On
my first day of my internship I got to know Velcro. We were setting up for the
new Civil War exhibit and the company that created the display panels forgot to
put Velcro on the back. The important task fell upon my experienced hands to
cut multiple strips of Velcro. I have to admit that it was therapeutic. Over the
next few days I helped finish the exhibit. At one point I held a sword and
rifle. It was awesome! Of course, I had
to pretend to shoot absolutely nothing because it made the experience
complete. I tried my hand at the sword but that was an epic fail so I’ll just
stick to firearms from now on. By the way, that rifle was heavy. HEAVY. I feel
for those soldiers that had to lug that thing around and then were expected to shoot
it constantly in battle, or use the bayonet at the end of it. That would have
ended badly for me; and I would have been drafted because the little jar full
of Popsicle sticks, red dot for not drafted and black for drafted, always gave
me a black dot. Always. Except for the one time I searched for a red dot. I won
that round.
After
my exhibit fun I got to travel into the secret mysterious room, called Collections.
I swear that place is so exciting. All in one room are objects from CENTURIES
of humans. Centuries! In one hand I could be holding a tool from the Native
Americans that lived in the Chemung area long ago and the other a 1960’s
election button for Nixon. However, I did not handle the delicate objects that
way. In order to touch the objects in the mysterious Collections Room I had to
wear gloves. Wearing gloves prevented the oils on my hands from damaging the
historical objects.
My
first task in Collections was the back left corner, the paintings. The
paintings rest snugly in two shelving units. Please note the word snugly. The
paintings were wrapped in cloth or packaging plastic, which means that they
take up more space than they should. The wrapping is to protect the paintings
but I can tell you right now it was the bane of my existence. Not only were the
paintings snugly placed in the shelving but they also had the tendency to fall
apart if they were really old, which was always a nice challenge. I had to take
out every painting in Collections, photograph it and then write its number and
a description. After the pictures were
uploaded onto the computer I would enter them into the
database, along with a description of each piece. Here’s the cool part: every object you have
ever seen in a museum has an ID number hidden somewhere on it. I had to find
the ID number of the painting and sometimes there would be multiple numbers on
one painting so I had to write them all down, later trying to find the one
actually in the database. It was a long process. However, it was fun to see all
of the art. There were water, acrylic and oil paintings. There were multiple charcoal
renderings, which were my favorite. I can still remember the older lady who
wore black clothing with a pink bow. It was gorgeous. There were also
photographs that were so long in length that it was hard to get them in and out
of their cubby hole. They were mainly photographs of groups of soldiers but it
was interesting to see all of their different faces. It made me wonder what
happened to all of them. Did they survive the war or did they die? What were
their names and where did they go? Alas, I have no idea. Once everything once
entered into the database my first mission was complete!
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