Lines Written in Recapitulation

"Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling." -G.K. Chesterton

Day eleven. Last (real) day of work for the semester.

Appropriately, we're de-installing (not un!) all the exhibits. I feel like there's a metaphor in here somewhere, but I'm all English major-ed out for the semester.

The process is simple enough. Take down piece. Remove nail. Spackle. Paint. Lather, rinse, repeat. The Lockhart Gallery is done in an hour.

Corinne and I get to talking about grad school and internships and I feel that old familiar panicky feeling of "CRAP! What if I don't get health benefits! DRAT! What if I'm stuck in a job I hate with thousands of dollars of student loans! POOIE!" By the end of our conversation, I have resolved to marry Prince Harry, get him to bribe the Met into letting me hang out there forever, and maybe sleep in that French bed they have kickin' around. This definitely seems more feasible than grad school and getting an internship this summer.

Let me repeat: CRAP! DRAT! POOIE!

There is, however, a tiny ray of hope. Dad plays tennis with a curator at the Met who has some sway with the Intern Advisory Board. I will almost certainly not get that internship. But my chances have gone from none to slim. I have fingernail in the door, so to speak.

Being an almost-adult is stressful.

Being Young and Green

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." -Pablo Picasso

Days eight, nine, and probably ten.

I've lost count.

I'm given a bit of an inkling that yes, putting together exhibitions will be more fun than just measuring and nailing when I'm (sort of) in charge of helping set up the El Sauce, Nicaragua photo exhibit in Lederer. This inkling was just that, a teeny tiny itsy bitsy hint, because Cynthia asked my opinion on how the wall with the author photo and bio best looked and then took my advice.


And I get to handle cool artwork and go to fancy galas and feel important in my conservation gloves...but I'm having my doubts.

I love putting together exhibits, but there is so much tedium associated with a collection. And if I want to stay in Smalltown, USA and work in that small-but-challenging-and-rewarding art museum/gallery in Somewhere Nearby City, there is going to be a LOT of tedium if I want a job where I can set up exhibitions and do research. So basically? I'm not sure what I want to do anymore.

I love all the learning involved and the joy and gratitude that comes from seeing a beautiful painting and then understanding what it means and I want to be able to impart all of that to others people. Chee-ZEE, I know.

Maybe I just need to relax.

I almost forgot my actual fail of the week: hanging up posters announcing a reception for an exhibition half an hour before it started.

Everything will be totes fine.

Inland

"What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art." -Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Cynthia's phone is broken, so she sends me and Carinne an email asking if we can work on Friday. Things need to be packed, there's an exhibit to be set up, and I still have to finish the accession reports. Apparently the storage room lock is broken and I get to learn another "wholly unseemly way of getting in."

Day seven.

Imagine my disappointment when the lock was fixed.

Imagine my disappointment when I realize I need more copies of the condition reports and I've already interrupted Cynthia once, twice during her interview with the newspaper. So instead of doing what I should have done and gone to ask for the Xerox key, I fill out the accession forms and wrestle with tissue paper to pack the large prints. The roll is roughly as tall as I am, I haven't the foggiest where to find the razor blades (remember those?), so I'm just tearing it off of the roll in a not-so-dignified fashion.

Eventually the interview is finished, the condition reports are copied, and I'm sent to help pack up an exhibit.

Except we have no packing tape.

"Um, yeah just be creative. There's some tape still stuck to the old bubblewrap."

Excellent.

Carinne and I wrap up these paintings, re-wrap them because we did it incorrectly, and attempt to stuff them into the packing boxes.

"There was some space in between them so I...got creative with the styrofoam."
"Well let's add some bubblewrap too."

Did you know that you should tape a box flap down at least six times?

If I Should Learn, In Some Quite Casual Way

"If I didn't start painting, I would have raised chickens." -Grandma Moses

Day six.

The mere fact that I have to wear white gloves for work today means that it's going to be roughly a thousand times better than last time. I have the feeling that the smugness of punching in the code to the storage room, carrying tools (i.e. a measuring tape and an archiving pen), numerous folders, and a stack of prints through Brodie is never going to lose its charm. Not to mention the white gloves were either stuffed conspicuously in my back pocket or being worn the entire time.

It's a regular day at the office. Filling out accession reports, being silently aggravated about forgetting my laptop with my music, swearing when I'd stack a print without labeling its collection number, handling some seriously SWEET lithographs (really, I WANT one), memorizing the address of donor Janet L. after filling it out eighteen times...all the nicely therapeutic aspects of gallery work.

But still. Kinda boring.

I nabbed the pair of white gloves, by the way. I figured it was high time I carried a pair around in my bookbag. Don't worry, Cynthia, I'll return them at the end of the year. But they're just too cool to NOT carry around.

Conscientious Objector

"One must from time to time attempt things that are beyond one's capacity." -Auguste Renoir

"So...apparently the collection has somewhere in between eight to nine thousand prints that we didn't know about."
"Oh crap."

Day five. I show up in Cynthia's office under the assumption that I'll be doing some condition reports, maybe handling some sweet prints, definitely wearing (the favorite) white gloves...ya know. Nope.

Instead, I'm handed a stack of papers, the collection list, and told to find which ones match up. Apparently the incompetence of Cynthia's predecessor was not to be believed and there are several THOUSAND prints floating around somewhere in the collection. The problem is, we're not sure which ones we know about.

So I trot off to the seminar room, under the assumption that the 60-page list of prints is alphabetized and it'll take maybe 20 minutes. Much to my chagrin, there is no apparent order in how the list is organized. What. So. Ever. Of course, I discover this after Cynthia has peaced out for the gym. And Vicki isn't in her office.

Being the devoted and pathetic intern that I am, I make an attempt. To search through a 60 page document with size (I'm being serious) 6 font. Maybe 8. But almost definitely 6. That is not in any particular order. After about ten minutes of this, with zero results, I decide to pretend that it's not there and wait for Cynthia to get back so I can use the beautiful Command-F function. I spend the remaining time taping pages together.

Eventually Cynthia gets back and I get to Command-F the crap out of the now alphabetized version of the print list. Thank goodness I gave up the chase early beforehand. Out of the 230ish pieces on the insurance list and the 6000 pieces on the print list, TWO match up. TWO. That's right, people. TWO.

Let's give a prolonged, very very sincere round of applause for laziness. It saved my ass.

A Visit to the Asylum

"Surely nothing has to listen to so many stupid remarks as a painting in a museum." -Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

Day three.

I did not think it could get much more tedious than writing hundreds of condition reports on prints of dead cardinals' tombs. This thought was quickly overturned when my Friday afternoon was spent painting the trim of the McClellan House. Painting the trim grey, no less. Poor Minerva and Carinne. They had to stay for more than my two hours.

Day four.

I pretentiously stumble (if that's possible) from church to the 9th Annual Art Gala in excruciating heels I haven't worn since senior prom. Candles line the walkway, a string quartet is cycling through the same four or five songs in the hallway, and I'm assigned a tray of deviled eggs to pass around. Minerva is standing in the gallery, looking bored, and holding a tray of hors d'oeurves that include something wrapped in bacon and something with shrimp. When the tray of deviled eggs is sufficiently depleted, I sprint (well, more like quickly limp, with very good posture) to the kitchen, where everyone who wants to avoid Geneseo's elite is munching on appetizers and massaging their sore feet.

President Dahl begins his address and all the sophisticated adults turn their attention to the various speeches in the gallery. Minerva and I take this as our cue to steal apple cider and food from the tables, while silently cursing Lockhart's creaky floors.

The rest of the evening is spent alternately snitching cake, making pleasantries about the exhibit, and teaching an older man with a British accent how to eat a deviled egg. (Shove the whole darn thing in your mouth, turn your head away from polite company, chew, swallow. Lather, rinse, repeat.)

After saying my goodbyes and avoiding the distribution of leftover food, I head home. I decide that the next time I waitress for a gala, I will wear better shoes and force everyone to eat whatever foodstuffs I've got on my arm. I will also eat beforehand.

How Naked, How Without a Wall

"I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone." -Vincent Van Gogh

"You should probably put those pins back where you found them."

Day two. Minerva and I are attempting to scour the pinboards of Brodie to find enough pins to install an exhibit in the Bridge Gallery. We manage to convince ourselves that just going to the storage room and getting nails would be more work than hunting all over the building for stray pins. Which in the end, we have to return and go to the storage room for new ones after all.

"You know," Minerva says musingly. "Being a gallery assistant has made me really good at leveling and guessing measurements." It should come as no surprise that neither of us really needed the level for the installation.

After finishing up in the Bridge Gallery, we're instructed to hang up posters in all the other buildings. No sooner do I reach the corkboard in Welles then I realize I'm missing a crucial element: pins. So back to Brodie where I quietly steal thumbtacks and then troop to the rest of the buildings to hang the posters.

There is some framing and matting done and then we all head over to the Lockhart Gallery to paint walls. Apparently if you let paint sit for a long time, the color slightly changes and should not be used for touch-ups on the walls. Because then you will have large splotches of odd color. And then you will have to paint the whole frickin' wall.

Painting the trim was mostly uneventful, minus the parts where I got lost in the basement, spilled paint on the wood floor, and painted the wrong wall. So not bad. Could have been worse.

Did I mention there's a GALA on Sunday?

From a Very Little Sphinx

"Believe it or not, I can actually draw." - Jean Michel Basquiat

Day one.

Fall semester.

After announcing myself with a lot of dramatic waving around and exclamations of "Oh hey! How's your summer been? I'm here! Let's do this! I'm here!" to Cynthia, I am directed to the Lockhart Gallery where I smugly retrieve the key from its hiding place and unlock the gallery rooms, basking in my elitist Gallery Assistant title. There is only one small damper on this glorious return; I haven't the foggiest idea how to turn the lights on.

And yes, I checked for all possible light switches.

I meekly jog upstairs to the Alumni Center and ask the kindly lady at the desk if she does have the foggiest idea how to illuminate the Esteemed Lockhart Gallery. I follow her, again meekly, to the locked reception room and then to a closet in the room and then to a cupboard in the closet (for real) where she turns on the lights. Except, oh dratsicles, most of the lights are still not on. So she meekly jogs upstairs to get another kindly person and I meander around the room facepalming and flipping the only light switch whenever I pass it.

The second, and more informed, kindly woman flips on the rest of the lights using a keypad the first thought was for the alarm system. And then she tells me I've only been turning the porch light on and off.

When Cynthia arrives and there is finally enough fluorescent lighting, I am assigned the task of peeling off painter's tape. Despite an embarrassing fear of heights (Anecdote: I once took so long to jump off the high dive that the lifeguard clapped when I finally did.), it's invigoratingly cathartic and even mildly amusing when I throw balls of tape at the walls. Unfortunately, it wasn't any of those things when I somehow managed to hit myself in the nose with the folded ladder.

The next task is to paint the borders of the walls in another room. Taking a deep breath and trying not to think about how I'm wearing my Explosions in the Sky shirt and favorite pair of jeans, I mostly focus all vacant thinking energies on the stupidity of the movie "Letters to Juliet" and how I would much rather do this instead of going to lab.

It's good to be back.

Here's to Opening and Upward

"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary." -Pablo Picasso

Day thirteen. Last day.

Well, of the semester.

I'm helping install the winning pieces from the annual county high school juried art show in the Lederer Gallery. Holy crapola. I had barely legible handwriting in high school (it's even worse now) and these kids are doing oil paintings and ceramic chess pieces (modeled after a battle between Mount Olympus and the Underworld) and portraits and digital art and let's not even talk about the effing CHAIR someone CARVED...well, frankly, it's all a bit upsetting.

"Wait. So this kid is like...fifteen."
"Yeah. I know. Insane."

But I'm helping install an exhibition, which is the main thing. There are several moments of panic, like when Cynthia and I hung up a huge banner-esque work and I almost fell off the ladder. Or when I almost fell off the ladder trying to hang up another giant canvas. Other than that, it was mostly okay.

"Hannah, can you please sweep the floor? This place is a mess."

I occasionally forget that I am first and foremost an intern.

As we leave the gallery, all the sickeningly-fantastic artwork beautifully installed, we say our summer goodbyes.

"Thanks for an amazing semester, Cynthia."
"Hey, I get a hug."
Bags and bundles and tools down. Hug.
"See you in the fall! Have a great summer!"
"Take care!"

See you in the fall. Have a great summer.

Now I Lay With Everywhere Around

"All art requires courage." -Anne Tucker

"So would you be interested--"
"Yes."
"--in an internship with Wadsworth Library in the fall? They need someone to help them catalog their collection of prints and watercolors."
"Yes."
"I'd help you in the beginning and show you the process and then you'd work on your own."
"Sounds fantastic. Yes."

Day twelve. I have barely sat down and I've already secured an internship in the fall. Clearly it does not get much better than this.

"Oh, and would you be okay with finishing early? I have to go to a couple senior portfolio reviews."

Never mind. It does get better. Especially since it's 77 degrees and sunny out.

Jean is out sick, which means that I am given the task of packaging prints solo-style. The initial stage is very validating and enjoyable. By "initial stage" I mean the part where I stroll confidently to the storage room, punch in the code, and then set up my music. After that, sweat beads start to form. Why? Because I have to confront a massive role of plastic wrap, easily my worst enemy in the universe. Not only am I totally alone in the matter, but apparently the scissors went on vacation and we only have razor blades to cut plastic and paper.

"Why isn't this cut-- oh, wrong end."

The brown paper that goes on after the plastic wrap has been rolled so tightly that I practically have to lie down on the work table to get it flat. After a fair amount of tussling, I'm able to put my Christmas-wrapping skills to use and I get a package that may or may not be somewhat rectangular. And by the twentieth print, I've got this stuff down.

Still hate plastic wrap.

A Total Stranger One Black Day

"It is a mistake for a sculptor or painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work." -Henry Moore

"What is this called?"
"Bubblewrap..."
"I just couldn't remember the word for it; the only thing coming to mind was 'popping paper.'"

Day eleven. Jean and I are packaging up pieces from the drawing exhibit to ship back to their respective artists. This means I have to work with both packing tape and massive rolls of plastic wrap, two of my deadliest foes.

I had spent the first hour putting all those rejection letters I mentioned last time in envelopes, along with the artists' work. It was a bit depressing. Not only did we not want their art in our galleries, we did not want the CDs of their work to clutter our filing cabinets. Or remind of us of our heartlessness.

"Cynthia, do you want me to just throw out these letters from the artists?"
"Put them in a folder. Then I won't feel so bad."

When Jean and I finish packing up the artwork, we sit around the office while Cynthia is on hold with Fed Ex. Apparently Canada has a lot of issues with getting artwork back in vast quantities. The three of us discuss grad school, Paris, automated phone operators, and Paris. "International shipping representative. No. InterNATIONAL shipping representative." Hold.

"Where were we?"
"Paris."
"Oh, right. Paris. I would definitely have an apartment there." This from Cynthia.
Jean laughs. "When you make your first million?"
"Before that, definitely."

Enter No

"But that's what being an artist is - feeling crummy before everyone else feels crummy." -The New Yorker

April 14, 2010

Dear Mr. Alba,

Thank you very much for submitting your work for consideration. Unfortunately, we cannot accept it at this time, as our galleries are fully scheduled for the next two years. However, if you are still interested in a future exhibition, please...

Dear Ms. Kretz,

Thank you very much for submitting your work for consideration. Unfortunately, we cannot accept it at this time...

Dear Mr. Wynn,

Thank you very much for submitting...

Day ten. Another Wednesday, a couple extra hours, and a box full of artists to reject. Artists continually send slides, CDs, binders, huge envelopes of their work to the galleries on campus, all very earnestly requesting an exhibition, a wall, anythingpleaseforpete'ssakethankyouverymuch. And someone needs to tell them that unfortunately, we cannot accept it at this time, as our galleries are fully scheduled for the next two years.

It's been awhile. "Some of these are pretty old; they've been here since before I got here two years ago."

I open one of the envelopes. "Oh hey. 2004. I was going through puberty."

23 artists and 23 exhibits we will probably never see at Geneseo. That's not such a bad thing in some cases.

"These kind of remind me of Andy Warhol plus Van Gogh plus medieval Jesus paintings."
"Yeah, I don't particularly like them."

Dear Ms. Kim, Ms. DeSalvlo, Mr. Navarra...

Thank you very much for submitting your work...

Two Little Whos

"One of the best things about paintings is their silence - which prompts reflection and random reverie." -Mark Stevens

"Jean, the door to the storage room is jammed."
"Are you sure?"
-brief pause while our protagonists go the locale of said door-
"Hannah. This is the gallery. The storage room is over here."
"Oh. No wonder the combination didn't work."

Day nine. It's Wednesday afternoon and I'm doing a couple extra hours since Cynthia will be in New Jersey on Friday. It would seem that the doors in Brodie are all conspiring against me. It didn't help that I had absolutely no idea where the storage room was in the first place and spent a solid five minutes wandering around looking for a door with a combination lock. I have a sneaking suspicion that whoever planned Brodie was either addicted to Tetris or just deeply sadistic. The main point is that Brodie makes absolutely no architectural sense.

Jean and I are in the photography room, taking pictures of the collection.

"These are 1000 watt bulbs. Holy mother."

The process is pretty basic. There's a table covered with grey paper (neutral background), with heavy-duty lamps on either side. The camera screws in to this interesting elevator-esque contraption which essentially operates as a manual zoom. I simply line up the print and snap a picture. Unfortunately, this basic task has me standing on a chair in my socks, surrounded by very toasty lamps, and sweating profusely.

Poor day to wear a fashion belt. "Jean, the worst part of this is, I know if I take my belt off at any point during the day, I'm just going to have a ring of sweat around my middle. Which is both funny and gross."

Several of the prints were of our own dear Brodie, featuring students looking all chipper and college-y.

"Oh man. These are from the seventies. Look at that hair!"

The longer I looked at the photographs (i.e. the more pictures I had to take of them), the more I was struck by the thought that these cheery-faced students were my age when these pictures were taken. And now they are most certainly not. This seems like a fairly obvious statement, but to once again realize, oh hey, this doesn't last forever, is always startling.

I think that's another reason I love art. It never really ages. Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly fine with growing older, but it's nice to know that art will remain constant. Well, art and frickin' Brodie.

In Just Spring

"Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame." -G.K. Chesterton

10:54 am. I am standing outside Cynthia's locked door.

11:02 am. Still standing.

Day eight. I'm beginning to wonder if I missed the memo.

TXT To: Cynthia Hawkins
CB: 1-314-159-2653
Hey Cynthia, just wondering if I should meet you somewhere on campus!

11:08 am. Now sitting on the nearest bench, checking my email for some kind of hint. Time moves awfully slowly when you have no idea where anyone is and when you have zero notifications on Facebook.

11:12 am. Ring ring ring.
"Hello?"
"Hey Cynthia! It's Hannah-"
"Oh, Jean didn't email you? I'm so sorry. Last week was crazy, so I'm taking the day off. I knew I..."

Did I mention that it was 70 degrees and sunny out?

"...I'm so sorry about that. Well, enjoy your day off and this beautiful weather!"

I was approaching crustacean color by the evening. Day well spent.

Picasso You Give Us Things Which Bulge

"I always thought that one of the reasons why a painter likes especially to have other painters look at his or her work is the shared experience of having pushed paint around." -Chuck Close

"Who would use spray glue on a glass case?"

"This floor is disgusting."

"I don't actually know how to put in an L-bracket."

"This one is called 'Blisters'."

"I have this terrible fear of stepping on these sea sponges."

Day seven. Four of us interns are installing an art exhibit in the Lockhart Gallery. I'm so relieved not to have to write any more condition reports, I don't even mind installing the same series twice. (Note: It is generally a poor idea to put artwork behind a door.) Actually, I love it anyway.

I have a dreadful fear of accidentally destroying artwork. One of the pitfalls of my (hopefully) future career is that I will spend a solid portion of my day with butterflies in my stomach and limbs slightly trembling. I feel like it's a small price to pay. Well, that and grad school tuition. It doesn't help that Patrice's show has a ton of jewelry, much of which is awfully fragile. Thankfully, the only injuries sustained were a small metal pot that dented (Note: It is generally a poor idea to put round, roll-able artwork on rickety pedestals.) and the patience of everyone trying to install Plexiglas covers over the very 3-dimensional pieces.

No, the pot was not my fault.

Yes, I learned how to install L-brackets.

Now the How Disappeared Cleverly World

"At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since." -Salvador Dali

Object No.
Examiner. Date.
Title. Artist. Medium. Signature. Marks/Labels. Condition.
Dimensions. Height. Width. Depth (if applicable).
Description of work.
Framed. Unframed.
Notes.

Sound familiar?

Day six. I'm back in the tweed chairs that are roughly the color of peeled kiwi and back writing condition reports for a bunch of dead cardinals' tombs. I will freely admit I did my fair share of geeking out the first day, but if I have to write "Monumento Sepolcrale di Someone Italian with a Bunch of Os and Is," heads will be broken. Or I'll sigh very very deeply and grimace a bit. It will probably be the latter.

But Jean and I (mostly Jean. Poor thing, she's been doing these for weeks.) finally finished writing up all 242 condition reports on these Monumento Sepolcrales. They were so tedious I almost got sick of the conservation gloves.

I will not be terribly heartbroken at the loss of the '70s chairs either.

Spring Omnipotent Goddess Thou

"To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature." -Auguste Rodin

Subject: snow day
From: "Cynthia Hawkins"
Date: Fri, February 26, 2010 9:32 am
To: "Hannah Pie"

Hannah, I won't be in today because of the snow. Enjoy your day off.

Have a great weekend!

Cynthia Hawkins
Director of Galleries
School of the Arts
SUNY Geneseo

Day five. I am sitting in an overheated study room, gazing out the window, drinking a cup of coffee (with hazelnut creamer and two packets of sugar) and blissfully contemplating not doing much of anything. Internships and old artwork are much easier to appreciate when you get breaks from them.

All Ignorance Tobaggans Into Know

"Black is not a color." -Edouard Manet

Object No.
Examiner. Date.
Title. Artist. Medium. Signature. Marks/Labels. Condition.
Dimensions. Height. Width. Depth (if applicable).
Description of work.
Framed. Unframed.
Notes.

Day four. I am sitting in the seminar room, surrounded by furniture bought in the 1970s, prints made in the 1850s, and my 2008 Macbook with the latest Explosions in the Sky album playing. I am not entirely sure which decade I'm in.

There are hundreds of these prints. They are a collection of etchings based on the artwork and tombs in the Vatican and let me tell you, there is something vaguely unsettling about the statues of the dead so-and-sos. They are more often than not lying down and look as if they're having those really bizarre dubya-tee-eff-elephants-and-Aunt-Sue dreams. (Doesn't everyone have those? Elephants and Aunt Sues, I mean.)

I get to wear the conservation gloves again.

Now here's a tidbit to chew on. A cud of art history, if you will. All of these prints, with their incredible (seriously incroyable) detailing and their hundreds of pages and flawless etchings? Hand-printed. Cynthia also showed me a machine-printed page. Lovely, of course, but the detail was eh and the shading was grid-like. Unremarkable, really. I'm not going to get into a technology discussion, but I would merely like to submit before the panel the following thought: perhaps one of the reasons why art is so beloved is because it is the work of human hands and not the product of one of our soulless creations. This is not at all to disparage the world of graphic design and other computer-based art fields. Nor is this to hate on technology, nor is this an original thought. But after spending 3+ hours poring over 150+ year-old prints, your appreciation for human artistic capacity increases at an impressive rate.

As does your appreciation for pea-green tweed chairs.

All Nearness Pauses, While a Star Can Grow

"Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love." -Claude Monet

The good news was that the four-hour internship period had been reduced to attending a memorial service for some important person in the Lederer Art Gallery. The bad news was that I had to forgo white conservation gloves and artwork in favor of attending a memorial service for some important person in the Lederer Art Gallery.

Day three. I am sitting in between a hyperactive alum who is VERY energetically discussing her life post-Geneseo with a professor and an elderly man who informed me toothily that he had no qualms about sitting next to a "good-looking girl." He was probably in his mid-eighties, had one front tooth that was much larger than the other one, and held his program against his mouth whenever he talked to me. He was nice.

I spend the next ten minutes informing and re-informing my venerable companion as to my major and home county and looking around the room to discover I am the youngest person in the room by about thirty years at least. The exceptions to this are aforementioned excitable alum, a dance professor, and Jean, who is hovering in the doorway and wisely deciding not to take a seat next to any of the inquisitive and forgetful old folk.

As the ceremony goes on, I am struck more and more how memorial services are a lot more poignant when one knows the person it is being given for. I have absolutely no doubt, after listening to four speeches and various artistic performances, that Bertha Lederer was a really astounding human being. However. There are only so many ways to listen to "Hey, so she was really pretty super awesome" when all you know about the woman is that the art gallery your bum is resting in was named after her.

I think I prefer the four hours with conservation gloves.

Somewhere I Have Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond

"An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them." -Andy Warhol

Day two. The copier is bleating angrily and flashing red lights. I have been alternately mumbling obscenities and begging for the past half hour, as it proceeds to jam four times on a 75-page document. We have not been on very good terms since the first day, where I accidentally broke into the dean's office instead of the copier room and then, upon finding aforementioned copier, pressed a lot of incorrect buttons and spent an inordinate amount of time just trying to copy a receipt.

So now it hates me.

Despite having anxious tête-à-tête time with office equipment, it's been a pretty successful day:

"Grab a pair of those white gloves over there and bring this painting down to the storage room."

This may not sound exciting. But "those white gloves over there" are cloth conservation gloves for handling artwork. And "the storage room" has a huge table for examining said artwork. And there's a lot of artwork. And I get to examine it.

This still doesn't sound exciting, does it?

"Jean, I have to admit something really geeky. I'm very happy about these gloves."
"Oh, me too. I carry a pair in my backpack."

I spend the next three hours measuring prints, trying to decipher tiny signature scrawls, and geeking out over my gloves and signing my name in the "Examiner" section of the file for each work. Clearly I am where I'm supposed to be.

Into the Strenuous Briefness

On my first days here I did not start work immediately but, as planned, I took it easy for a few days - flicked through books, studied Japanese art a little. - Gustav Klimt

It's common knowledge that butter makes it better. Apparently business makes it bitter.

"Are you looking for me?"
"Oh, no, sorry. We're interning with Cynthia Hawkins in the art galleries on campus and we're checking on the campus collection."
"There's nothing in my office. Any artwork in there is mine." The door was open. We were just looking at your wall. You twit. "There's no reason for you to be in there." Listen. We're sorry we looked at the wall that was clearly visible from YOUR OPEN DOOR.
"Okay, sorry. Have a good afternoon!"

Day one. Jean and I are going around to all the departments on campus to try and find artwork that was put there in the 1970s and 80s. And hasn't been checked on since 1998. Never mind that most of the faculty it was originally loaned to have retired/died/taken a job in espionage (I made that up. But you never know.). Never mind that they forgot, understandably, after thirty years that the nice watercolor hanging in their office isn't theirs. Never mind that some of these works are worth...was it $75,000? There were five digits, I know that much. Never mind that this business professor is scolding me and Jean and I've been working for an hour and a half.

Never mind that I'm an art history major and I'm not going to have a job after graduation anyway.

"Jean? The only thing worse than being a business major would be being a business professor."
"I know, right? 'Sorry my major is interesting.'"
"She's just bitter."

I guess at least she has a job.