In the Future

by Marysia Lopez

This week, two women from Sarasota came in to meet with Peter to discuss Museum at Work, and to observe the overall museum atmosphere. These women are in the process of opening up their own contemporary art museum in Sarasota. As they jokingly said, they were hoping to explore how CAM works in order to avoid making mistakes when they open their own museum. 

 

To speak with these women was definitely one of my highlights here so far.  I probed them about the process of opening up a brand new museum (something I've never given much thought to) and they tested us on our knowledge of Museum at Work. After asking them about their journey in opening a new museum, I found out that it's a very slow and long process. They shared with us that they needed to raise $22 million in order to start and open up their museum. In two years, they have raised a little less than half of that. Unfortunately, with the current state of the economy, not many have the money to donate to the arts.

 

Something that really caught my attention was when one of the two women mentioned that they really wanted to make it a contemporary art museum to help people get over their "fear" of contemporary art. I never really thought of contemporary art as something to be feared, but the more I thought about it, the more I noticed that it was true. As one intern stated in a past entry, she confused a table that was used to bring out art pieces from the vault, with a piece of art. Contemporary art is different than art of the past because there seems to be no constraints on what "defines" art anymore. Many people might go into a contemporary art museum and wonder "why is that art?"  Instead of allowing themselves to enjoy the art, they become confused and frustrated. I have to admit that as a Humanities major who has studied mostly Renaissance and Baroque art, I am sometimes guilty of doing the same thing. But in my weeks of interning at CAM so far, I've realized how important contemporary art museums are in keeping the local culture of art alive. As Museum at Work comes to an end, I can honestly say that I'm very proud to have gotten the opportunity to intern at CAM and I can't wait to see what else CAM will bring to the USF community in the future.

Continuing to Learn

by Marysia Lopez

We are getting closer to the end of Museum at Work, and although I haven’t been working on it for nearly as long as everyone else, I can see that a lot of hard work has gone into the exhibition project.  I think all of the volunteers and interns should be proud of all the work they’ve put into it.

I helped with more photographing of different art work, thereby learning how to handle each different type of art work, from paintings to photography.  I also helped Shannon make the labels for the art work, which displays the name of the artist, the art work, the year it was made, etc.  Yet another one of those things you always see in art museums, but never give much thought to.  It was definitely a more complicated process than I thought it would be. First I helped Shannon correct some mistakes that had been made to some of the labels and saw that an adobe program was used to make them, instead of plain old Microsoft Word, which was what I assumed was used.  Little did I know that the Adobe program was a lot of help in not only centering the wording, but also in the cutting that would take place later.  After printing, we used spray adhesive to place them on a white board, then cut them into rectangular pieces.  This is where the lines that Adobe had created on the sides came in handy (with knowing where to cut). 

As Museum at Work comes to an end, I’m excited to work on new projects/exhibitions and I know I will continue to learn much more about working in a museum. 

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.