My name is Molly Kaye, I’m a rising senior Illustration
major and MAT candidate. During Summer 2018 I was a workshop intern at the
Bible Lands Museum in west Jerusalem, Israel. It is a archaeology museum that
focuses on artifacts and the histories from places mentioned in the bible and the
Talmudic stories (the stories in Jewish Law), They had exhibits on everything
from Neolithic art, to Proto-Canaanite, to Canaanite, to Babylonian, Greek,
Roman, Persian, Etruscan and a new exhibit on a recently re discovered ancient
way to make a blue dye called Telekhet. I was introduced to the museum through
a third-party organization called Onward Israel. Onward is a growing
organization, funded by the Jewish Agency (not all participants were Jewish),
and seeks to help young adults expand their resumes and to facilitate a deeper
firsthand understanding of Israel-Palestine through being part of the society
for even a short time. Through Onward I went on several day trips to ancient
cities dating back to before the roman period (Tzipori, Mamshit and others),
had serious conversations about history and culture within Druze communities,
spent a day wandering around an Arab city, that got cut in half by the ‘47 partition
line (Barta’a), and had many may adventures with Israelis, Palestinians, and
other Americans from my Onward group.
This summer was one of the most educational, experience
filled and frankly, fun summers I’ve ever had in my life. As it was my first
internship ever, I had no clue what to expect from working at the museum. To be
honest I was really nervous about working in a museum for the first time, let
alone one that was predominately Hebrew and Arabic speaking, when I barely
understood modern Hebrew. When I got to the museum, all of my coworkers were extremely
welcoming, even going out of their way to speak english to me. After the first
two days of awkwardly translated conversations had past I felt like a member of
the team, I was doing research around the museum to help create illustration
projects the museum needed done, I was helping guide kids around and explained
the histories of the various people exhibited around the museum. Just as
everyone else in the workshop was doing. I felt like a professional employee of
an amazing museum.
The experience I’m most proud of has to be speaking
(broken) Hebrew, and picking up some Arabic on a nearly daily basis. Specifically,
there was one day where I was running to work a couple minutes late, I get in
and my boss is not only fine with my two-minute tardiness, she asks me to be
the lead assistant with an entire camp group, all day. One catch, no one in the
group spoke Hebrew, or English. That day I had to teach them how to create the
Canaanite figures, they had just seen in the museum. Not a very complex
project, but still challenging for elementary school students. Working with
them that day taught me different ways of thinking on my feet and how to be
more adaptable. In addition to that the experience taught me that without
words, without understanding exactly what the other person is saying, we can
always connect to others as people. These skills will definitely be using for
the rest of my time at MICA and in the professional world.
Working outside of the US gave me an opportunity to really
connect with things I didn’t understand, and become more comfortable with being
uncomfortable. After work every day, I would drop my stuff at my apartment,
pick up a sketchbook, go outside, pick a direction and explore. That has helped
me solidify that I want to be a traveling artist and in my practice I want it
to be informed by wherever I am, who I’m around, and how I feel in that moment
of creating the art.
