Blogs

Goblins, two-foot-tall marionettes, and dozens of hand puppets are in the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh’s storage, just waiting to be seen by audiences. But what happens behind the scenes to preserve and prepare the items for display or keep them maintained when not on view? The answer is a lot of careful organizing and cataloging, usually in conjunction with resourcefulness in the face of a lack of space or maybe even ideal materials.

From tiny land snails to massive seashells, my time in the Mollusks department at the Carnegie Museum showed me just how much goes into their upkeep. It’s not enough to simply collect and display these beautiful specimens; they require constant care, organization, and accuracy. My tasks often focus on reorganization, ensuring each specimen is in the right place and properly cataloged. 
  

In the age of information and digitization, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History is still catching up to ever-evolving standards of collection storage. Museums collect across a wide range of artistic, cultural, and scientific history. All of these objects need special care and attention to preserve them for future viewing and research. This work now also includes digitizing acquisition forms, loans, and any documents pertinent to the museum’s history and mission. 
 

Walking into the Malta Foundation, I never expected to find an image of India hung prominently on the wall. Made by Pittsburgh-based artist Diane Samuels, Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie (2014) is an eye-catching piece with many latent narratives. The journey of researching this work of art has been a snapshot of many of the lessons that my internship at the Malta Foundation has taught me this semester.