A Day in the Life

A fairly typical day in my life at the moment:

Rearranging books in a historic house bookcase in preparation for an upcoming exhibit.

And then working from my living room desk for awhile after I got home.

Playing Catch-Up

Whew - can't believe it's been a month since I last posted!  Where has the time gone?  Here is a series of images from the last four weeks of my museum life:

January 30 - Gorgeous 1870s quilt at the museum today.

January 31 - The sun's back!

February 1 - Awesome or creepy attic scene? You decide!

February 16 - Awesome gallery wall in the orientation gallery at the Rosenbach Museum & Library

February 17 - A friend volunteers for the amazing Woodlands in Philadelphia. We got a private tour on Sunday - this is the exterior of the house on the grounds (built in stages between 1774 and 1840).

February 17 - Inside the drawing room at the Woodlands. Gorgeous light!

February 20 - Baking pies late at night for a museum workshop in the morning. Pecan pie on the left and chess pie on the right.

February 21 - The pies the next day, plus the cornbread that I made with my workshop kids.

February 21 - Home early from work that day and rearranged my home office so the desk faces out the window.

February 22 - One of my historic house organizations is renovating their rental apartment and it's been fascinating to watch. This is the kitchen, with new paint, a new light fixture, and newly refinished floors. It's awaiting appliances, drawers, and butcher block counters, but it's gorgeous as is!

Working from Home Awesomeness

A lovely day of working partially from home today. I drove up to the museum this morning, packed up some artifacts and the museum's projector, gave a lecture to some lovely old ladies, dropped everything back off at the museum, and headed home to finish out the workday here.

The troika of puppies at the reservoir on the walk they got when I got home.

My garden house office, lit from within as the dark started to fall. This is exactly how I was picturing it all fall while I slaved away cleaning & painting.

Post-Holiday Work

My first winter Tuesday working from home!  Unlike some of my working-from-home days in the past, it was a great success.  I was warm enough in my little garden house office (converted this fall), I came in the house for lunch & a dog walk midday, and I was able to work out in the garden house until 8:30pm (after a late afternoon visit from my dad & nephews).  A perfect blend of getting actual work done and enjoying being home.

Pre-Holiday Work

As you can probably tell, I was off work for quite a nice stretch (11 days) over the holidays.  Hence, no museum daily posts.  Here are a couple of images from my last week of work before the break, though:

Baking woodland creature sugar cookies for one museum's cookie social.

Schwag from my coworkers - they're so generous!

Expect the Unexpected

As I've said before, sometimes this is museum work, too.  The ingredients for oatmeal cranberry chocolate chip cookies for a symposium tomorrow in Portsmouth.  My job is not half bad.  :)

Home Office Sort-Of-Makeover

Ta-da! I present the result of about 45 minutes labor this morning - a new & improved home office space.  We got the magnetic board and picture ledge at IKEA recently and I've been waiting to put them up.  I love having the board right there now, waiting for notes, reminders, inspiration, etc.  And the picture ledge gives me a space to finally display my Bachelor's and Master's degrees, as well as my husband's Bachelor's and his Army Achievement Medal certificate.  His Master's in teaching will take over that spot once he's got it.

Now that I'm working from home one day a week (since it's winter), I'm happy we could carve a more officey space out of the guest room.  And for under $30.  That's museum professional frugality at work.

And one more thing - happy 4th birthday to Museophilia!  I started this blog four years ago for a class assignment and here we are now.  To be honest, I get very few readers, but that doesn't really bother me.  I just love thinking & writing about my field & my work and this space is a great way to chronicle all that.

Lunch @ Home

Working from home, as lovely as it is, is getting a bit old. The above was my lunch yesterday. Not bad, really, but let's compare it to a couple of work lunches that I took pictures of last spring and fall.

On the hill by the river at one of my museums.

At a lovely sidewalk table in the town of one of my other museums.

Sigh. I realize the weather and season are big factors here, but it's just not even close, is it?

Art Restoration on a Snowy Day

Since my road looks like this:

I will not be going into work today.  Instead, I'm working from home at the desk in the guest room and savoring a second cup of coffee.

I wanted to share this interactive from a December 18th article in the NY Times. The Met has a painting in their collection that has, in the sixty years it's been at the museum, been alternately identified as a Velázquez, repudiated as such, and now vindicated. It's a really interesting story, but what attracted my attention even more was the accompanying interactive.

Extensive restoration work was done on the painting over the last eighteen months, which was key in revealing the true identity of the work. To help readers see the difference in the painting pre- and post-restoration work, the Times layered photographs of the two stages (pre-restoration on top & post- on the bottom). Readers can move a slider back & forth to see more & less of the images. The difference is astounding!

I love the idea of using an interactive like this for a museum exhibit, particularly one that includes paintings and can therefore raise those specific issues of art conservation. However, you could also do something like it to illustrate any kind of restoration work, from furniture to documents. It's a more sophisticated version of the "before & after" trick and I think it's probably quite easy to execute on the technical side. Hmmm - I'm getting ideas . . .

The Many Faces of Museum Work

Many days, I spend my time scheduling field trips with teachers and volunteers, researching grant possibilities, developing future programming, supervising interns, researching elements of local history, responding to phone calls & emails about two of the historic houses I manage, and teaching school age kids about their town's history.

But, the above is museum work, too. One of my museums hosted a gingerbread cookie decorating workshop as part of its holiday offerings last weekend. So, I spent a few hours last Saturday making & rolling out dough, cutting bear shapes, and baking the cookies. It's nice to have a little variety!