Thursday, September 17, 2009

Hello!

Hello,

My name is Catherine and I’m new to the Den Blog! I am currently a junior and I am a studio art major and marketing minor. I started volunteering at the Muscarelle during the Spring ’09 semester because I’ve had a strong fascination with art history, and I figured that it would be an educational experience to volunteer here and see what it would be like to work at a museum, a potential career path for me. I found that it gives me a break from the regular school work I do, and that I do get general sense of what goes on towards running and organizing a small museum, but I still haven’t decided if museum work is for me. I love prints and printmaking (I taking History of Prints, Silkscreen printmaking, and Advanced Relief Printmaking this semester), so I wanted to be around in the background this semester when the Andy Warhol exhibit comes around.

Because of my interest in marketing, this semester I (and a couple other volunteers) has been given the task of helping find the Muscarelle think of a new marketing strategy towards students. I was told that the goal of the museum is to find a way to bring every single student through the doors of the Muscarelle at least once a semester. This may or may not be possible, but I’ll give it a shot! As far as I can tell, most of the emphasis will be on getting people in for the Warhol exhibit.

One of the great things about volunteering at the Muscarelle is that I’m typically in the know about the events, lectures, or special guests who come to visit the museum or college. Just before my volunteer shift today, I went to a special discussion and Q&A session open to 20 students (only 15 came) with David Allan Brown, the curator of Italian and Spanish paintings at the National Gallery of Art in D.C. , who is receiving one of the two Leslie Cheek medals today or tomorrow. I felt a little bit out of place as an art major who hasn’t narrowed down what to do for a career, but it was nice to hear about his background and how fell into his career. Several of the other students there had questions regarding what type of college degree to get in order to get into curation or exhibit design (Masters vs. PHD, Art History vs. Museum Studies).
I have several other fun stories regarding museum events, but I will wait to share them some other time.

Also, as a side note, phones have always scared me a little bit. Not necessarily my own phone, but answering phones that aren’t my own. This semester I’ve had to answer the DEN phone and attempt to take messages while people on the other side typically talk really fast about important sounding things. It has been awkward occasionally, I must admit, but I am getting over this fear pretty quickly.

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