With much enthusiasm, I entered my internship at the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) at the beginning of the Volkskunst exhibition. Interning with a curator requires a steady hand, good decorating skills, enthusiasm for meeting new people, a sharp eye for tiny specks of dirt, and the fortitude to spend the lunch hour at estate sales and random exhibitions throughout San Antonio. It’s been a crazy ride.
Interning has given me a chance to network. A lot of the volunteers are really important people in the community, so I’m getting to meet a lot of influential people along the way. It’s been an amazing experience to listen to the artists, read what they have to say about their art, and get their insight.
Curator Nancy Fullerton and I visited different exhibitions and museums on lunch break. Many lunch breaks are spent at different museums or artist’s stores (like a hot glass store), and it’s a great chance for me to gain some knowledge about how museums run.
The exhibition I had the privilege of working on was the Volkskunst exhibit. Volkskunst (which literally translates as “Folk Art”) was created as a trade with the Reading Public Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania. Reading’s population has recently changed from being mostly German-Americans to Latin-Americans and the museum did not have any artifacts or works of art that related to the new population. Reading wanted Latin-American folk art, specifically depictions of La Virgen de Guadalupe, and both museums agreed to swap pieces for a designated amount of time. The pieces SAMA received were the German-American folk art pieces of the 19th century. SAMA decided that since there is such a strong German-American heritage in the Texas Hill Country, the museum would benefit from a German-American art exhibition.
The entire exhibit plan started out with pictures of Reading’s German-American collection. They decided on 75 pieces, and then put together a diagram of how the items would be grouped. The labels were then sent by the curator from Reading. General lighting was set up, and the focus point was painted the day before the works showed up from Pennsylvania. The pieces were cleaned and condition reports were documented simultaneously. As they were cleaned, the exhibit crew would place them in the case, decide where the pieces looked best, and photograph them in the case for future reference. The director of exhibits also spent this time deciding whether pieces would need blocks to give them an extra boost within the case. Pieces were finally set to their places, and last minute adjustments with the lighting and spacing were done. The labels were the last piece to the puzzle. They were being edited and attached until the night before the exhibit opened.
I helped work on this exhibit almost all of the way through from beginning to end. I created my own story of these pieces just by working with them. I was responsible for editing and re-editing the labels for this exhibit. I realized quickly that labels can make or break an exhibit. I learned a lot about how museums put together an exhibit.
There were quite a few obstacles throughout this internship. Lost car keys, illness, disagreements with influential people, etc. will all happen. My advice for future interns at SAMA is: be ready for Murphy’s Law. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. I showed up one day to find that Nancy had not informed me of a meeting of hers, so I had nothing to do for about an hour or so. I walked across the street to help with Bazar Sábado, but no one was there. I went to the registrar’s office to work with them for a little while and I managed to stumble upon a collection of 30 objects that were incorrectly labeled and filed. The file took almost 3 hours of the registrar’s time to figure out and fix, and it changed her plans for the entire morning. All of this happened before 9:30AM. Be ready for anything that is dumped on your lap and even if you don’t like it, know that they are trusting you with something very important. It’s a privilege to clean a 7 foot cabinet with a Q-tip. Don’t forget that.
Hopefully, I can find a job at a museum in the Hill Country and gain some experience before graduate school. After this internship, I know for sure that this is what I want for myself. I actually am now a little torn between working as a curator and a registrar. I love both jobs! I’m so grateful for the opportunity to gain some experience within the museum. I have fallen in love with the staff here at the San Antonio Museum of Art.