I always knew that I wanted to work in museums, but I didn’t know how it would tie into my studies as an anthropologist or archaeologist. Since I enjoy art as well as cultures in general, I thought of curation as a possible career. When I first signed on as an intern with the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA), I thought that I wanted to curate and do nothing else. I quickly realized that this wasn’t completely true. It did, however, help me decide that no matter what I would be doing in museums. I have to say that my choice to work with SAMA was one of the best that I have ever made.
The registrar’s office at SAMA is where all of the files and cataloging systems are kept. The office keeps track of the permanent collection as well as organize temporary exhibitions that come into the museum. It is the central nervous system of the museum because without it, it would be extremely difficult to keep up with such an extensive collection. They also work closely with the exhibitions crew, who help set up new exhibitions. They work to map out galleries and set up exhibitions properly, keeping tabs on security and installations of objects or collections. The office also works on rights and reproduction. This will allow someone to reproduce a photograph of an object in an article or magazine, post it on the internet or put it in a collections catalog by borrowing the rights to an object. They work with sellers and buyers, allowing the museum to build up networking ties often times leading to the acquisition of new objects.
My internship with the registrar’s office at SAMA offered several opportunities for me to learn about all aspects of museum work. After gaining the trust of my bosses and working on several small projects, I was allowed to work on one extensive project and when time permitted, I was able to participate in smaller temporary exhibitions and artwork handling. My main project over the summer was working with the online cataloging system and the permanent antiquities collection.
In March of 2008, SAMA added a building onto the west wing of the museum to exhibit the Greek and Roman sculptures that they had been forced to keep in storage for several years. Around this time, they had acquired a new curator for the antiquities collection, Jessica Powers. She came into the museum with much knowledge on the subjects at hand, but faced an overwhelming amount of work. She was not going to be able to create all of the label copies, condition reports, clean, create media on the pieces and add close to a thousand artifacts to the online cataloging system by herself. This is where I came in. I was responsible for entering and researching close to 500 objects in the collection.
Although this was my main project over the course of the internship, I was able to help the department in several other ways. I worked on loan documentation, which is a document between two vendors that shows who owns a piece and its value. This is important because it is a contract between two museums or a museum and an artist. Special care has to be taken when an object is loaned to SAMA and vice versa. Temporary exhibitions were also a big part of my job. These temporary collections are usually loans and traveling shows. Specific museums are chosen to exhibit a show for a certain amount of time. The largest that I worked on was Mutual of Omaha’s “Visions of Victory.” This was a collection of sports photography dating from the early 1900’s to the early 2000’s. I was able to help unpack and clean the pieces. I also condition reported them. Conditioning is extremely important, especially when dealing with loan items. Each piece is promised to reach the facility in a specific condition. All nicks, scratches and breaks must be notated by the lender and a copy will come along with the collection. This was exciting because I was able to personally handle objects and clean them. We cleaned the Irish silver collection and a few pieces in the Egyptian cases. I was also in charge of the hygrothermograph machines in the galleries. They record the temperature and humidity in each gallery in a seismograph fashion on a chart. It revolves slowly over a seven day period. This is extremely important since each collection is supposed to be exposed to a specific environment.
I extended my internship from the summer through the fall semester because I enjoyed being at SAMA so much. I found that I had become most interested in the Asian art collection. It’s one of the largest collections in the greater Southwest and I wanted to work more closely with the pieces and familiarize myself with it. My internship has helped me find a potential concentration and something that I would like to study more thoroughly in the future. I really benefited from interning at SAMA because the ladies in the registrar’s office were extremely helpful. They wanted to make sure that if there was something I wanted to learn about or work with that I would get the opportunity to do so. Therefore, I was not only able to work to feed my interests but I was able to educate myself on several different topics and cultures. So whether I want to work as an art librarian or curator, I now have some insight as to what each job would entail. I would strongly recommend working with SAMA and the registrar’s department if you are unable to decide which aspect of museum work suits you.