Last Day Jitters

Today is my last day! When I left home this morning, I had everything all set: a sandwich packed for my last-day lunch that my boss had invited everyone to, plans to meet with the Norman Rockwell Museum archivist about a research project I'll be working on into the fall, and a grocery list of things to pick up for our event tonight. Oh, I had everything all planned out for a perfect last day. And then my plans went way off track!

I made it all the way out to Stockbridge, where the museum is, and was going to continue on to Great Barrington to pick up the food. As I've mentioned here before, I take the backroads to get there on what is usually a beautiful drive. But today there was construction--and a lot of it! The police officer directed me to follow the lady in front of me through a lenghty detour--which I did successfully, winding through gravel mountain roads until I found my way back to the highway. After grocery shopping I headed back, turning off at the place the detour had dumped me out before. And then...I was lost. With no lady in front of me to follow, I didn't know which of the unlabeled dirt roads was which, and ended up on an unfamiliar highway in a town I didn't know.

So at 12:30, when I was supposed to be sitting down to a lovely goodbye lunch that my boss had planned for me (with cake and everything!) I was driving down Route 41, headed straight back (though I didn't know it at the time) to Great Barrington. Thankfully the people I work with are supportive and forgiving, and eventually with the help of Joseph, the manager of Visitor Services, I was able to find my way back to the museum--an hour late for lunch and my meeting afterward!

Everything worked out--the cake was still delicious, and I'm here in plenty of time to set up for tonight. But sometimes things just don't go according to plan. Overall my summer here went so well--our programs seemed to run remarkably smoothly, and I think we left lots of happy kids and parents in our wake. I suppose something had to go wrong eventually! But speaking of those happy kids, I took some adorable pictures the past few days that I wanted to share with you as my "last word" here:





Thank you so much for following my blog. If you're reading it because you're interested in interning at the NRM, you can find more information here. Enjoy, and consider visiting the Norman Rockwell Museum sometime soon!

An Educating Summer

In my last couple of days at the museum before I go back to school, I volunteered rather masochistically to prepare our art supplies for the coming fall season. This means sharpening pencils and colored pencils and disinfecting markers while discarding the old and broken for the fresh and pristine (just after typing this I trashed four stubby inch-long pencils that have probably seen better days). Not only is this noisily endearing me to all my coworkers, it's also a bit tedious (we make a lot of art!) But I'm actually really enjoying it. Not only is it consistently satisfying to see the tip of a pencil become pointed and ready for use by some young artist, it's also feeding my nerdy love for school supplies.

This week I've definitely got education on the brain. But not just the type of education that takes place in a K-12 classroom--I'm talking about what goes on in the education departments of art, history and science museums everywhere.

Part of the reason I took this internship is that I knew I was interested in museum work and had taken classes in art, history and the ideology of museums. But I wanted a real-world experience to see how this one specific cog in the machine of the museum works. As it turns out, I love the emphasis on interactive learning and public outreach in museum education. Most of all, though, and even though we have lots of programming for adults, I love working with kids. One day after a Creating Together class where we looked at Rockwell portraits in the gallery and then drew self-portraits with chalk (one of our messiest projects), I was helping a little girl who was about four years old wash her hands with soapy water. Her mom turned to me and said, “if you haven’t thought about becoming a teacher, you definitely should.” Well, now I’m considering a career in museum education, with this hands-on summer experience to thank.

I'll post again on Thursday, which is my last day--but after that, I'm heading off into the sunset (which is to say my senior year of college). Here's a little doodle I did today in our Summer Sketch club, where we were cartooning up a storm:

Turning the Tables

Today I experienced what it's like to be a visitor at the Norman Rockwell Museum, turning the tables a little bit on one of my last few days here for the summer. Since my time is winding down I decided to bring my boyfriend to see the galleries and help with my weekly food shopping. He's also staying for our event tonight, when New Yorker Cartoon Editor Robert Mankoff will speak as part of our American Storytellers series. I think it's going to be a great talk--why not come out and join us if you're in the area?

When I arrived at work, rather than winding my way around to the staff parking lot and entering at the loading dock, I parked in the visitor area and followed the steady midday stream of people heading through the front door and into the sunny lobby. We checked in at admissions and visited the Rockwell Studio together, taking a nice stroll through the grounds and sitting on a bench overlooking the Housatonic River. After the lecture tonight we're going to dinner in the area, so we asked the lovely people at Visitor Services for a recommendation. They obliged, suggesting we drive a few minutes up the road past Tanglewood (where the Boston Symphony Orchestra spends their summers) up to Lenox.

Right now he's in the galleries while I get some work done and prepare food for the event tonight. But today I got to be a visitor (I even got a handy map of the Berkshires!) and I have to admit, it's a pretty cushy gig. Hey, maybe I'll stop by the museum store on my way out. And I definitely want to get a picture with my guy in front of the white and red Norman Rockwell Museum sign to remember the great day we had here.

Laugh Out Loud!

Last Saturday we had yet another fun-filled Family Day at the Museum, only this one was truly Rockalicious (read on...). The theme for the day was the laugh-out-loud comic genius of William Steig, who created the character Shrek--little did Steig know, his imaginatively disgusting ogre would one day be a bonafide movie star!

We did several art projects throughout the afternoon, beginning with Steig-inspired cartooning in the galleries. Kids drew their responses to Alpha Beta Chowder, creating alphabet-inspired characters, and to Steig's series "The Kids are Alright" about children who literally save the day.



Later in the afternoon we painted with watercolors out on the terrace. One little boy did his own rendition of Norman Rockwell's Main Street, and I would not hesitate to call it a modern-day urban masterpiece. Talk about perspective...this kid should be giving me lessons!



I have to say, though, that my favorite part of our afternoon was a fantastic performance by the groovy husband-and-wife musical duo Rockalicious!. Their motto is "never too young to rock", and they defintiely proved that on Saturday. I for one spotted some very tiny tots headbanging to their set list of classic rock. Best of all, they played "I'm a Believer", made re-famous as Shrek and Fiona's wedding song in the first blockbuster movie of the series.



What a fun family day...those little babes jamming out (their demand for rock was eventually sated by cupcakes, apple juice, and the arrival of naptime) definitely had me laughing out loud. If all this has you intrigued, you should know that our Shrekalicious Steig exhibition is on display through October 31st.

Cover Stories

My time here at the Norman Rockwell Museum is winding down--I have two more weeks in front of me, and I intend to make the most of them! Just yesterday I finished a project I've been working on for just about the whole summer, squeezing it in whenever I didn't have a more pressing assignment. Back in June, my bosses asked me to spend some time in the Stockbridge Room, which houses all of the over 300 Saturday Evening Post covers that Norman Rockwell painted. These are framed magazine covers, mind you--not Rockwell's original oil paintings, which are exhibited upstairs. They asked me to look at the covers, and find prominent authors and/or public figures that wrote for or were featured in the magazine.

Now, this project is interesting for a couple reasons. First of all, one of the most frequent comments our visitors make is that they're surprised by the size of Rockwell's originals! They walk into the galleries expecting to see magazine-sized artwork and are frequently blown away by the canvases that are two, three, and four feet wide (you can read about one visitor's experience at her personal blog here). But working at the Museum, I've found that an opposite phenomenon occurs. It's easy to forget that the huge paintings in the galleries were made to be printed and reproduced, and sometimes even covered with text describing the Post's stories that particular week.



Now, Rockwell rarely painted a cover that actually related to the articles inside the magazine--they were self-contained stories on their own part. The exception to that rule was when he painted politicians on some later covers--Dwight D. Eisenhower, who Rockwell claimed was his most expressive model of all time, and later John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon during their contentious 1960 presidential race.

So throughout the summer I spent an hour or so whenever I could hunkered in the Stockbridge Room, scanning names and finding celebrities in the Post like Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Ford, Groucho Marx, Katharine Hepburn, and even Norman Rockwell himself (the Post did a retrospective on his work in 1955). I also wrote down a lot of names that sounded familiar but who I had no idea who they were. I learned that Boris Karloff, who always sounded like a politician to me, was actually the actor who played Frankenstein, and that Jack Lemmon, who I had in my mind as a prominent golfer, was a (very famous) actor. I think Rockwell or anyone of his generation would be sorely disappointed in me!

The good news, though, is that now with this information we can develop tours that incorporate the content of the Post with the art of Norman Rockwell. And as an added bonus, my knowledge of mid-20th century American pop culture is at an all-time high!

Summer Sketching

Today, with clouds looming in the distance, teacher Monika and I led with slight trepidation a group of thirteen kids out onto the grounds--to a patch of apple trees--for our Summer Sketch Club. The projects have been getting increasingly complex as July and August wear on, and today the kids had a particularly challenging one. We were talking about perspective, which is often hard even for adult artists to fully capture. In my one and only studio course in college last fall (required for my Art History major), I listened fuzzily as my professor explained vanishing points again and again. Half the time I couldn't even tell if a line in whatever I was trying to draw went up or down. I drew buildings as if I was floating above them and often arrived at the middle of a sketch to discover that all the different elements were grossly disproportional. Once while drawing outdoors, when I thought I wasn't doing too terribly after all, an old man stopped in his tracks and started coaching me on how to draw a straight line. It was that bad.

So I have to admit, I was a little worried for these thirteen kids. Their assignment was to pick a view--of the historic Linwood house, or perhaps a bench off in the distance, or a flowery bush--or Norman Rockwell's very own, very red studio. They were to do one drawing "zoomed out" of their view, another a little closer, and a third picture very "close up," like of the window at Linwood, the details of the flower, or the siding and shrubs of the studio. Their materials were paper and pencil, both graphite and colored. We explained the project and sent the kids out to find a special spot, visiting their concentrated hunched-over heads every so often to see how things were going.

All I have to say is, these kids really could have taught me something while I was plodding away in my painting class last fall, drawing a line only to go back and erase it right away. They plunged ahead, fearless as they pressed pencil to paper to make dark purple and green lines for the Linwood roof and the deep scarlet of a flower in the back gardens. Two little girls who were sisters began so far away and wished to get so close to their subjects that by the end of the class for their final drawing they were sitting near a gravel Museum service road, furiously sketching the reedy flowers that line it on either side while Monika and I watched on.

I always get sad when people leave this class early, because they miss the final fifteen minutes when each child gets to share what they made. Many are shy at first, like Coby today who scampered away in the middle of circle time to get some reassurance from his mom, then came back to share the beautiful drawing he had done of Linwood house, with the multicolored slate roof and unpolished marble walls drawn to perfection. Evan had done a similar drawing of the house, then a closer one with just that marble wall and a bench and flowers, and a final one--so creative!--of a giant red flower, as if he was hovering under it while sketching. He definitely got the whole "zooming in" part!

As people who work with kids often say, they have just about as much to teach us as we have to teach them. Today I learned that my pesky perfectionism might be getting in the way of my art, because these kids didn't need to know what a vanishing point was in order to make expressive drawings that gave the rest of us the visceral experience of focusing in on one delectable detail.

Monument Mountain

It's been "one of those days" here at the Norman Rockwell Museum. It's storming outside and the computers are down, so the great people at Admissions have been doing everything by hand. I went to the store for our Thursday night event (Combat Artist and Marine Chief Warrant Officer Michael Fay is speaking), driving there over slick backroads (okay I'll admit, that's a dramatic way to explain my outing to purchase cheese and crackers). Our terrace cafe, normally a charming spot for visitors to eat their lunch, is sauna-like as steam rises off the stone floor and our kind patrons roast in 100% humidity. At about 12PM, with the rain coming down in sheets outside, I checked weather.com to see when it would stop. The website kindly informed me that it was actually partly cloudy with a 10% chance of precipitation.

But in fact, it is strangely appropriate that today is so rainy. Remember, faithful readers (hi Mom), when I mentioned the historic property tour last week? Well, we never fail to stop and mention Monument Mountain, which is just visible in the distance. The mountain is a popular place for hiking and biking today, but there is also a legend associated with it that literature geeks love to tell. Purportedly, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville picnicked on the mountain in 1850. While they were still climbing to the top there was a big thunderstorm (like today!) and they were forced to take cover under a rock. While they were there, Melville showed Hawthorne a story he'd been working on called "The Great White Whale" and asked for his advice.

Well, I'm not sure if Melville ever did get to writing that book, but isn't it a great story? I'm kidding, of course, he would go on to write Moby Dick right down the road in Pittsfield. And do you know what day they ventured onto Monument Mountain and had that fateful discussion?

August 5th.

You are my Sunshine

Last Thursday night as part of our American Storytellers series, we enjoyed a fantastic performance by the Berkshire Ramblers including Alan Chartock and friends. To hear more on their renditions of folk favorites (including lots of Pete Seeger), read Chartock's column for the Berkshire Eagle. And for a short clip of the Ramblers in action on our terrace with everyone singing along to a truly beloved tune, just press play:

Alpha Beta Chowder II

A few weeks ago I wrote about the interactive display I made for our Creativity Center on Jeanne and William Steig's book Alpha Beta Chowder. The response throughout the month of July was truly phenomenal as we filled the board several times over with different characters for each letter of the alphabet. Here are some pictures of the display in action:







And some of my all-time favorite characters:

-Cookie the Crazy Cook who Cooks Corn on the Cob, Cookies, Cupcakes and Crabs
-Henry the Hippo who has Huge Hips
-Ian, who takes an Irate Interest in his Ipod
-Paola, the Pretty Penguin who loves to Pretend that she is Picking Peppers and Paprika in Peru. She also loves to Perform as a Pop diva (whew!)
-Wendy, the Winking Waterhorse who Wants to be Wonderful

Sadly, we had to take Alpha Beta Chowder down yesterday. Not without good reason, though--we are welcoming the Multicultural BRIDGE program to our Creativity Classroom for the month of August, which I will definitely write about here as I work with them on a daily basis. But clearing the classroom for BRIDGE meant taking a staple remover to my beloved display.

"Oh no!," I bet you're thinking, "I've been carefully planning my Norman Rockwell Museum visit based exclusively on the contents of this blog and desperately wanted to see the Alpha Beta Chowder display while it was up!" I for one wouldn't expect anything less than for visitors to make a beeline past Norman Rockwell and William Steig's art and head downstairs to see my construction paper, staple-mounted "exhibition."

BUT WAIT. You didn't miss it at all!! In fact, I spent the better part of today making the truly creative doodles that our visitors created throughout July into a book for future musuemgoers to see. I can give you a sneak preview, but I'm afraid you'll have to come to Stockbridge to see the whole thing!