30 May 2025
Another week filled with diverse experiences working in a museum! At this point in my internship, I am feeling pretty comfortable tackling the expected weekly work. I know every week will consist of collections management work, social media content creation and posting, organizing programming for the museum, and giving tours to the public. However, sometimes I am given a new and exciting task to do that adds a little something extra to my work week. This week, the name of the game was reorganization.
Sometimes, you have to make a mess to clean it! Downstairs in my beloved basement, I have a work room that is in need of some reorganization. In order to effectively manage our collections, I need the space to organize myself and any artifact or archive. We have been picking away at that room to gradually get it more organized, but we made a lot of progress this week. To optimize the space, we thought it would work best to stack two shelves in the room on top of each other, but before we could move the shelf, it was my job to move everything off of the shelf. This was a fun process! I used buckets to organize any loose objects on the shelves and I meticulously moved everything to a condensed corner that would be out of the way while the shelf moved to its new home. Once everything was relocated to that corner, I stared in awe at the magnificent mess I had made in the name of reorganization. Soon enough, the shelf was moved and safely mounted to the wall, and it was my job to organize my mess for the final time. Slowly but surely, this work room will become the best space it can possibly be to manage our collection. In the meantime, I thoroughly enjoy being a part of the reorganization efforts!
While there is a lot of consistent museum work to be expected, no week is exactly the same and that’s just the way I like it! It’s reassuring to know that there will always be more catalouging and inventorying that needs to get done, always more things to make to post on social media or more tours to give. But I do love not knowing what new unique experience a week will bring. This week I got to flex my organization muscles, but who knows what skills or abilities I will engage next week. Whatever it may be, I am eagerly anticipating what I don’t know is next!