I wonder who wrote this post....

Sometimes I think to myself, “I wonder what it would be like to work in a museum.” Would it be a fun action filled Night at the Museum? Or like falling asleep in College to the soft dry lullaby of monotone American History lectures?

Early last week I visited Lynne in New Jersey and shadowed her as part of a month-long community outreach program that invites local school children, college students, and admission counselors from Long Island to realize their dream of going behind the scenes at a Museum.

We spent most of the day sitting at her desk talking to her friends on gchat, researching the origins of expressions like “mumbo jumbo”, and walking to the State House to get coffee.

One interesting part of the day was when she gave me a guided tour of the newest exhibit at the museum. The exhibit tells the story of child labor through the photographs of Lewis Hine. Here, in this photograph, you can see Lynne delivering a lecture on the process of researching and developing exhibition content and the aesthetics of exhibit layout.

Later she was called down to the lobby to greet a man dressed in black who was walking through the double doors of the main entrance holding a shovel with something curled up and furry on it. It turned out to be a dead fox. A man brought a dead fox to the museum to be stuffed and mounted for an upcoming exhibit on the indigenous creatures that have lived/currently live in New Jersey.

What an exciting day! I was given an opportunity to interview her to ask many pointed questions such as:

What made you interested in a museum career? Her answer? :: "the glory".

What role should an arts and cultural institution such as a museum play in the surrounding community? She didn’t give me a straight answer to this question. She just looked blankly at me, uncomfortably fidgeted with her cell phone, and then said “hey, remember that dead fox we saw before?”

When did the New Jersey State Museum open? Her answer?:: "In the early spring of 1653."

Tell me about your ideal job? Her answer? :: "In a perfect world I would get paid to travel across the United States stopping at thrift stores and flea markets collecting other people’s old crap. And then I’d write a book about it. Or wait, did you mean in the museum field?"