Museums have always been a place of excitement and
tranquility for me. I became interested in making the museum my workplace when
I recognized the abundance of job and internship opportunities at museums and
galleries in Baltimore city. I researched internships for the Walters Art
Museum by looking on their website, and sent my application in for a position
in the education department. In my interview, I talked about my classes in Art
Education at MICA, and the experiences I had with teaching through CAP and my
Critical Response class. I was thrilled when they hired me as the intern for
the School Programs division in the Walters’ Education department.
School
Programs manages and organizes tours and studio activities for school groups
that visit the museum. Everybody in School Programs has their own specific job,
but each employee also teaches and guides tours for the programs. There is a
variety of themes with the tours and activities, including Ancient Egypt, The
Age of Exploration, Animals in Art, Telling Stories, Medieval Manuscripts, and
countless others. A couple teachers do “outreaches” to schools, where they make
a visit to the classroom, and introduce a theme with an activity. After, the
class makes a field trip to the museum, and participates in a tour about that
theme. Following the tour, they do an art activity about the theme that they
learned about. School Programs offers a great learning experience for students,
integrating the classroom, history, art, the museum, and hands-on creativity,
giving them a well-rounded lesson about art.
My
supervisor was Brittany Powell, one of the Senior Education Coordinators in
School Programs. She organizes the tours, makes outreach visits, guides tours,
teaches the studios, and writes lesson plans. I worked at a desk in the big
office, which Brittany and 3 other School Programs employees also worked in. Brittany assigned me two big projects to
complete over the summer. I designed a new tour/studio program for the theme “Elements
of Art and Design.” Secondly, I digitized and categorized the curriculum and
education resources of the department, so that they are now easily accessed
information.
For the Elements of Art and Design workshop, I
made a list of ten objects and wrote a discussion script for the one-hour tour.
I also wrote the lesson plan for the one-hour art studio. It took many weeks of
editing and reviewing with the coordinators Brittany and Rebecca. Receiving
feedback from them was incredibly useful because they had experience with
leading the tours and studios. When it was finalized, Brittany added it to the
lessons database, and scheduled the workshop to be taught in January. This made
me feel very proud and confident of my work, that they believed it was on par
with the other workshops, and it would be used in the future.
Rebecca gave me information about
the Studio Internship Position opening for the 2013-14 school year. I applied
for this position because it would give me experience in teaching and giving
tours for School Programs, and I would be able to continue working at the
Walters, an environment that I love. I like the idea of bringing students to
the museum and showing them a new world of art. Thus, I am very excited to
continue working and learning in museum education, and look forward to my
career heading in that direction.
