Putting My Senior Project into Frame

Katherine v -

Hello, Readers! Welcome to the first blog post for my Senior Project. Today, I am putting my Senior Project into frame just like the documents I will be framing for the gallery showing my mentor has arranged. 

My interest in art started with an assignment for my art class in middle school: find a piece of art to write a critique on. So, I went to the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum and simply finished the assignment. I did not think much about it at the time, but as I kept visiting the museum and started exploring other museums like the Phoenix Art Museum, I developed a personal interest in art. I want to explore as much of my world as I can, so I decided to do more research in order to discover more about the world behind the scenes at museums. Specifically, I am focusing on the conservation of the pieces and researching what considerations are needed to prevent degradation. 

I will be working with Ms. Aspen Reynolds, the archivist at the Phoenix Art Museum, to see what kind of work goes into preparing new exhibits and storing the pieces from old ones. I am looking forward to helping my mentor with her gallery of archival documents relating to the women in the history of the museum. I will be handling framing tasks and deciding the lighting angles to minimize damage to the pieces as they are placed in the public view. It is scheduled for March 7th. Although the documents in the exhibit are not exactly artworks, I am excited regardless.

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Comments:

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    nick_a
    Hello Katherine! It's interesting how one assignment helped spark your interest in art. Is there any training you have to do beforehand in order to understand how to treat the documents, or will you learn what to do on March 7th?
    February 18, 2025 at 1:57 pm - Reply
    allison_h
    Hi Kathy! I never thought about how lighting angles of the pieces when they are displayed affects their damage. That was really interesting! Do you know the number of pieces you will be framing for your mentor's gallery?
    February 18, 2025 at 4:40 pm - Reply
    cason_t
    Hello, this sounds like a very interesting project. Do you know the age of the documents you're working with, or will you learn more about that later? I'm excited to see what sort of things you learn from this. Good luck with the project.
    February 18, 2025 at 9:39 pm - Reply
    danielle_l
    Heya Kathy! Oh, my goodness, I remember those art critiques from back then; those feel so long ago. I think that taking an interest in art preservation is so fun and worthwhile; it sounds like a very underappreciated craft. The exhibit that you mention fascinates me as it seems to incorporate feminism into the artistic world; do you know what inspired the exhibit to come about? As a person whose family loves the Phoenix Art Museum (we used to have yearly passes), I can't wait to show them an exhibit that someone from my school helped curate!
    February 18, 2025 at 9:41 pm - Reply
    katherine_v
    @nick_a, thank you for your comment! There is not much training I can do prior to doing the actual framing since it will be quicker to learn hands-on. However, I will be observing the different ways the museums have framed documents in previous exhibits and using that information to decide the framing methods for the March 7th gallery. For example, some documents can be put in a frame directly without any preparation, while some of the documents need to be put on a cardstock backing first.
    February 18, 2025 at 10:06 pm - Reply
    katherine_v
    @allison_h, the lighting was something I also did not consider until recently! Thankfully, I know about it now, as there is a window in the showing room for the upcoming gallery, and I need to be mindful of it. I do not know the exact number of pieces in the exhibit; however, it is a good amount. If I had to guess, I would say around 20 documents.
    February 18, 2025 at 10:11 pm - Reply
    katherine_v
    @cason_t, thank you for your comment! I believe the ages of the documents range from before the opening of the museum, around the late 1950s, to the present. One part of the gallery is dedicated to the history of the museum's library, and some of the photographs are from the early days of the library. The other documents illustrate snapshots of the museum as time passed.
    February 18, 2025 at 10:19 pm - Reply
    katherine_v
    @danielle_l, the art critiques indeed feel like such a long time ago, yet I have to thank them for sparking my interest in art and inspiring this Senior Project. The exhibit is actually not an official exhibit in the Phoenix Art Museum, as it is just a small gallery showing of archival documents, but it serves to illustrate the growth of the museum. The main focus is on the women in the history of the Phoenix Art Museum and how their contributions shaped the place we know today. I believe it was my mentor's desire to shed light on their work that led to the creation of this exhibit.
    February 18, 2025 at 10:51 pm - Reply
    meggiles
    Kathy! This is such a cool place for you to be. For clarity--what exactly is happening on 3/7? Also, can you post a photo of the art museum? It would be great to get a visual of where you are! MG
    February 20, 2025 at 10:41 am - Reply
    meggiles
    Hi, Kathy--To clarify, what exactly is happening on 3/7? Can you post a photo of your site? (Could really be anything from PHX art museum . . . . MG
    February 20, 2025 at 11:47 am - Reply
    katherine_v
    Hello, Ms. Giles! I am very sorry for the extremely late reply! The gallery will be a showing of archival documents, and it will be open until around the end of May or early June. Apologies for not having a photo of the museum, but I hope the abundance of pictures in my later blog posts makes up for it.
    March 9, 2025 at 6:50 pm - Reply

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