The best part of museum work~

I really like my work at the art museum. It’s a small art museum so I get to know almost every aspect of the museum, from the guard, reception desk, to the curatorial documents and the back-stage storage. I just learnt how to make exhibition labels yesterday, using press and cutters—really big and sharp cutters, don’t know its official name. I love the moment when the knife cut through the card board, leaving the beautiful slop on the edge of the label. Haha~!

But the most exciting part of the museum work is about art work research. Research at the beginning may be not that interesting, but getting some basic information and knowledge about the art work is important for gathering key works for further research. Then search for related books by looking at some articles’ bibliography—and get the books from the library. I know there are tons of books on my loan right now, but since I am doing several artists and art works at the same time (and I am doing my own research also~), no wonder.

I was doing some research on a Chinese export punch bowl made during the 18th century, Qianlong Period (1736-95). It was one of our Chinese art collections but nothing was done for the art work. So I chose it, thinking I could use my language skills and Chinese background. However when I pulled out the art work itself, I realized that the image on the Chinese ceramic bowl was something about the Greek Mythology, which I know only a few names: Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Paris, Achilles, Hector, etc. just because I watched Brad Pitt’s movie Troy before.

Since I know nothing about the story, all I can do is to remember the image itself and go through all those books, trying to find out some images that look like the one I have. FORTUNATLY, I found it this morning, after flipping through 4 books. It was an image of the Judgment of Paris, with one man sitting under a tree and three other nudes standing besides. The nudes are not proportionally drawn, and Athena was drawn like a man with muscles on her back; and the “gold apple” that Paris handed to Aphrodite was actually a yellow mango.

But the moment of figuring out was extraordinary. Just like solving a puzzle or figure out a crime as a detective. It’s full of excitement and satisfaction. That’s the best part of museum work.