In the month since I started interning at the Sloan Museum and the three weeks since I last updated this blog, my work has remained pretty much the same. I come in at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and start cataloging either photographs from a file or 3-d objects that one of the actual museum employs has assigned me. This routine has continued with little variation, with a few notable exceptions.
The first deviation was last week when the Collections Curator (my boss) and I went on a tour of the Applewood Estate. It was a quick little tour, more of a professional courtesy between two historical institutions than anything else, but it was still interesting. The Applewood Estate was home to C.S. Mott (a very important figure in the history of Flint and General Motors) and his family. The staff of the Estate kept the place in excellent condition for various tour groups and it was overall a very nice way to break up the montany that was beginning to form at the Buick Gallery.
The second deviation was less glamorous than the immaculate halls of Applewood, in fact it was downright grimmy. Last Tuesday my assignment was to vacuum the upstairs storage room in the Buick Gallery. I say “upstairs storage” but “dusty attic” would be more accurate. The room was full of artifacts crammed onto shelves, most of which aren’t even cataloged and predate the entire collections’ staff. Before I started interning there, they had replaced the roof of the building in order to stop it from leaking whenever it rained (a very bad thing in a museum store room) and thus the room was full of dirt and other leftovers from that renovation. By the time I was done, two vacuum bags had been filled with about 10lbs. each and the battery had to b recharged half-way through it.
The final deviation was today, and that was when I shadowed the Executive Director of the entire museum, Todd Slisher. While shadowing him I learned several things about the museum, such as the overall organizational structure of the museum staff. I also saw the master plan for the renovation going on at the main building, which looked very promising and I hope goes well. We also talked a little bit about the new public-charter school that is being built at the Flint Cultural Center and how they hope to integrate the resources available at the Cultural Center with the the classes provided there. Mr. Slisher also had me sit in on a phone call where he was negotiating a budget disagreement with the school, and that was interesting to see (or hear rather) go down. After I shadowed him for the morning I headed back to the Buick Gallery to continue with my standard task of cataloging photographs.
Going forward the Collections Curator has promised to arrange more opportunities for me shadow other staff members during my internship.
Caleb the Intern 