Reflections on a Smithsonian summer 🌞

The day I was introduced to contra — thank you Smithsonian Folklife Festival & Appalachian friends!

To know me is to know that I LOVE museums.

I myself didn't realize just how much until I started writing my application essays for Smithsonian Institution internships about one year ago.

In 9 applications across 3 museums & 2 Smithsonian offices, I waxed poetic about 'wonder' & 'temples of knowledge' — the true wonder is that my supervisor Fiona saw past the platitudes & offered me an interview, then an internship.

During that first Zoom conversation, I told Fiona, former English major that she is, that I was at a Plathian 'fig tree' point in my life — I could see my life branching out in so many different directions, I had so many interests, & museums were a frontrunner.

Last summer, I interned under the Office of Education & Experience at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Quite a time to be in DC, working in the cultural sector — as the Trump administration *attempted to* redirect funding from the National Museum of the American Latino & the Anacostia Community Museum & *attempted to* do away with the Institute of Museum & Library Services, which supports museums, libraries, & archives across the U.S., as well as *successfully* pressured National Portrait Gallery Director Kim Sajet into stepping down & *successfully* initiated an internal review of all Smithsonian exhibits to snuff out all traces of 'divisive narratives' in anticipation of the Semiquincentennial (250th anniversary of America, indexing from the Declaration of Independence). Not to mention the whole fiasco of the NMAH impeachment exhibit, which even got Colbert airtime, ooh la la. Never a dull day!

While I did, for a few fleeting hours, occupy the NMAH building (a veritable stone fortress constructed at the height of the Cold War, originally billed as the Museum of History & Technology) at the same time as Vice President & Smithsonian Board of Regents Member J.D. Vance, I was decidedly far from the political action. As a Daily Experiences intern, I designed, prototyped, & facilitated daily experiences during peak season at the 8th-most visited museum in America. 'Daily Experiences' implies employee/volunteer docent/summer intern-facilitated educational programming — not tours, but interactive programs designed to enrich visitors' experiences & engagement with history.

Eager guinea pig for Berea broom-making lesson!

With my lovely intern crew of Evan, Charles, & Eliana, & under Fiona's patient tutelage, I helped develop Semiquincentennial programming to accompany the 'Buff George' statue, i.e. Horace Greenough's original 'Washington Monument,' which originally sat in the U.S. Capitol rotunda & now greets visitors as the landmark object of 2 West (the 2nd-floor west wing, in NMAH lingo). Through running the stereoscope cart & the World War I animals cart (ask me about daguerreotypes & messenger pigeons — I am happy to talk about either), we helped visitors of every age, from around the nation & the world, understand that 'history is all around us' & 'the past connects to the present.' Individually, I researched Civil War nursing to assist museum theater specialist Julie with developing a theater program. In behind-the-scenes tours, we got to see Mr. Rogers's original sweater, Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch, dresses dyed with arsenic, & so much more. & I would be remiss to omit our dear 'cousins' from Berea College — Alethia, Baella, & Beth — intern colleagues whose work often overlapped with ours, & who became good friends over the course of the summer. I learned so much about history, public history in particular — I like Evan's definition of 'however we make history palatable to the general public' — education, museums, & the politics of cultural institutions in the nation's capital. 

2012. Probably my first visit to D.C., & I'm 90% sure we went to at least the National Air & Space Museum.

In 1826, James Smithson, an Englishman who had never set foot in the Americas, entrusted the United States with his fortune, with which he requested the government create an 'establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge.' Almost 200 years later, & after so many years in awe of the Smithsonian Institution, I got to play an active role in that diffusion of knowledge, & it was truly an honor.

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To 'get political' again (though I believe most everything is inherently political), I want to offer some thoughts on cultural institutions:

I grew up at the public library, & at the museum, & listening to NPR on the way there & back. On my weekends, I maxed out my family's library cards & watched PBS Kids. I was raised on the publicly funded diffusion of knowledge, & I am all the more knowledgeable, kind, & civically engaged for it. 

The Trump administration tells us we cannot afford our cultural institutions — that our museums, libraries, & archives are frivolous dead weight to be shaved off of an inefficient bureaucracy.

Simultaneously, the president places his name on the Kennedy Center, seeks to whitewash National Park discussions of slavery, ... I could go on (& I did, some paragraphs prior). How telling! 

Evidently, the truth is precisely the opposite — we cannot afford to lose our cultural institutions, whether to defunding or bad-faith revisionism. These buildings, their collections, & what they represent, alongside our laws, our courts, & all the rest, are institutions that underlie American democracy. To quote Devon Akmon, chair of the board of the American Alliance of Museums, cultural institutions are 'guardians of truth, education, & collective memory.' The past year's political attacks signal at best a disregard, at worst a disdain, for these institutions' crucial role in educating the American populace. (Sidenote: I find it noteworthy that the U.S. is one of few OECD countries that lacks a dedicated Department of Arts & Culture.) The Trump administration's control of cultural activity should make you uneasy — if I were feeling alarmist, I'd call it a harbinger of fascism.

On that cheery note, I sincerely hope my fellow museum people keep up the good fight — that we do not go gentle into that good night.

I am hopelessly in love with this piece: MVSEVM by David Beck. What breathtaking attention to detail, & what ingenuity to tell the story of the Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery through miniature, drawing from the aesthetics of Wunderkammer/cabinets of curiosities. I visited SAAM/NPG maybe 8 times over the course of the summer, & I never got tired of seeing this beaut. (I also never got tired of that gorgeous courtyard — if you know, you know.) MVSEVM perfectly captures why I personally love museums — it's the collecting, the preserving for the benefit of the public, it's so noble, & so profound! That status symbols conceived out of colonialism & elitism are now spaces we go to to feel the awe of the simultaneous individuality & universality of the human experience ... maybe now you have some sense of what Fiona was reading in that application essay. Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick also speaks to this love.