Museo de Historia, Antropología y Arte - Melanie Torres Crespo, Week 4

 

Museo de Historia, Antropología y Arte

Melanie Torres Crespo - Week 4

Hello everyone! Welcome once again to my week 4 recap at the Museum of History, Anthropology, and Art. This week was also shorter, since Monday was a holiday day in Puerto Rico. However, I still completed a lot of tasks and explored new things.

Tuesday was mainly focused for organizing the digital archive of the museum. It contains papers, books, scanned artworks, and other multimedia; thus, I really enjoyed having the chance to sort through these documents and images. Furthermore, I worked in the museum reception answering calls and helping visitors.

I also took care of the huerto and other plants surrounding the museum! This week in general, the temperatures have been very high, so it was important to always water them. This is one of my favorite daily tasks.

During Wednesday, I printed, cut, and started gluing the papers with fixed, updated information of the museum to the brochures. 

Each brochure has a Spanish and an English section, and the goal is to update around 100! This is due to the fact that these materials will be given at the upcoming Freshman orientation of the university.

Moreover, I spent some time in the exhibition helping visitors and answering their questions in regards to the museums and art displayed. And, fun fact: it was the national day of the cheesecake, so the whole museum's personnel tends to order a slice of cheesecake from a local shop. I liked being part of this yearly tradition :)

Then, on Thursday, I still worked on the creation of more brochures, but I also had the chance to have conversations with the museum's director and see the storage and categorization of the pieces that are donated or bought for the diverse collections available. 

Indeed, I was quite excited to learn more about the process that must be completed before, during, and after a new exhibition opens.

Later, I cleaned the anthropology segment of the museum. This is located outside of the current exhibition, and it currently does not possess a bigger space since its original area is under construction. The mummies that are currently on display were donated by the Peabody Museum at Harvard University in the early 2000's, but the other artifacts on display were found in costal areas of the island.

And finally, Friday: some of the key highlights of this day were having the opportunity to assist and change the frame of an artwork. It was nice to learn more about this process and the precautions one must take. I am so glad I had the chance to be part of this. I supervised and cleaned the interactive part of the exhibition too...

On the other side, I observed and engaged in the selection process for the fall volunteers of the museums. I had the opportunity to see the rubrics and what the museum looks for in the applications... This was such a hard process since all of the applicants were amazing!! Still, I am very excited for this new cohort and all of the new opportunities they will have during this marvelous experience. 

Well, this was a very exciting week, full of new activities! I'm sad that next week is going to be my last one. Nonetheless, up to this point, this has been an amazing opportunity that will stay with me for the rest of my life... I'm incredibly grateful to have been part of this!!! 

Hope you all have a nice week! 

And hopefully I will see you, one last time, next Friday.