Shadowing at a Museum= I am in love!

On January 12^th, I got the chance to go shadow a family friend of my parents, Paul D’Ambrosio, who is the chief curator at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY. I got a private tour of the museum and spent the day meeting with people in all of the different departments there. I found out that HR is pretty paperwork-filled, “Development” is getting money for the museum by working with donors and grants, and that an “exhibitions curator” is like the sheep-herder to make sure that all of the displays in the museum look great. I also finally got a pinpointed definition of what a chief curator really is. Paul spends the day planning upcoming exhibits and choosing what pieces to put in a show. He also researches the artists, and works with other museums to borrow their art pieces. One other really important thing that a curator does is ‘schmooze’ the donors. He joked that the museum might make more use of him as a socialite than as an exhibitions researcher! Paul also writes a fabulous blog about American folk art- check it out at    http://www.fenimoreartmuseum.org/

I also kind of figured out that very few people have high positions in a museum that do not have their PhD. I had always planned on getting only my Bachelor’s degree, but recently discovered that a Bachelor’s is nothing in the museum world so I decided I will try to pursue a masters (in Museum Studies, most likely). But now, after my visit I am wondering if I will end up getting my PhD one day… It’s a scary thought!! I would be in school forever, but then maybe I could wear a fancy hat and drink wine and go to intellectual parties.

On the bright side, I discovered that the Fenimore Art Museum shares its campus with a graduate program for Museum Studies (how perfect). Cooperstown Graduate Program is one of only two museum studies programs in the country that operates out of a real museum campus! They also have some fantastically helpful and brilliant seeming professors, four of whom took time out of their busy day to make me fall in love with the program. Is it bad that grad school is 2.5 years away? I want to be out of art history and get into museum studies already!! (although I love Syracuse, I wish we had a museum studies program for undergraduate study because I am more interested in that than writing art history research papers for the rest of my life. I would rather spend my time writing grant applications or hanging artwork!).

Since the museum is in Cooperstown, NY, the home of the national Baseball Hall of Fame I decided I had to stop. I’m not a huge baseball person, but now I can say I have been there! I spent some time with a life size sculpture of Lou Gehrig, which was a little bit moving because close friend of mine has a mother with Lou Gehrig’s disease (more technically known as ALS), which is a terrible illness that slowly deteriorates one’s body. Lou Gehrig was a young, healthy baseball star until he was diagnosed with ALS, and died just a few years later.