A Day In The Life of a Museum Ed. Intern

(Mary H. using our powerful Prox card)

(click on the pictures for a larger view)

9:00 AM: Our day begins in the Student Programs and Docent Room in the basement of the Modern Wing - we lovingly refer to our windowless domain as "the dungeon" - though it's quite nice and comfy inside.

Our 'Prox' cards are the magic keys to the Staff Only doors. Forgetting your Prox card makes for a miserably tedious day of inaccessibility... I learned this the hard way.

9 - 10:15 am: Here in the Docent Room we conduct a lot of SERIOUS RESEARCH to come up with great tour ideas such as: Storytelling in Art, Travel and Transformation, Technology and Innovation, Movement and Music, Ritual and Celebration and of course, my tour partner Mary and I's favorite, EXTRAORDINARY TRANSPORTATION!

(NOTE the breakfast muffins in the foreground - early on we realized that something about this job made us hungry as soon as we stepped in the door regardless of how large our breakfast was - thus, we instated a breakfast schedule.)

At 10:00am we also have a morning meeting so we know where everyone's tour is going - though even with this kind of preparation we still find ourselves in traffic jams every now and then.


10:15 - 10:30 am: We meet our little tour participants (who are not always as little as seen here - the group here is Pre-K and ADORABLE!) in the orange floored Ryan Education Center just off the Modern Wing Entrance.

Here we introduce ourselves and introduce them to the museum rules. The question, "Does anyone know some rules we have here in the museum?" has produced a wide range of odd and adorable answers such as: "No hurting" or "No choking" or "No stealing"

(left to right: Jen leading the little ones through Griffin Court, Maya and Natalie going into the closed Modern Wing galleries in the morning)

10:30: Annnnd...we're off! At 10:30 we can officially let our groups into the museum. A guard tails each group so that we can bring them into the galleries that are closed due to the rotating closures.

(left to right: Mary D. and I (Adrienne) going to the Alsdorf Galleries; David and Sandy in the Rice Wing; Mary H. and Jen in the Alsdorf Galleries)

10:30 - 11:30: Chaos in the museum! Ok, not really - but for an hour there are multiple student tour groups weaving in, out and around galleries.

(left to right: Me (Adrienne) have an impromptu story time, Mary D. in front of the Seurat, Jen using her teacher tricks in the Chinese galleries)

We try to see 6 works on an Art From Many Places tour (meant for student groups above 1st grade) and 4 works of art for the ABC's Tours (meant for the little ones with a shorter attention span) - but sometimes you have to improvise.

Pre-K kids are adorable, but if they aren't paying attention to the artwork as much as you'd like, sitting them down for a story might help corral them in.

(left to right: Mary D. using the key to get back into the Modern Wing, Mary D. and I about to take kinds into the Sagmiester, Natalie leaving the modern galleries)

Mary and I took the Pre-K tour to "Being Not Truthful Always Works Against Me" by Stefan Sagmeister - this is an interactive piece which kids LOVE.

They jumped, they played, they ran, they yelled - they pretty much broke every rule we introduced to them that morning and they loved every second of it.

(left to right: Maya and Picasso, Natalie with Shiva, Natalie and Mary H. talking to groups in the same room, Mary H. at Doris Lee's "Thanksgiving")

One problem we occasionally encounter is the tour traffic jam - however a skilled docent can maneuver through this problem with ease like Natalie and Mary H. did today. By crouching down with their groups and keeping their voices low they masterfully engaged two young groups in an American art gallery.

(left to right: Sandy and David leading their group down the Grand Staircase at the end of the tour)

"Oh my god, there are so many stairs! I'm going to be so tired! (after 3 stairs) I'm already SO tired" - 7 year old boy

- Quotes like these and many others on our intern Twitter: Overheard at AIC

12:00 pm: We like to attend the noon-time gallery walks led by other experienced docents in the museum. We went to a Highlights tour to get ideas for future tours.


She was great! What I learned: Doing extensive research really helps to keep people engaged on a tour. The public (and we interns) LOVED the little anecdotes found in original letters and other obscure research material that the docent shared with us.

Some of the regular docents have been doing this for as long as 30 years! So, needless to say, we have a lot to learn from them.

LUNCH (1:15 pm): We tend to rotate our lunch locations depending on the weather - which in Chicago can change dramatically in seconds. On nice days we like to sit outside at the museum cafe, sometimes we dip our feet in the river at the Lurie Gardens and on miserably humid days we admire the view from inside one of the studios in the Ryan Education Center.

2:15 - 5:00 pm: (Imagine more research and tour planning here - it pretty much looks the same as the morning except we may be spread amongst The Education Resource Center, Ryerson Library or walking around the museum)

5:00 pm: On our way to have happy hour drinks with some other Museum Education staff. One of the best parts of this job is liking the people we work with.

5:30 - whenever: Drinks at Midtown Bar.

The day is DONE...well not really...most of us are doing multiple things this summer - whether it's another job, school, one of the many Chicago summer festivals or just making sure we see our non-museum friends - we all keep pretty busy.

After a long day, we go home, sleep and do it all over again tomorrow :)

Travel and Transformation: The Ultimate Tour

After our first couple of weeks of training, David and I had to rack our brains to put together a tour worthy of kings - or maybe a tour that really highlights some of the incredible assets of our collection. Writing a tour isn't easy, but once you get into the swing of things, know your way around the museum, and understand the breadth of our collection it begins to feel like second nature.

But how about I walk you through the steps for writing a tour? Sound good?

1)THEME: Theme is key here. Especially with student tours. Themes help you to narrow down the pool of object choices for your tour and keeps things streamlined. We tried and tried and tried some more to think of the best tour theme, and after running ourselves into a wall, we consulted Robin for some ideas, settling upon the theme of Travel and Transformation. T&T, is a tour that ventures into the stories of the art, artists, and cultures of the works we've selected, which leads me to my next point...

2)OBJECTS: Picking objects!! The Art Institute has around a quarter of a million objects in the permanent collection, of which 140,000 are architectural drawings; 70,000 works on paper; 12,000 textiles; 16,000 photographs; 3,900 paintings; 3,000 sculptures; and 15,000 decorative arts (YOWZA!).* Of course it is not possible for all of our collection to be on display, but there are quite a few objects to pick from, hence having a theme to work with narrows down the selection considerable. 

The objects David and I picked include:

Cartonnage Case of Paankhenamun
Egypt
Third Intermediate Period, Dynasty 22 c. 945-715 BCE
Cartonnage, Gold Leaf, Pigment, Human Remains
Gallery: 154A

We chose this work for the story it tells, of the transformation of a body and materials in the process of mummification, as well as the travel/transport that the spirit goes through in search of the eternal afterlife. Plus, the kids LOVE MUMMIES! And the x-ray is amazing! 

End of The Trail
James Earl Fraser (American)
1918
Bronze
Gallery: 163

This sculpture tells the story of American Indians traveling across the transforming American landscape with the introduction of modern technology and transformation - the train symbolizing the beginning of a trail, and the horse and rider being the end of the trail for this culture in the American landscape.

Eight Armed Dancing Ganesha
India, Uttar Pradesh
10th Century CE
Sandstone Relief Sculpture
Gallery: Alsdorf/Bridge Gallery

Ganesha underwent a series of transformations - from losing his head, to gaining the elephant head we see here, as well as the addition of the snake belt, and rat face on the left knee, we have tales of great transformation all wrapped up into one fantastic sculpture!

Still-life With Dead Game, Fruits, and Vegetables In A Market
Frans Snyders (Dutch)
1614
Oil on Canvas
Gallery: 208

David and I love this work dearly, and we had to stretch to get it into our tour so here's our spiel: Supermarkets have gone through many transformations over the years - here we a supermarket from the Baroque period in the Netherlands. We have the students think about the transformation food goes through as it comes from the initial source (milk/cow) to the food we dine on at home and at restaurants. Basically we love love love this piece... 

Arrival of The Normandy Train at Gare Saint-Lazare
Claude Monet (French)
1877
Oil on Canvas
Gallery: 201

With this painting, I usually discuss the ways in which technology transform our everyday life by examining how the beginning of the modern era in France (Paris in particular) was transformed by the introduction of technology. Here we have the steam engine, large single panes of glass, architectural steel framework, and the incredible mass of people coming in and out of Paris at this specific train station.

FUN FACT: The Caillebotte Paris Street: Rainy Day portrays a couple looking towards the left of the painting, which is the geographic location of this Monet painting the Gare Saint-Lazare train station. The way this painting is curated in the space aligns their pictoral view with the actual train station.

Hinoki
Charles Ray (American)
2007
Wood Carving in Japanese Cyprus
Gallery: 292B

And then there's the intern favorite: HINOKI! We love this piece. Seriously. With Hinoki, we talk about the kind of transformation the tree featured underwent, as well the transformation that occurred as the tree was remade in the wood sculptural format. It's big, it's awesome, and it's a great way to go out with a bang!

3) ORDER: The order of the tour is also extremely important. We don't want to be running the visitors around the museum in a nonsensical order. We must structure our tours to flow well, in addition to thinking about the logistics of the tour in terms of the location of each work selected within the space of the museum. Plus, having a good transition between works helps the flow of the tour.

4) PRACTICE: Practice makes perfect. Know your work. Know how to talk about it. But be flexible! Tours don't always go in the direction you expect.

5) DOUBLE CHECK THE MUSEUM: Live by this. Always check the museum before you give your tour to make sure the works you plan on discussing are still on display. It's been known that some objects grow legs and walk away overnight - so beware of gallery changes!

6) HAVE FUN!!: This is probably the most important rule to live by. Be yourself. Be comfortable. And have fun. If you are passionate and excited about what you are doing, the visitors will also become excited about their trip to the museum!!

telling the stories of Ganesha in front of the Eight Armed Dancing Ganesha sculpture

leading a discussion in front of the cartonnage case