Week 1: Let's jump right in

-->

For this summer, I will be interning at the Newseum in the Collections and Visual Resources Department with the Registrar, Maeve. I will be doing all kinds things such as exhibit cleaning and installation to condition reports and cataloging. Sounds like it will be an exciting summer!

**I am at the Newseum for 2 1/2 days out of the week. For the rest of the week I am at my regular job, which I am sure would not make an entertaining blog. So I will be posting weekly entries that will capture the main points for the week.**

Monday 5/6

News History Gallery

Upon arrival Maeve and I jumped right in to do the morning exhibit case cleaning. This entails doing a rough cleaning of the outside of all of the exhibit cases in the entire building!

She showed me her cleaning route through the museum and we went through all six floors in an hour and a half. We mostly just clean off any of the finger/face prints that we find and move on. So it goes fast. For the plexi galss cases we use a gel like cleaner and for the glass cases we use a special glass cleaner from Italy called Chiaro since most of the permanent glass cases were custom made in Italy.

After cleaning, we checked the light meter readings for three objects in the new JFK exhibit, which have to be checked twice everyday in the morning and afternoon. These specific objects are on loan and so have strict environment requirements that have to be met on a daily basis. The next task was to sort through the sticky notes on JFK message board in the exhibit. There are two boards. One board asks the question “Where were you when JFK was assassinated?” that is intended for those who were alive at that time. Sometimes people leave silly messages like "I was not born yet" or other variations that have to be taken down. The other board asks “Where were you when it happened?” that is intended for everyone else to post where they were when something tragic happened such as 9/11. Again, some people tend to leave silly and ridiculous messages like “I was riding my unicorn in space”, which have to be taken down. The good posts are sorted through and kept for future use. Some of the most ridiculous posts are put up on the “Wall of Shame.”

Arten Meter

Then we had a small get together to celebrate the leaving of the spring interns and the coming of the summer interns with delicious coffee cake. Then I was introduced to some of the people in the department and got my ID and schedule.

In the afternoon, I went back out in the museum with Emma, the museum tech, to do the exhibit/building walk through. This is done every morning after the case cleaning is finished. The person who is assigned to do the cleaning is also responsible for doing the light checks and walk through. The walk through consists of going through every exhibit and checking the environment inside of cases on the walk through list and the environment (outside of the cases) within the exhibit as a whole. There are also two meters, which monitors objects in the processing room, which have to be checked as well. By the end of this internship, I will hopefully be an expert at reading hygrothermographs and arten thermohygrometers.

For the rest of the day I was set loose to explore and become familiar with the museum set up (which can be really confusing at first) and all of the exhibits.

Tuesday 5/7

In the morning I was assigned to do the exhibit case cleaning, light readings, and walk through with one of the spring interns. In the afternoon, Emma trained me on how to start and complete object condition reports. We worked on two objects, an anti-civil rights license plate from Mississippi and a book (Upton Sinclaire's The Jungle) that the museum had purchased.For the first object, I watched her complete the condition report process such as describing the object’s surface and structural condition and took photographs for documentation. The second object we worked on together so that I could get a sense of what to look for when describing the object. I think the book was the hardest to describe since it had different elements (inside and outside). Later I was trained on how to use their cataloging database and completed the catalog for the two objects.

Wednesday 5/8

On Wednesdays I am only at the museum until 12. So for that time me and another intern worked on the Cold War cartoon scrapbook project. Basically the project entails creating a finding aids list of basic information for each book corresponding to the year from which the cartoons came. We have to go through each book looking for important people, events, places, and other important topics. For the morning we went through four scrapbooks corresponding to the years 1966 to 1968.