this, the museum being part of a university allows for exploration of how to facilitate and build connections to not only students but also to other disciplines. How does one encourage diverse engagement with a specific collection? I am happy to say that these explorations have already started happening!
While the Meadows Museum Student Collective (MMSC) has existed for several years, Anne and I have transformed it in order to provide the students a way to gain direct paid experience with the museum. The collective will be producing a short podcast exploring a specific portrait by the end of the spring semester - the first podcast associated with the Meadows Museum! I am currently in the process of interviewing our applicants and securing guest speakers. Managing all of the tour requests for the museum takes up a good chunk of my workday, but I’m hoping to start developing individual meeting plans for the collective soon. Our fall college night event has already passed and was a great success, but the development for that (and future events) is for another post.
Our current exhibitions Canvas & Silk: Historic Fashion from Madrid’s Museo del Traje and Imagine & Identity: Mexican Fashion in the Modern Period opened on September 19th, 2021, and will be on show until January 9th, 2022. I hope you will come visit!
A PODCAST! Sooooooo cool! I am really, really, really excited to hear about how the podcast unfolds, Evan, and I can't wait to listen to episodes! And, it is awesome that it will be the Meadows' first podcast. I imagine the students in the student collective are going to be excited to be a part of that experience.
ReplyDeletePodcast production will be extending into spring 2022 so I'll definitely make sure to keep everyone updated as we get closer to knowing an official release date!
DeleteEvan, your internship at the Meadows Museum sounds exciting and like it keeps you very busy. How have tour requests been over the last few months with COVID-19 still impacting many edu spaces? Although it seems like attendance is improving steadily, in my experience, attendance still feels relatively light at many cultural institutions.
ReplyDeleteSo far, what have you learned about managing the student collective? And would you be willing to share more info about the gallery talks you created? Excited to hear more about both! And, like Laura, I am also intrigued about the podcast - I would LOVE to listen to episodes on my commute each day.
Hi Kay - it's definitely kept me busy! I believe fall 2021 is the first time that tours have been available since Covid first hit. Tour requests were fairly slow when I first started, they picked up in the middle of fall, and they've since slowed down again as we're coming up on winter break and K12 planning takes a break around then. The museum will be offering docent-led k-12 touring (as opposed to booking space for large self-guided groups) in the spring for the first time since Covid started so we're expecting an uptick. All things considered, the engagement has been high for the circumstances.
DeleteIt's certainly been a learning curve with the student collective - namely the battle to get people to check their emails (haha). Developing long term plans of engagement while also allowing the members to have some creative control has been the most important, but also the most complex, lesson. Since this is not a traditional gallery teaching or handing students lesson plans, it's also a fine line to walk between treating it like a job position and a class. I'm still figuring it out, but as we move to working more directly on the podcast in the spring I'm sure things will solidify.
I did a talk on the paintings “Portrait of Archduchess Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia” and “Portrait of the Archduke Albert” by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz. I actually focused mostly on their cousin/brother Rudolf II because of his rather interesting life that worked well to pique college students' interests. Originally in an arranged marriage to his cousin Eugenia, Rudolph never married and led an eccentric life. He was LGBTQ+ in some way, having had many affairs with men and women alike, and later curated his own cabinet of curiosities. This cabinet is fascinating because not only was it held in a large house, but it also had a live lion and tiger prowling the premises, which we know because of financial records outlining financial compensation paid to survivors of attacks and family members of victims.
Podcast production is going to extend into summer of 2022, but I'll definitely keep everyone updated as we get closer to knowing an official release date!