Mid Fall Semester Update - Meadows Museum

Hello everyone!

Things at the Meadows Museum are trucking along! Since my first update, I have continued working with the Student Collective on our podcast project and we have progressed pretty well. The collective has spoken to four out of our five planned guests and I am in the process of scheduling our spring meeting dates. The guests we have spoken to so far are: Meadows Museum’s collections manager Anne Lenhart, Meadows Museum’s curator Amanda Dotseth, Texas Fashion Collection director Annette Becker, woodworker, and furniture/frame conservator Alton Bowman - and art conservator Claire Berry will speak in the spring. Interviews with these speakers will hopefully be scheduled soon! As we have learned more about Portrait of a Lady I have been thinking more about the narrative and goals of the podcast, and I am very excited to see what direction the collective wants to take the project in the spring. I am allowing the collective members to have control over narrative direction by picking a focus along with the number of episodes and the episode(s) length with the goal of them selecting specific audio clips to be put into the final product. It’s definitely a learning curve both in understanding my position within the education department while also figuring out how to produce a podcast. Just the technology and recording setup research alone has taken up more time than I expected!

Tour scheduling and associated communications continue as always, but we have had to work through quite a few hiccups. I’ve lost track of how many times the system has been restructured. We don’t have specific software designed for tour scheduling and so the workarounds we have had to organize are complex with a number of little steps, but I think we have reached a stronger system through the tried and true method of trial and error. Tour requests have been heavier than expected, and the museum will be opening docent-led tours to all in the spring, so we expect to see a large increase in requests. Luckily, the education department is happy to have a new hire who will be assisting with managing tours!

I’m coming up on my last day at the museum before winter break and I’m in a rush to make sure everything is organized enough for me to find my footing when I come back in the spring. I can’t wait to share everything I have learned with y’all!