My First Week

by  Marysia Lopez

Although the week of June 28th meant being closer to the end of Museum at Work for most other volunteers and interns, it was the first week for me.  I couldn’t help but feel slightly overwhelmed, as everyone else had a routine down, while I had just come back from studying art history in Florence.  Coming back from 6 weeks of studying 14^th and 15^th century art works and jumping into the works at the Contemporary Art Museum was definitely an adjustment.  But I think it’s always interesting to wonder what people centuries from now will say of the art we’ve been photographing and documenting at CAM. What will it reveal about our society, politics, and overall history?  As a humanities major, I’m always considering these factors when looking at art, whether contemporary, from a few decades ago, or from a few centuries ago.

In just two days of interning at CAM, I had already learned much more than I knew about working in an art museum before coming in, which I have to admit was essentially nothing.  On my first day, we worked on photographing a portfolio which combined both words and art work.  I learned about the importance of handling these works carefully, but also not taking too much time on handling them carefully because, as Peter said, the more time you spend handling an art work, the more likely you are to do something to it.  I also learned the importance of photographing an art work correctly.  In other words, making it look appealing and also making it look like what it actually is.  In this way, it could be compared to commercial photography for advertisements. 

Even though I came in late to Museum at Work, I can already tell that this project is teaching me a lot and will continue to do so.