to Harvard I go

My last post was written on the bus to Boston to visit Rachel, but also to spend a few hours of the morning in the Houghton Library at Harvard because I got permission to see William Blake's work "The First Book of Urizen". I was so excited that I barely slept the night before. Ok I feel like some brief back story is needed to explain my giddiness.

Backstory: I spent last semester vigorously studying William Blake in my art history seminar class. You see Bill was not just a poet, as you probably know him ("Tiger, tiger burning bright" and all that) but an engraver of epic proportions. Those poems weren't just prose but an explanation of the mythology that he created to explain his artistic philosophy. He then fused both poetry and engraving (well technically it was this etching process that he invented) to create these radiant illuminated books. Basically he was this wonderfully eccentric whackball visionary, whom I love excessively as his basic artistic philosophy is beautiful. Instead of believing that there was one all powerful god, he thought that god was actually something called Poetic Genius, that it is found in every person and that to reach it we must experience art to transcend our human limitations. Awesome right?! Seriously I could go on and on, but I will spare you.

Are you getting why seeing one his works would make my head explode from happiness? Oh and I forgot to mention my 25 page paper/20 minute presentation was on "The First Book of Urizen". I know! It is fate that I live within driving distance of one of the 8 editions (Blake printed them all himself) in the world in a public collection. So I got the special permission to see it. Upon arriving at the library I had to present two forms of picture ID, lock up my backpack and hang my coat as nothing but a notepad or laptop are allowed into the Reading Room. I get in there and find out that the curator I had been conversing with wasn't there yet and no one can get it out but her so I hung out for 40 minutes. Then this guy brought it out for me. All the pages are individually mounted in a folder with a piece of plastic and he just put them down on the table to let me look at at my leisure. YEAH. I couldn't believe it-I would have been happy just to look at it from afar. To be afforded the privilege of picking each one up in it's folder was more than I could bare.

Now I thought I knew what to expect because on blakearchive.org all of the editions are scanned in so you can see them in detail. But the old adage holds true-you just have to see it in person to truly appreciate it. Upon holding the pages a hairs-width from my nose I could see just breath-taking details. The lines as thin as hairs, vibrancy of color and even the texture of the ink were plain as day and completely non-existent in the images online. About 5 pages my excitement had reached a point at which my hands were shaking and my breathing was bordering on hyperventilating right at that point which you just want to scream and run around just to get some of this anxiousness out of my system. It was around this point when the curator came by to see how I was doing and I stared at her in a daze of joy. I think she was a bit taken aback by my level of enthusiasm and the fact that trying to explain to her how thankful I was for her allowing me to see it that I was crying just a little. She responded by telling me I could even move the plastic out of the way and gave me a magnifying glass to see better. I feel she was a kindred spirit of my art history nerdiness.

Anyway I stayed for an hour and then left to meet up with Rachel. We then went to a place called "Upstairs on the Square" for lunch. It was delightful. Then we took the T to the North End of Boston and walked on the Harborwalk. It was sunny and gorgeous except for the 40mph wind which made it impossible to feel my appendages after an hour or so. But these things matter naught when one is surrounded by a beautiful city and good company. It was fabulous to catch up with Rachel and be regaled with some Boston factoids that she has gleaned from her 5 months living there. After 2 hours we made our way to a starbucks to warm up with some coffee on our walk to Mike's Pastry for cannolis.

After that we took the T back to her place, regrouped and met up with her boyfriend for dinner. We went to this lovely restaurant/bar called Saloon. It is done up to look up a prohibition era pub with beautiful wood paneling, the bartenders wear suspenders and the waitresses wear black pseudo flapper dresses. The food was incredible, but more importantly the drink list was an extensive selection of whiskeys and scotches. Seriously a very good time. I will be back there.

Then today we went to breakfast at a place called Three Little Figs, a greek restaurant. All I can say is I had a lavender biscuit that was to die for. I am now obsessed with lavender bakery and will be attempting some recipes soon. Then I caught the bus back to Manchvegas and proceeded to grocery shop, make scones, do dishes and zone out in front of the tv.

Twas a very fine weekend and I hope to keep up this level of wonderment in the weekends to come.

Give me another project!

The post is coming to you via the Boston Express bus as I am headed to Cambridge to see Rachel for the weekend-so excited to explore!

Now to share what I have learned about myself this week-I am most content when I have so much work to do as to almost put over the edge into a crying heap, but it doesn't. Let me explain with the story of my Friday.

When I got to my desk on Friday I had these tasks to complete by end of day:

-finish numbering and sorting the 50 pictures of the galleries and sync them to the building plan to create a visual guide to the spaces in the museum for a contemporary artist that is going to be doing something at some point in there

-get my curator supervisor a copy of an exhibition catalogue from 2006 that seemed to somehow not have been catalogued in the library

-find a picture of Frederick Macmonnies sculpture "Pan of Rohallion" (which we just bought a bronze cast of) either in its original location at the Rohallion estate or of the cast in the courtyard of the MET and email it to a different curator for the wall plaque

-go over all the membership information that I assembled for the development department to find a way to organize it

Although there are a lot of bullet points there, I got all of this done by 10:30am and got a bunch of new stuff:

-retake half of the pictures of the galleries because once on a computer they turned out to be slightly blurry (I may have had too much coffee giving me the shakes....oops)

-after finding the catalogue, it turns out it didn't have the info needed so I had to make a photocopy of the exhibition checklist from the registrar

(the picture I found of Pan was good-woop woop!)

-create an excel spreadsheet of the membership info so that comparisons could be made

-help with folding and stuffing a mailing that development is sending out (sidenote: when I started helping with this, I wasn't paying close attention and didn't realize that the letters I was folding and stuffing into addressed envelopes were also addressed so they had to sync up. YEAH. So I stuffed 50 or so which had to then be unstuffed, sorted and re-stuffed. After fixing this I bowed out and went back to the spreadsheet)

Again I got all this done (really the spreadsheet was the hardest part because I am an infant when it comes to excel-it just doesn't do what I want because I don't know how to make it do anything). I even had time to slip away from my desk and go to the newly set up "tea station", yeah that's right the public programs women whom I love teamed up with reservations and set up a station with mugs and easily 20 varieties of tea. It will be my new haven when I mess up stuffing envelopes. I haven't even mentioned my ongoing projects i.e. the wallpaper notes need to be typed up, I need to assemble all articles of Sam Gilliam (artist), edit my writing about Marisol, research the Bauhaus and the new Macmonnies sculpture. I am a busy girl.

At some point amidst taking pictures and photocopying and researching, I realized that I wasn't overwhelmed or worried about getting these things done. Instead I was invigorated with the amount of things that needed completing and cranked it out. I think it has to do with my competitive nature-I see the giant to-do list as a challenge and can't wait to start defeating it. I know, it's twisted. It's like when I was 10 chapters behind in Business Law reading 2 weeks before the exam a year ago and read them in 1 week then studied my notes the next week. It's a personal challenge that makes me super motivated. Or maybe it's that I love the feeling of accomplishment when I finish everything. Whatever the reason I certainly do thrive when I am so loaded down with tasks as to flirt with the edge of disaster and weeping in the fetal position. From what I can tell, this is a good thing because working in an arts organization guarantees I will often be in this environment of borderline project overload. As long as there is a coffee maker I can't imagine a better fate.

interested in 19th century French Wallpaper?

If your answer is 'yes' then I am your girl.

If your answer is 'no' then I am definitely your girl because I will make you LOVE it because it is super friggin cool.

This newfound fascination in said wallpaper is due to my most recent project (add onto my ongoing 7 projects), which is to learn everything I can about a piece of 4 panel wallpaper called "vue de lyon" (view of lyon, a city in France) that was made in 1823 in Paris. Here's what's so cool about wallpaper in the 18/19th century - it was hand printed with woodblocks on hand made paper. Even cooler - this series of wallpaper likely took 3000 individual woodblocks that probably took about 2 years to carve. So cool!

With this basic information acquired I spent the entirety of yesterday in the registrar (aka where the records of EVERYTHING are kept) reading the giant file on this piece of art. Now I am about to launch into the harrowing tale of what a day researching in the registrar is like. It is this wonderful/frustrating/complex adventure that is like a living an episode of Sherlock or Doctor Who but without near death experiences or monsters. You see in theory, the file contains literally every document pertaining to the piece, any article referencing the piece and all manner of other odds and ends. In reality it contains a whole of it, but with the passage of time, different people working there and lack of focus preserving documents early on has resulted in a lot of gaps in information.

In other words, my goal is to piece together the story of this wallpaper from bits of information gathered in the past 90 years. Basically what happened is I began reading the letters on top and from the information in those letters questions arose. I kept reading, some are answered but more questions formed. I asked the registrar about a bit of it and she proceeded to pull out 2 d-ring binders and another folder to search through. Having sifted through those, I am now paused as I need to find out how in depth I need to go.

Anyway, I love it. It's frustrating not having the information easy to access, but if it was just a matter of typing stuff into a computer it wouldn't be nearly as interesting. This way I get to read newspaper articles from the 20's and letters written between socialites, curators, french curators, etc. Also I'm learning all this crazy specific stuff about wallpaper, which I never would have studied otherwise and about how records are kept in museums.

Oh and something completely unrelated to wallpaper that this project is teaching me is about new england culture. There is an incredibly strong sense of pride in ancestral roots/the objects in their family lines/place. I brought this up to the registrar because the wallpaper file is packed with letters from people who moved into the house that the wallpaper came from, wanting any information we had on "their" wallpaper. It's like they moved into this historic home in Vermont, found out this priceless wallpaper used to be there and think it is somehow partially theirs. The registrar even said that she lives in a town in massachusetts (everything is town based) and that she isn't considered to be from that town because she wasn't born there. She just lives there. These new englanders are super proud of their birthplaces. And why shouldn't they be? New england is wonderful and historic.

Researching my brains out

I know, I know, I'm behind again so we shall begin with a quick catch-up.

My inclination is to say that the reason for my lack of reporting on my days for the past week have been that nothing of great excitement or interest happened. That is simply not true because everyday is a wonderful little mini-adventure in which I get new projects and find out fascinating things in my research. Therefore the reason I have been absent is laziness. I just didn't feel like writing. Simple answer and now I can't remember anything in particular that seems worthy at this time to write about, if something comes to me I will report on it later.

In order to not be completely dull, I will share stories from my weekend. I spent Saturday morning at a coffee house, as I am on a quest to find a favorite one that I will always go to. This is one is not the one. It was really hot and smelled like onions/cooking food and now my clothes smell like that. The coffee was wonderful though. I stayed there for a few hours writing letters and such. Then I had been told that northern Manchester has beautiful homes so I went for a walk, upon which I realized I have a terrible sense of direction and clearly was NOT in what is considered the north side because the neighborhoods were very plain. It was a beautiful day at least. Then I went home and grabbed lunch before walking over to the supervisor of public programs, who I found out lives just a 10 minute walk from me. Along with her 3 year old daughter we went for a 2 hour walk and she showed me a bunch of walking trails near our houses, which is extra wonderful since this neighborhood has no sidewalks. Not fun to walk in. Then Sunday I went to a bakery over by my house that yelp.com suggested and it was heavenly. Made to order doughnuts? Delightful. Then I went on another short walk around that neighborhood. After that I had an excessively lazy day in which I skyped with a few people (just what I needed - I'm getting a bit tired of always talking to new people. It's wonderful to see familiar people) and watched a documentary on Pixar studios-super fascinating. That's all.

Now onto today: I got to present my research on Joachim Wtewael's Apulian Shepherd to 50 docents in a powerpoint lecture and I absolutely loved it. I would have to say that aside from presenting my Blake paper at the art history symposium, this was the single most satisfying thing I have ever done. I just want to teach people about art!

It did start off a bit of a bad note - I spelled 'Shepherd' as 'Shephard' on the title slide and one woman raised her hand and pointed it out. I didn't quite know what to say because well who cares? In the grand scheme of things this is an inconsequential detail. Anyway, I said "well just pretend you don't notice that" and went onto the next slide. From there it went fabulously well. I got hammered with questions and had answers, for the most part. It was just incredible to present all of this information that I spent a week gathering and manipulating into a comprehensible format to an audience that actually gave a shit. So fun!

Then when it was over, the woman who corrected my spelling came up to me and apologized for doing that saying it was incredibly ungracious of her. I told her not worry about it as I didn't take any offense (if there is one thing I have learned about docents it is that they are super particular people and will notice EVERYTHING that is possible to criticize but it isn't personal). Well then she went on to say, "one word of advice, though, it's always good to have someone edit your work before you present it" YEAH. Let it die lady! I mean not only had I looked at this powerpoint a dozen times and not noticed it, Jane had as well and she didn't notice it either. Jeepers.

The rest of the day was spent working on research projects for Nina. You know I am a bit hard on the curators, but I really do like them, especially Nina. With her in particular, though, I am incredibly intimidated by her intelligence and get incredibly anxious thinking that I am wasting her time by asking her questions or giving her the wrong/not detailed enough information. This anxiety is increased by the fact that she never tells me why she needs certain information. Just yesterday she sent me an email listing out 3 different things she wanted me to look up and tell her what information I could find. Well that's great, but to what purpose? That would inform the research I am doing. Of course do I ask her why? No friggin way. So this minor miss-communication is completely mutual. I just haven't yet figured out a way to ask "why?" in a way as to not waste her time with a lengthy explanation or make me seem like an idiot. Another point of anxiety - I desperately want to make sure she doesn't see me as a silly college student. So that's been fun. Mostly the result is me beginning my research or writing, updating her on the where I'm at, discovering a bunch of things I either don't need or there are a whole lot more I need to find and resulting with me back in the registrar office re-reading everything. Tis a bit frustrating, but it's getting better as I increase the thoroughness of my note taking.

Because it's just Tuesday

Couples call it "Valentines Day" but for us single people, today is just Tuesday and I spent it like this:

I went to a training session on a teaching method called VTS (Visual Training Strategies), which they are teaching the docents to use during their tours. It focuses on asking the viewers questions in order to lead them to their own conclusions about the artwork and keeps the docents from lecturing about the work. I love it. Anyway today was just an opportunity for the docents to practice and ask Jane a bunch of questions. It was fascinating-the docents had a really interesting discussion about the whole method and things that go well when they use and don't go well.

Then I went to the curation budget meeting, which was also really interesting. The amount of things that need to come together harmoniously in order for a museum exhibition to be successful is staggering. There was a 20 minute discussion about lightbulbs because they just spent $2,000 but they don't have any low-watt bulbs for the upcoming print show. It was intense.

Through all of this I took 3 pages of notes and proceeded to spend the last hour of my day peppering Jane with questions and we had an awesome discussion about everything. I am learning so much here it is mind boggling.

(This post is a bit wimpy-my apologies, it was a long day and I am feeling excessively distracted so I think I'm leaving out pretty much all details and am going to watch a movie now)

Getting out of Manchvegas

This past weekend I went to visit the brother and his girlfriend in Quincy (40 min south of Boston). To get there I drove 20 minutes to a bus station in North Londonderry and took the Boston Express bus to South Station in Boston, then I took the T (subway) to Quincy. This whole process only takes 2 hours and looks more arduous written out than it really is in practice. The drive is easy (a rarity out here) and the bus is fun because I like to make friends (aka chat up strangers) and this time was no exception.

I was sitting at the station reading and waiting for the bus when a guy asked me if the bus had come yet. When I told him it hadn't and that I too was waiting for it (a lot of busses leave from and come from that station) he told me he had never been to New Hampshire and was just up for an interview. This then aloud me to exercise my small amount of knowledge about this fine state and the Boston Express. When we got on the bus we sat across the aisle from each other and pulled out our books to read quietly. This plan was thwarted by a group of 4 girls (or women I suppose is the better description as one of them was 50 "I'm half a century so I know a thing or two") cackling and gabbing about babies/raising kids/things I don't want to listen to. Although to be fair there is no subject I would have liked to listen to them chatter about. I wanted to read dammit. I did attempt it for about 20 minutes, but gave up in a huff (passive-aggressive to a fault). At that point I turned my head to send them a scathing look (I'm telling you-passive aggressive) the guy was looking at me and we shared a look of annoyance/I can't believe these rude-ass people talking on a bus in which every one has turned off their light to be quiet. Anyway the hour passed and I got the hell off that bus and trekked to the T successfully.

I got into Eric's around 9pm and we hung out a bit then went to bed. Laura had to work until 2am so she slept in late the next morning and Eric slept till 8am, but I am a morning person so I got up at 6.30am. You know I usually say at this point that I can't help waking up so early, but it's more that when I wake up and know it is after 6am I can't stand laying in bed anymore. I feel unproductive and bored so I just get up. Anyway it was lovely. I took my blankets out into the living room and wrote the last post on this blog and caught up on emails and read my book.

After Eric and Laura were up we watched some HGTV, drank coffee and then went to a sports bar close by so they could watch the Marquette basketball game. Getting the waitress to find the right station on the tv was a whole kind of fiasco and when she finally got it, the screen was all pixelated and unwatchable. It took another 20 min to get her back to change the station to non-HD. It was ridiculous. After that we hopped on T into Boston to get dinner in a part of Cambridge called Davis Square. Unfortunately the 3 restaurants we tried each had a wait of over an hour, which would be fine if the bars were full because we just could have gotten a drink to wait. We ended up staying at the last place since you could eat at the bar so we staked out seats. It was an awesome restaurant. Actually it's a restaurant/bowling alley. But New England bowling is this bizarre game where the pins are a lot lighter and are kind of like blunt cylinders. The ball is weird too, it's small and heavy, like a bochi-ball. Anyway it was a pizza place that would fit perfectly in Madison - they use only locally grown ingredients and serve only locally brewed beers. I had a really good beer and the pizza was amazing! So fun.

Then we went back, watched a movie and went to bed. The next day we just bummed around until I let at 2pm. A nice relaxing weekend.

The Week of Meetings

The reason I have not written at all this week until now is simple, I was given a link to watch the newest season of Sherlock and I started catching up on Dexter. Essentially I allowed both shows consume all of my free waking hours and didn't have any time to blog/do anything productive. It was worth it.

So now to catch up on my happenings this week. I went to a whole bunch of meetings and am beginning to get a sense of how the different departments co-mingle. More specifically I have observed the general disconnect between the curatorial staff and everyone else. This is most pronounced between curation and public programming - and I'm working with both. Makes for some awkward times. The problem as I see it with my limited 2 week experience is this: curators are thinking primarily (only) about building a highly focused collection of art full of perfect examples of historic periods by relevant artists and public programs wants a collection of artworks that lend themselves to interpretation and greater audience appreciation. Of course they want famous artists and works represented, but it is because it's easier to hook young audiences/non-art people with big names/items they recognize. The problem lies in the fact that the curators don't ever take into account the value a visitor will get from the art, whether it is in regards to a piece they want to buy, an exhibit they install or visiting artist installation. In the 3 meetings that lasted 2+ hours each that I attended this week, the curators put together beautiful (I mean immaculate, gorgeously worded) presentations. Everyone is nodding along and appreciating the work they do and then a question is asked about visitors experiencing the art and they are brought up short. They have no prepared responses, they stumble, mumble and pull themselves together enough to pull out a poised/intellegent answer that has nothing to do with the question and the meeting continues. It's like they never even considered how the public would react/understand/interact with the art.

When I observed this to the public programs department at lunch (seriously these women are the most wonderful 4 people I have met here), they affirmed that this is the key problem that they deal with every day. I quite honestly am in shock and feel very disappointed. How could you have the power of the curator to build a collection of art and never take into serious account what it will communicate to people???? That is the whole POINT for goodness sake! Why else do we put art in museums if not to learn and enrich our lives and show people that you don't need to know a thing to interact with/appreciate/talk about art??? That art can change the way you see the world and yourself if only you would take a moment to really LOOK at it and get over this concept of "not understanding art". You have eyes - look at it, think about it, make observations and can come to understand it in your own way.

Sidenote: all of that being said, I do sympathize with the curators for one reason. Although I have loved looking at art all my life, it was art history classes that brought that appreciation to a level of bliss at going to art museums. So I get it when they are after this idea that only the educated masses will enjoy the art and they don't need to provide those people with anything to help them interpret the art, making public programs irrelevant. But really I think they should look at it like they have these educated people already in the bag as an audience (I hardly need any encouragement to go to a museum), so they should be trying to get MORE people to come in that wouldn't necessarily think they like art.

This difference in outlooks between departments is also visible in my encounters with my supervisors from each department. When I ask Jane (public programs) questions, whether it is about the work I'm doing or about art history or the museum, she anticipates where I'm going or what I'm really trying to ask and we have hour long discussions about fascinating things. She is wicked smart. But when I ask Nina (curation) questions about the work I'm doing or her job I get really short answers and I feel confused when I leave. Therefore I'm not enjoying the work I'm doing for her as much because I don't really know if I have it right and she is so particular about wording that I am terrified to get back the piece I just wrote for her. It's almost like the curators are too far removed from the everyday experience of non-art historians in museums and they don't take the time to relate/observe them, leaving them not taking into account this point of view at all. I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I'm working it out still.

Anyway, onto other things as I didn't just sit in meetings all week. I've been researching my brains out and it has been wonderful. I finally finished reading everything the museum has on a contemporary piece by Marisol called "The Family" and wrote up a brief explanation of it/her life to go online for visitors. This is what I turned into Nina to review. I also got to show off my wicked awesome photocopy skills when a different curator gave me this ridiculous project.

Ok so he tells me wants me to find all the articles/essays listed in this artist's bibliography (Eric Aho - look him up he does gorgeous landscapes http://ericaho.com/). We are talking 30+ things here and I already have 7 projects I'm working on. But he tells me I don't need all of them exactly just the good ones. Right because I'm supposed to what, skim read all of these (assuming I can even find them online) and find the good ones?? And what makes a good one? I am sure our definitions of that are different. He then gives me a foot high stack of haphazardly stacked exhibition catalogues/papers/folders saying it is what the artist sent him so maybe a bunch of it is in there. (Sidenote: this is EXACTLY what I am talking about - curators don't know how to communicate). So I go back to my desk and loving a good challenge/chance to prove I am an organization master, dig into the mess before me. Within 2 hours I have a finished/given up on finding anything more. About 11 articles/essays were in the mess and nothing I found online was accessible for free. So I categorize the ones I have, binder clip them with a list of what is included, restack all the stuff neatly and give it back to the curator. Fun project.

Also this week I met the docent staff and am very thankful for my time at Ten Chimneys working with those docents. It has prepared me for these docents, who are equally particular and fussy about details and I kind of love it. It's a constant challenge to work with all of the unique personalities and address their needs (when reasonable). You are never bored when you manage a volunteer docent staff.

There you are, all caught up on my week. See I needed to veg out to Dexter/Sherlock when I got home because those meetings were tense and I had curators needing things done. I will not get so severely behind again, although it has been nice to sit here in Eric's apartment (visiting the brother this weekend) watching the snow fall on Quincy, curled up in a blanket and writing this blog :)

First Weekend

This was my first official weekend here alone in Manchester and this is what I did.

Saturday: I woke up early and went grocery shopping hoping to avoid any and all superbowl craziness. Although I beat the rush - everyone I did see at the store was wearing Patriots gear. That is one committed fan base. Then I stopped back at home, showered and went to find a post office and wander around Manchester. Finding the post office was a 20 minute affair (who puts a post office on the ground floor of a sky scraper office building with only one side outside that says "Post Office Entrance to the left" and there are 10 doors to the left. Jesus). Then I walked the length of the main street and all there is to see are a bunch of restaurants, Dunkin' Donuts (3 within a 2 mile block), cafes and that's it. Not a store in site. It's kind of like Water St in Milwaukee. Very industrial. Anyway I then went to brunch at a cute little cafe near the museum. It was delightful; I sat at the counter in the window and pretended to read, but actually listened in to everyone's conversations because I love the accent here. Then I went to the museum as an actual visitor since I haven't been able to even see the art yet. After a few hours of wandering and sketching and journaling I sat in the cafe and read Game of Thrones while sipping a latte. Now just to prove that NH is basically WI, as I was reading I was interrupted by a married couple in order to compare Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings. So fun. Then I came home and had a Dexter watching marathon.

Sunday: my supervisor Jane (seriously want to be her) invited me to Portsmouth (about an hour west of Manchester right on the coast) for brunch. We went to this delightfully hipster place. Seriously all the waiters were hipster guys in cardigans, page boy hats and mustaches - honestly. But the food was AMAZING. Then she showed me around Portsmouth. It was beautiful; it's all brick buildings, cobblestones, boutiques, good food. Think Madison but really clean and not over run with students. Very nice. Then I came home and have been catching up on stuff.

Twas a fine weekend indeed. I do wish my wonderful friends could be here to part-take in my adventures, but alas they have real lives and jobs and school and husbands. One day I will come back here with all of you and you will love it because New England is just about the cutest area of the country.

Manchvegas

Today I found out that natives call Manchester, a variety of names including Manch-cha-cha, Manch, and Manchvegas. The last one apparently originates from the fact the bars here used to have video slot machines at each bar seat. Also there is apparently a bar nearby the museum that has a Manchvegas mural in the bathroom. I'm so happy that I live here :)

I learn fun things like this over lunch, which I have with most of the museum staff. I tell them stuff about Wisconsin, they look surprised. Then they tell me awesome things about Manchester/New England in their lovely accents. It is just one part of my day that I love. The rest of it I literally spend researching art history. Right now I'm simultaneously working on three projects:

1. Researching everything about a new painting on loan (I have a book on my desk called "Copper as Canvas: two centuries of masterpieces painted on copper"), create a handout for the docents and teach the docents how to present it to the public.

2. Research 12 paintings the museum wants to deaccession (i.e. get rid of) - I need to find out their value, who would want them, if we are legally allowed to get ride of them.

3. Research 4 contemporary art pieces in the museum and then right a 300 word bit on each one to go online. So if you go to the website and look up the work BAM there is my explanation of it!

So I'm plenty busy and spend hours in the registrar's office reading all documentation on artworks. It is fascinating and I can't believe it is my actual life.

Introductions

This is what happens when I am introduced to someone (about 10+ a day):

1. My supervisor, Jane, says, "This is my intern Aimie. She is from Wisconsin!"

2. Response of random person we will refer to as Pam, "Oh my gawd! Where in Wisconsin are you from?" (eyes have bugged out a little at this point).

3. At this point I use my hand as the map of Wisconsin and point out where Waukesha is, talk about Milwaukee and try to make sense of the fact that although UWSP is called University of Wisconsin, it isn't just a satellite campus of Madison. What I neglect to do is tell people that Wisconsin is shapped like a hand, which I don't think is common knowledge. I gather this from the look of confusion as to why I was pointing at my hand today. Oops.

4. Pam, "Wow, and where are living?"

5. Me, "Across the river in a house with this woman I found on Craigslist"

6. Pam, "HA! What?! Really?" (at this point I can practically hear the whir of their brains as they collect this information later to relay in a story to someone else)

7. Me, "Yeah it's actually totally fine, she is really nice"

It is hilarious and goes the same way every time. I can tell I am this strange anomaly running around their museum. This is due largely to the fact that Manchester is NOT a happening place that would ordinarily draw a Wisconsin bumpkin across the country in a Buick. Instead it's more like the east coast's version of Wisconsin, ironically enough. I love it just the same. My need for adventure and itch to explore new places is being satiated in a way it hasn't for the past 3 years (since London).