Sunday, July 22, 2007

Iced Tea

Alex and Mary are to thank for this post. I know I haven't written in a while, so it's about time.

I've been working at the tea shop and interning at the DIA for the last couple months and it really is great, although I am feeling a little burnt out. This could be ameliorated by the fact that the shop is cutting it's hours so I wont be working as much, but really it's just frustrating because I need the money and for some reason it's close to impossible to pay Birmingham rent with tea leaves. I really want Spot O Tea to succeed; I feel invested and actually somewhat passionate about that place. I want Sharon to win against the multitude of odds she's up against, and I want to keep my job. It's difficult to believe that my coworkers feel the same sometimes; often I think I am the only person taking orders and cleaning up.

My internship is much more involved and complicated than last summer, which is exciting. I'm creating high-tech interpretive stations for the American and the Contemporary galleries, basically on my own. I've done nearly all the research, put together ideas in documents that are being mocked up by a company in New York with close to no help from my boss or the other educators. I've been given a huge responsibility to create educational experiences and opportunities for the permanent collection of one of the best museums in the country, a secret that will hopefully be let out of the bag with the reinstallation. I will be able to show people things that I made in a museum. I'm excited.
This internship has made me realize that this is what I want to do; I want to create more accessible museums for people to come and feel inspired and to learn about art. The museum is no longer, and should never have been, focused on the wealthy patron or the philanthropist; they are for the public and should engage all people in a dialog about art and it's meaning. It's pretty painful to say but most museum are still very prejudice, formal and cold so it's no wonder that the citizens of the community who are not involved with art on an everyday basis feel bored or intimidated by them. I now have a goal.

I just finished Cloud Atlas. I have to admit that I didn't really like it until the end. The middle section was so difficult to read that I almost gave up, but it brought together a lot of current ideas of freedom, human rights and democracy that I wasn't really expecting.

In other news, I have a new dog. Her name is Ruby.