Intern Thoughts: A Weekly Response
Every week we’re asking our summer interns to share some thoughts and responses to various experiences and readings. This week we asked them to reflect back on the last ten weeks and share what they’ve discovered about museums, themselves, and their future goals; some of your favorite memories from the past ten weeks, and to update us on their major projects.
Not a Farewell, but a See You Later
Museums haven’t been the same, since I became an intern at one. Now I read museum labels not just for information, but to consider their writing style. I see glass displays and wonder about the hundreds upon hundreds of hours of brainstorming, researching, and grant writing that had to happen before those objects could be shown. I’ve got a third eye now; unlike my usual pair, which see the exhibits for what they are. My third eye can see the invisible behind-the-scenes hands and minds that made the exhibit possible.
Are museums in my future? This future, which at the beginning of the summer was more an impression than a concrete vision, still feels very hazy. I’m still undecided about my major, although I’ve enjoyed the places where my work here has intersected with anthropology and organizational studies. I like the parts of my work which have allowed me to be creative, like when we formulated themes and sections for the new core exhibit. If I were to intern in a museum again, I’d be interested to see more of the administrative side. I’m curious about the questions museums face, and how museum directors and administrators are trying to answer or solve them, such as, “How do we get people to come?” and “How do we get people to care?” From what I’ve seen of the world of small museums, administration overlaps with exhibitions; administrators get to be part of the creative process, while overseeing the big picture and the long term of the museum itself, a perfect combination of my interests. That’s why I’m considering taking some classes in the Organizational Studies major at school this next year.
Regardless of my future in museums, if it exists at all, I’ll always see exhibits differently. Now the word “museum” evokes more than old heavy objects and marble floors. When I hear “museum,” I think of lunch breaks at the picnic table behind the offices, giggling with my fellow interns. I think of my first tour of the basement collections, learning how to handle old and delicate things with white gloves. I think of surreptitiously following visitors through Beyond Chicken Soup to observe their engagement, particularly the time when a mother and daughter spent over two hours in the exhibit, very very much engaged! And goodness knows how I’m going to miss the always full, always happy candy bowl.
I’m sad to be leaving when I am, because we’re still very much in the early days of the new core exhibit. It would be neat to check in a year from now, when things may be more concrete, and less lists of people and events on an infinite number of GoogleDocs! But our work is still moving along, and I feel proud to have made contributions to what I can tell is going to be an amazing exhibit. We’ve narrowed down lists of our iconic figures, and expanded lists of new names. We’ve restructured and refined our themes. Next week, we will have focus groups, which I hope will be the final key to deciding who and what our exhibit will focus on, and I hope I can be there for some. Seeing how real people respond to the research and thinking I’ve been doing, even at this early stage, will help make tangible the ideas I’ve worked on, as well as our still-distant core exhibit as a whole. I look forward to coming back in 2019 (with my BA in some unknown major!) and walking through the exhibit that will have grown out of this seed I’ve helped nurture.
~ Emilia Halvorsen
Serving the Community
Over the course of this internship, I would hope that I learned at least something about the museum’s role in society. The Museum must serve as a resource to the community, at least as much as it is to function as an attraction in its own right. A museum, especially one which focuses on a local phenomena, like the JMM, must serve its community as its primary mission. As for myself, I think the most important thing I’ve learned is how to maintain good work habits, and how to stay productive over a long period of time.
I think my most interesting memory of the internship was our first visit to DC to see the Library of Congress. As well as seeing the incredible building and institution for the first time, I think it was a chance for me to get to know the other interns better, and spend some time with them outside of the normal work environment. I think we all grew to appreciate each other more as individuals. And of course, the trip was fun.
Right now, I’m working on holiday orders for the programs department, as well as research for the museum’s new scrap exhibit, and a script for a new audio tour of the Lloyd Street Synagogue. I sincerely hope that my experience at the JMM will help me move on to bigger and better things in the near future.
~ David Agronin
Combining Learning and Action
The last two months at the Jewish Museum have been a truly eye-opening experience. I have spent the last several years at Towson University studying Education with a focus in History. While I have always enjoyed the various subjects that fall under the social studies category, my passion was very much in the actual teaching. Working with kids and people is what I prefer doing, rather than burying myself in books and internet articles doing research. Working at the museum allowed me to do both, often simultaneously. As I look towards my teaching career, which will begin within the next few years, I will be sure to include museum trips in my curriculum. The JMM is a great example of how a museum trip can enhance any lesson, especially by breaking the monotony of a classroom. I loved working with the school groups that came to visit.
The most memorable parts of this Summer come from meeting the other interns and museum staff. All of us are attending different colleges and have something different to share. The education department in the West Wing where I spent most of my time is always an entertaining spot. Anna, Rachel, David and I are always laughing together or debating various topics. The four of us also had the honor of working with Trillion and Ilene who taught us something new everyday. Each day the interns meet outside in the courtyard for lunch, and once a week we have a workshop with a museum professional. The staff, from Deborah Cardin to Marvin Pinkert, all offered fantastic advice on various topics.
Rachel, David, Anna and I have spent the last few weeks working on an audio tour for the Lloyd Street Synagogue. We wrote scripts and spend a few hours last week trying to record them. I think I owe Rachel and Anna an apology, as laughter got the best of me and we had to hold off on recording for a little while. Regardless, I hope the recordings will be a valuable asset to future museum tours. Anna and I also got to work with a group of students from the Maryland School for the Blind which was extremely rewarding. The kids were excited, sweet and I was happy to have the chance to show them what the museum has to offer.
In short, this Summer was extremely fulfilling for me. I would like to thank the staff, interns and volunteers. Everyone from James, our security guard, to Trillion, my supervisor, had something to offer me this Summer. I look forward to using what I learned in my teaching career, and I cannot wait to come visit the Auschwitz exhibit in March 2017.
-Ben Snyder
Crunch Time
With my time at the museum ending, it’s time for some reflections. Overall, this internship confirmed something I basically already knew. With great coworkers, a relaxed yet upbeat atmosphere, interesting projects, and a meaningful mission, it’s no problem waking up early to work everyday. With this in mind, thought about the future some this summer, especially while working with the archives. I always considered graduate school abstractly, but recently put that thought aside. However, as I wrote about in a separate blog post, looking through all the magazine and brochure artifacts made me realize how much knowledge is contained in boxes in museum basements. The idea of spending a few years tracing topics through different publications and making new discoveries reignited my interest for a potential masters degree. In the short term, I discovered that my university offers a year long internship with its museum that involves designing and implementing an exhibit, with an application due next month. I’m seriously considering applying, something I wouldn’t have done before this internship.
I enjoyed every day at the museum, but some moments really stood out. One day, I helped facilitate workshops with a group of visually impaired students, which included running around the lobby to avoid being “eaten” by a paper skeleton one of the kids created. Of course, she caught me, as I ended up on the floor begging for mercy while she laughed and pretending to make her skeleton eat me for the fifth time. All of the student groups were so different, and really added something special to the internship. Aside from these groups, I had a great day at the Student Teacher Institute (STI) on its day at JMM. Even with the Holocaust as a primary topic, the atmosphere was upbeat and energized, with all of the teachers in the museum eager to learn. All of the speakers were so engaging, especially ones who incorporated interactive elements. I usually don’t think of conferences very positively, because it’s difficult for me to sit and listen to multiple speakers, even when I’m interested in the topic. This experience provided me with a counter example to that. Besides these standout moments, working day to day with the other education and program interns always brought interesting conversation. Inside of staying in a cubicle, we all shared an office space that facilitated conversation. We covered politics and philosophy many times, as well as more light-hearted topics. My internship definitely wouldn’t have been the same with a different group of interns here.
With a day and a half left, I’m finishing up some great projects. I’ve collected all the items for the Lloyd Street Synagogue Rosh Hashanah display, worked with Trillion and Joanna to find the right spot and display case to use, wrote my first draft of the labels, and decided how I’d like the objects to be arranged on the display case. Pretty soon, it will be out of my hands! I’m also working with the other interns on the audio tour of Lloyd Street Synagogue. We’ve practiced recording and made the edits to our script. With so little time left, we need to make each recording count! Tomorrow, the last day, definitely isn’t going to be a laid back last day; it’s crunch time.
– Anna Balfanz
Farewell, JMM!
It’s hard to believe that my JMM internship is nearly over! I remember what I thought this internship would be about in the beginning; contrasting those assumptions with what I have learned about how a museum runs in the past ten weeks highlights how beneficial this experience was. Most importantly, I learned how much work and thought goes into each exhibit they show here. For the whole summer, Emilia and I have been examining and reworking the big idea of the new core exhibit, which is currently set to open in 2019, and that work will continue after the summer internships are over! My interactions with the other staff members and observations of their meetings impressed upon me how much they truly care about the content of this exhibit and what it represents. In terms of my personal growth, I learned that I have absolutely no self-control when a bowl of candy is sitting in front of me and that I need to push myself even harder to think outside of the box, which has been an essential exercise with this summer’s work.
My favorite moments of this internship have been the interactions between all of the interns. From experiencing the deeply meaningful Holocaust Museum in D.C. together to playing Pokemon Go on our lunch breaks, we have become a close cohort over the past ten weeks.
One afternoon a few weeks ago, we were between projects, so we took all of the quizzes on J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore website (which Hogwarts house you would be in, what kind of wand you would have—important stuff) and compared results.
The results for my work this summer have been more abstract than those for the online tests. Our main project has been figuring out the categories of what defines Jewish identity that we want to include in the exhibit and the people and stories that exemplify each category. By the end of this week, we will have an updated list of categories with corresponding characters based on extensive research in our collection. I bet they will change many more times between today and when the exhibit opens, but we have definitely made real progress during these ten weeks.
-Alice Wynd
Reflections on Working in JMM Collections
Ten weeks go by faster than I would have imagined. I was startled to realize I’ve been working here at the museum since June. It has become such a part of my routine, not coming in will feel weird. It’s crazy and kind of cool how much of my prior knowledge I’ve been tapping into; things such as how read blueprints, and topographical maps which I’ve found to be useful in locating and entering the basic descriptive information about the documents. My art history knowledge is useful in identifying themes and describing the artworks of the museum. I find that there are a lot of different versions of Moses and the Ten Commandments in the Jewish Museum’s collections, some of which I have talked about in different blogs. I even got to tap in to my archaeological knowledge with the creation of a finding aide.
This internship has helped me do something that I have desperately wanted to do: help bridge the gap between collections and the availability of knowledge. This past year in college in my archaeology field work seminar, we talked a lot about archaeological collections, and how they are often poorly stored and documented. After learning that I decided that I wanted to try and find a way to fix that problem. By helping to catalog materials, adding more detailed descriptions to archival documents, and updating and writing finding aides, I hope that the information and history that collections contain will be easier to find, whether it be for exhibitions or private researchers. It will also help me as I go into future careers, whether I end up going into museum work or into cultural resource management in archaeology.
– Tamara Schlossenberg
And That’s a Wrap, Folks!
Over the past ten weeks, I’ve learned a lot about oral histories and Jewish weddings. I’ve gone through every oral history the Museum has collected in the past forty-odd years hoping to find gold, and I did! But that was just the beginning. Since the last update, I’ve been digitizing and listening to the oral histories that hadn’t been transcribed, and looking at all the oral histories together to try to decide who should be a key couple in the exhibit—aka, which couples have the best story or the most information that we can use. At this point, we’re so swamped with married couples we’re using index cards to sort them all out, old school-style. Fortunately, we’ve found a designer for the exhibit and met with him, which helped hammer out some better ideas about what this exhibit is going to look and feel like, which helps me pinpoint better stories. Although the exhibit is still nowhere near close to finished, looking back at day one when all we had was a list in Past Perfect (our collections software) and a vague idea that the exhibit would be about weddings, I can’t believe how much we accomplished in moving this project forward in the past ten weeks.
Working here at the JMM has taught me so much about museums behind the scenes! As I learned on one of our field trips to Washington D.C., seeing exhibits in other museums now has me viewing them with an understanding of how someone worked on them, thought them through, designed them with a specific idea in mind. I recognize how much research and background and effort gets put into each exhibit, and I have so much more respect for museum professionals and everything they put into each and every exhibit. Also, the JMM has really taught me a lot about what I need out of a career and a workplace. It’s been a great place to intern for ten weeks, but I don’t think long-term that museums work is for me. Watching Joanna get excited about certain parts of the collections and hearing Marvin talk about Museum management made me realize that I don’t have that kind of excitement and passion for this work. As much as I like museums and I like learning about the theories and social science of museums, I realized that I want to find the career that I have the same passion and drive for that all of the staff has for museums here at JMM. I’m not certain what that is yet—I’m looking at law school and other options—but I now know that museums aren’t quite the right fit for me.
This is not a final goodbye to the JMM for me; if nothing else, I will definitely be coming back to see my wedding exhibit when it opens in all its glory. But it is goodbye to working here, to seeing the friends I’ve made here every day. As I think about leaving, I remember some of the best moments I’ve had here at the JMM—from the simple pleasure of eating lunch in the shade of the courtyard surrounded by my friends, to the excitement and satisfaction of completing a milestone in my project. I also really enjoyed our internship visits, such as visiting the Walters Art Museum and getting to learn about and actually experience a Touch Tour. Even though I don’t foresee a future in museums for myself, I’m glad I had the chance to have a great experience here at the JMM, and I’m sorry to have to say goodbye.
– Gina Crosby
Final Week at the JMM
It has been an interesting ten weeks here at the JMM, an animation major working at a museum has been quite a crash course in a totally new world. As a kid I had the pleasure of having parents who enjoyed going to museums, they have always been a part of my life. I had never seen the administration side of the work, so taking a look into this experience from another lens has been quite interesting. I learned a lot about how I feel about museums and history. Sometimes it takes knowledge and experience within something to learn to appreciate its full value. I learned some practical skills that I think will aid me in the grand scheme of things. I am currently pursuing some outside work regarding museum visitor surveys which I worked with at the JMM.
I have experienced a variety of fun times in this internship, as much time as was spent working was spent socializing and having a good time. It was nice to meet some other people around my age interested in a vastly different field, being around artists all time can be draining so it was refreshing to be around some different mindsets. The DC trip was a fun blur of activity, some other activities that come to mind: shuffling around onions and baked chicken for hours working on a stop motion while people peered in confused, some of our usual intern shenanigans on our down time.
As I wrap up this internship at the JMM I take a moment to look back on what I have accomplished and how these projects will live on or be continued. I started working to digitize the Mendes Cohen exhibit as a website, this project evolved into a new and interesting start-up in Baltimore working with geo-location. This geo location project has been started and spans the museums departments working to bring a more inclusive historical experience to the everyday person walking through Baltimore. The city is old and filled with stories, monuments and historical buildings ripe for exploration by both the tourist and the everyday resident of the city. As time progresses this project has included the education department. I am now currently working on a fun stop motion animated short about making chicken soup for the JMM’s Beyond Chicken Soup exhibit about the Jewish community and medicine. It is nice to see the projects I worked on featured and to watch their development continue with the input of the museum as a whole.
– O. Cade Simon
Internship Reflections
We are in the home stretch now and basically everything that I have been working on is finished. The brochure for the Lloyd Street Synagogue is complete and needs to printed as well as a miscellaneous other flyers and postcards that I have created. Additionally, I created a colored and black/white version of a placemat for a Chicken Noodle Soup program for school groups. Lastly, we are all working on an audio tour of the Lloyd Street Synagogue as well as a tour of Jonestown. It will incorporate an app and will allow users to move around individually, which I think is pretty interesting.
As far as my future with museums I think that I have come to the conclusion that I am more attracted to artifacts and art more so than I am about the programs that go along with the exhibits. That being said, I did find this experience crucial to my development and growth. It has also opened my eyes to that wide range of opportunities there in museums, because I have always thought of museums as limited in opportunities, but there is a lot more that keeps an institution such as a museum running. Actually, while we were at the Walter’s Museum when we were able to talk to the conservationist, I found that really interesting and a potential career path…if I can figure out how to understand chemistry.
Among my favorite memories had to have been meeting everyone. It was amazing how quickly relationships formed among the interns. I also think that, in part, it has a lot to do with the small work environment. I actually got to know my supervisors as opposed to “that person that gives me stuff to do”. I really enjoyed that. Betsy had a great impact on me as well. Her zest for life is inspirational and her charm is timeless. Of course, I’ll miss the endless candy bowl as well.
Overall, this experience has changed my views on museums, and the amount of work that goes into them. It made me want to explore them further, so I think I took a step in the right direction, and that’s really all I wanted.
~ Rachel Morin
A Summer at the JMM
The last ten weeks at the JMM has been an adventure. We have taken field trips to different locations like the Walter’s Art Museum, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Library of Congress. We have learned new skills like how to conduct oral histories, how to engage different types of visitors and how project management keeps things moving. Along the way, we bonded with each other and became our own little family of interns. Even though we didn’t all work in the same department, the interns ate lunch together almost every day. Whenever possible, we sat outside in the shade to take a break from the cold office. We talked and laughed and played Pokémon Go. It’s sad to think that it all had to end.
My original purpose for this internship was to find out if I am compatible with museum work. As a rising senior at Salisbury University, it is time for me to start thinking seriously about how I am going to live my life. I wanted to discover if this was a place where I could enjoy my work and not feel burdened by my job, and I can confidently say that this is true. Creating a core exhibit is hard work and the stressors of deadlines are a definite reality, but the joy of investigating stories and finding materials to weave them together outweighs the pressure of looming deadlines.
At the beginning of my internship I was the public history intern. After a few weeks of research as well as digitizing and transcribing oral histories I became more involved in the exhibitions project. After many google docs and working lists, we have finally created a solid idea. The internal bits and bobs may change before it is completed in 2019, but we have made some real progress this summer on refining ideas and compiling useful information. The intense amount of brain storming and formulating ideas we have done this summer has kept me active and ready to go back to college this fall. I can’t wait to come back when the exhibit opens and find out what the final exhibit contains.
~ Rebecca Miller