Intern Anna Gray: Perspectives of a High School Senior

     My time as an intern at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in the Archives was very informative and helped me to learn a lot about being an archivist in the museum setting.  As a high school senior, I was not expecting to do anything like the projects I was assigned to. I had been expecting to be doing minimally important work, but instead I received projects which kept me engaged and stretched me as well as teaching me different tasks that I had no idea even happened behind the scenes in a museum.  I did a variety of tasks including transcribing Burchfield’s personal journals, rehousing slides and contact sheets from Artpark, and hanging the work of Alexander Levy in the gallery.  This was an amazing experience and opportunity to learn about the inner workings of the museum.
     One of the big projects I worked on for quite some time was rehousing some of the slides and contact sheets that had been brought over from Artpark.  Artpark was a government funded project in which artists were given space and materials to create these huge installations and sculptures throughout the park.  These projects were recorded in many forms, and one of them were the pictures taken at the time that the park was still fully operational in its original intended capacity.  I would go through and take the slides from the old binder and then transfer it to the new protective sheet and then place in a properly labeled file folder.  I had to be sure that everything stayed in order and that its original format and organization of the pages was maintained in order to keep an accurate record.  There were many times that the binders would be sticky and the slides would have to be carefully pried out of the sheet so that they could be transferred to the new and clean protective sheets.  When working with the contact sheets, there were two binders with the same sheets in there so the labels were kept with the sheets and duplicates were stored together.  The second binder also had some sheets that the first did not and vice versa so any gaps in either binder were filled for the most part.
      One of my favorite experiences was helping to install the Alex Levy work, even if it was only a couple of small drawings.  It was an amazing experience to be down in the gallery and doing a task that included being surrounded by amazing art work.  It was also pretty cool to learn the correct way to hang a show and to take a step back and observe the curators as they did their job and worked through any problems they encountered.
      Overall, the experience was an amazing one and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  As an intern, I was afraid that I would get the menial jobs that no one wanted to do so they hand it off to the young intern.  That was not the case at all.  Everything I did at the museum was important, even if it was a small job and it felt amazing to be a part of something big and it was an interesting journey.  Even if I don’t go on to work in archives in the future, the skills I learned while doing tasks such as installing art work and rehousing slides and contact sheets will help me as an artist.  Yes, this looks good on college applications, but the skills I learned during my time at Burchfield Penney Art Center will be beneficial throughout my time in college as I go on to study the Fine Arts, since exhibitions are a part of the program I have applied to.  Having this opportunity has helped me to learn what goes on behind the scenes of exhibitions and in the day to day in a museum and gallery.