Posted on: Tuesday December 17, 2013
If you have been reading the HBC Blog, you are probably aware of some of the work involved with being a curator. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to experience the job firsthand, to see if it is really as great as Amelia makes it sound? My name is Kristina, and for the past couple of months, I have been able to do just that. I am a Masters student studying Curatorial Practices at the University of Winnipeg, and I am working at The Manitoba Museum as an Intern. So far it has been an amazing experience.
It is fascinating to get a behind-the-scenes look at everything it takes to keep an institution like The Manitoba Museum running. While most of my time is spent job shadowing with Amelia, I have also had a chance to visit several departments to see the roles they play in creating exhibits, designing educational programming, and keeping our artifacts safe from damage.
Aside from job shadowing, I am also working on a couple of projects for the Museum. One of these projects involves exhibit renewal within the HBC Gallery. Presently, there are several props being utilized, along with the many artifacts on display. Ideally, we would like to be able to identify which objects are props and which are artifacts, so that we can eventually replace the props with actual artifacts from the collection. As mentioned in some of our earlier blogs, the HBC Museum Collection is much larger than what is currently on display in the gallery. We simply don’t have the space to display all of the artifacts.
At this point, I have completed the first stage of the project. Armed with the inventory binders, I spent a morning just looking at what was on display, recording any discrepancies and identifying which objects were props. The next step will be to make sure that the props are entered into our database so that we have a better record of exactly what is on the floor at any given time. Once this is all done, I will be able to complete my report, listing recommendations as to how to better use the existing collection by replacing props with actual artifacts. The main goals of this project are to make sure we can optimize the visitor experience, as well as showcasing more of our incredible HBC Museum Collection.
Image: Identifying artefacts in the York Boat.
