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.