And so the end has come to my Internship at the collections department of the sloan museum. My final days at the Buick Gallery were taken up with cataloging a massive file of old photographs of the Bisho Airport outside of Flint. I was also able to sit in on a couple of meetings discussing some future plans in the new “Flint History” section of the museum, from exhibit layouts to class activities for visiting school.

Overall, I feel like I learned a lot over my 150 hours in that place. I learned the importance of proper storage for artifacts, and how to properly catalog them for future use. I also learned the importance of doing this in the first place as while many of these artifacts may not seem relevant or important at first glance, they provide valuable insights to a specific time in history. They also may surprise you, for instance an innocuous metal cylinder may turn-out to be an Imperial Japanese artillery shell from WWII.

I valued my time at the museum and have come to have a greater understanding and respect for the role they play in communities and preserving their history and stories.

Something new has happened at the Buick Gallery this past week. While I was still assigned to my basic tasks of cataloging artifacts, I was also able to sit in on a meeting between the Collections Department and the Education Department about the design and layout of the new history exhibit that’ll be a part of the museum after its remodel.

For some background, the Sloan Museum has been undergoing extensive renovations since before I started interning there (thus limiting my activities to what can be done at the Buick Gallery). A part of this remodel will be a whole section of the museum dedicated to the history of Flint, from the original Native inhabitants to modern day. Their currant plan is for it to be a sort of “timeline but not a timeline”, meaning that as people move through the section they’ll move from one era of Flint’s history to the next, but there is not clear dates associated with each era.

The main problem the were dealing with was where to put a “community gallery” in the section. This gallery would feature artifacts from the community and would change yearly. Unfortunately, the nature of the gallery means it doesn’t conform to any one era of Flint’s history and thus would break the “flow” of the section if it was just stuck in the middle of it. They debated between either making it the entrance to the section or putting it at the end. Eventually (after much shifting of post-its on a printed-out map) they were able to make the gallery fit at the end.

Other matters were also discussed at the meeting, mainly how to make the section more conducive to educational activities for the many school classes that will sure to be visiting the museum. One particular idea that was discussed heavily was adding a projection of a short film showing Flint’s growth from a small town to a city for the Education Department’s “Build a City” activity.

This meeting was very reminiscent of meetings I attended as a part of Student Government, with people offering up their ideas and potential solutions for issues and of at least a temporary agreement being hashed out. This holds a valuable lesson about how cooperating with others can actually get stuff done, even if it can be tedious at times.

Not much has changed from the last time I updated this blog, my work at the Sloan Museum has kind of fallen into a rut the past few weeks, with very little variation in my daily schedule. I come in at 9am and then work on cataloging either some 3-d artifacts that the actual staff assigned to me, or just slog through cataloging old photographs (I’ve almost completed one entire drawer, WHOA).

Besides shadowing the director last month, not much has happened. I’ve vacuumed both the upstairs and downstairs storage facilities, and my boss now has me working on cataloging some of the old artifacts from the second floor, shelf by shelf. These artifacts have been there a while and are suffering from not having a proper storage facility (something my boss is very frustrated by). These artifacts are often covered in layers of dust, grim, and rust, causing my to have to change gloves often. After I get all the relevant information I can from them (dimensions, visual description, etc.), I have to take photographs of them to attach to the file. After I finish with that, I put the artifacts back and then continue with cataloging the photofiles.

On the personnel side of things, one of the three full-time employees in the collections department went on maternity leave recently. This means the remaining two have even more work on their hands and less time to actually give me tasks to do. In fact, I was even given today off because of all the meetings they had to attend today.

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.

One week ago, I began my internship at the Sloan Museum in Flint, Michigan. While I am required to complete an internship for my Political Science degree, I choose to pursue an internship that had more to do with history rather than anything political, A fitting choice as History is my other major.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I should start with some basic introductions. My name Caleb Carter. I am a, college student at the University of Michigan-Flint, and I am about to my senior year. I am pursuing a double-major in Political Science and History, with the hope of getting into law school. For the next few months, I will be acting as an intern to the collections department of the Sloan Museum.

What does interning in museum’s collections department entail? So far it is primarily sitting in front of a computer entering in data from photographs. While this may sound boring, it is important work. The information I put into the program that manages the online collection, will help researchers find materials more easily, and hopefully assist them in understanding what they’re looking at.

Information Provided:

• Detailed description of photo
• When it was taken (if known)
• Where it is currently located
• Physical condition of it

I have also started moving on to entering information about some of the 3-D artifacts, or what people traditionally think about when they imagine museum artifacts.

Throughout my internship, I hope to expand my knowledge of how museums operate, and what goes on behind the scenes of these reliquaries of history.