Act Like an Angel, Catalog Like Crazy
Hello, Readers!
This week at PAM, I continued my progress on the catalog. I did the usual tasks like taking photos and filling in all the necessary data fields, but a few challenges popped up.
The first problem I encountered was when I needed to catalog some awards and plaques. The metal awards were very shiny, so I could see myself as well as the cabinets in the background reflected in the photographs. To cover the cabinets, I took a big grey board and propped it up using my chair. Then, I held the camera slightly to the side so the photographs would not show my reflection.
This same problem showed up with the glass awards, and in addition to that, the lettering on the awards were white so they blended with the white paper I was using for the background. I flipped a box around and created a new setup where the background was grey instead.
Since my setup was on a table, I had to do things like squatting down or leaning over the table in odd poses to make sure my reflection stayed out of the pictures. I felt a little crazy and was glad no one walked in to see me.
But, that was not the only time I felt a bit insane this week. After cataloging all of the awards, I moved on to textiles. My mentor had done two T-shirts for the initial catalog examples, so I followed her guide. We laid the T-shirts flat on a grey board and took photographs from above, adjusting the lighting as needed. One of the shirts had pictures of four different pieces of art on the front, and my mentor told me the names of three of them to put in the description. Yet, she could not remember the name of the third piece from the left.
I was a bit disappointed that my description of the T-shirt in the metadata had the titles of the pieces and the names of the artists for only three out of four paintings, so I took matters into my own hands. The style of the painting was Chinese, and it had to be a part of the museum’s collection – otherwise it would not be on the shirt in the first place. I got permission to go back to Piction Discoverer (where there is a record of all the items in the museum’s fine art inventory); however, I found that the filtering system on the website was not functional. Powered by my determination and refusal to give up, I opened the folder of all the items in the Asian category and manually flipped through the 68 pages of 1700+ items with only the low-quality picture on the T-shirt to guide me.
I doubted that anyone would appreciate my efforts, but those thoughts did not stop me. Even if I could not find it, I was already happy for the opportunity to browse the museum’s inventory some more. Eventually, I did find the name and artist of the painting: Zhang Daqian’s “Autumn Flavors”, a Chinese ink painting on paper.
The thoughts about craziness this week made the song “CRAZY” by LE SSERAFIM pop into my mind, and I incorporated their lyrics “act like an angel, dress like crazy” into my blog title while changing “dress” to “catalog” so it made more sense. Their song is about having fun and being confident even when the world thinks you are going crazy. Like their message, I just need to have more confidence that my work is good and carry on.
Finally, there was a special event on April 7th where my mentor did a presentation on the archives. I got to sit and watch, and I even went early to see a presentation by Dr. Mary Hogan Camp, an independent art historian. Her presentation was about Belle da Costa Greene, a librarian who worked at the Morgan Library in the 1900s. It was very interesting to learn about Greene’s life, and I now hold a deep respect for her.
The audience was made up of docents, volunteers, and people interested in art and museums. A docent is a person who teaches others, and museum docents in particular work as tour guides and teach visitors about the history of the museum and the context behind artworks.
Here is a few words to describe the docents:
Doing magnificent work
Our precious museum volunteers
Carrying a vast library of knowledge
Ever so eager to share their tales
Never stopped learning
Teaching others very well
So the spirit of the museum is preserved
I was very excited to be surrounded by a large number of people who were interested in the museum and its workings. I also had a lot of fun learning from the docents about other docents, and I am glad I went to the event.
Next week, I am going to continue the catalog. I still have some more T-shirts to input information for, and I look forward to tackling any problem they could possibly throw at me.
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