3rd Week Recap

Today, my professor for the W&M in Washington Program asked us to write a short reflection on any "disappointment, despair, or dilemma" that we have had thus far at our internships. I couldn't really come up with one real instance, as I haven't come across anything that awful over the past 3 weeks. Therefore, I wrote this reflection on how a lack of context before launching into a completely novel experience can leave one feeling quite lost and frustrated. So, here it is-- the supposedly "darker" shades of my time at the Hirshhorn Museum.

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So far during my internship at the Hirshhorn Museum, working in the Marketing and Communications Department, I have encountered fairly minimal amounts of disappointment or despair. Actually, I feel incredibly blessed to work with such a supportive staff and a supervisor who is genuinely appreciative and thankful for the work that I do on a daily basis. Upon starting at the Hirshhorn, everyone I met was kind, generous, and engaged me in conversation. I would walk down the hallways to fetch computer printouts, make copies, or fix a new cup of tea, and I would have two or three conversations with other staff members. They all made me feel like a major part of the team—that I was just as important of an asset, as an intern, as I could be. It has made the past few weeks a joy. I look forward to waking up in the morning and going to work, because I know that I will be expanding my sphere of knowledge, professionalism, and work ethic.

As is the case with many things that we love, there are parts of the experience that are less than desirable and pleasant. For me, it’s a bit more of a general feeling rather than any specific citable experiences of immense disappointment that lead me to some incredible frustration. I threw myself into a world about which I knew very little. I decided to bypass my sensibility and prudence and choose an internship that would push me and make me really become responsible for learning on my own, without the guidance and structure of college courses. Instead of choose an internship working with curatorial departments at the Freer Gallery, Phillips Collection, or National Museum of Women in the Arts, I chose the Hirshhorn because I would be working in a department I knew very little about (Marketing), and I did not recognize one piece of artwork in the entire collection.

To go into a space as hallowed and respected as a Smithsonian Institute’s museum and not know anything about the history of the space, the material, or the collection is incredibly daunting. Unlike the National Museum of the American Indian, where one could pull open childhood reminisces of The Indian and the Cupboard, old movies, or American History lessons, or the Air and Space Museum, where one could remember the footage of the first moon walk, stories of the Wright Brothers in the Outer Banks, or the tragic disappearance of Amelia Earhart, the Hirshhorn does not lend a vernacular common with the majority of Americans. It showcases pieces from the international art community of the past hundred years, and it focuses on the oft controversial, compelling, challenging, brooding, complex, and at times opaque pieces of modern and contemporary art. While I knew nothing of esteemed artists as Alexander Calder, Dan Flavin, Wolfgang Tillmans, John Baldessari, Chryssa, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Pae White, or Virgil Marti, I knew that I wanted to get to know them.

I remember reading about the Hirshhorn Museum on Wikipedia and coming across a striking quote by former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute S. Dillon Ripley. In discussion of the Museum’s architecture, he wrote, "If it were not controversial in almost every way it would hardly qualify as a place to house contemporary art. For it must somehow be symbolic of the material it is designed to encase." He references the circular nature of the Hirshhorn’s physicality, which is arresting in its 1970s inspired starkness and minimalism. It was this quote that drew me into the Hirshhorn—the more I read about it, the more it began to encompass much of what I was seeking in an institution and an internship position—a chance to use ordinary mediums to challenge conventions and stereotypes.

However, this is so much easier said than done. I go to work every day for eight or nine hours, completing tasks such as scanning of press clips, photocopying critical current essays, magazine texts and newspaper reviews, completion of various Excel tables, calculating attendance figures for exhibitions, writing formal letters to members of the press, preparing press releases, editing pieces of writing, collating reports, organizing the office, and running various errands. How am I challenging contemporary social conventions through this work? Wasn’t my goal, my scope, for this internship to be able to be a part of a sea change? Yes. And in a way, I am working towards and for that. I’m representing an institution that brings experimental and significant characters like Matthew Barney, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Noguchi to the American public. I’m helping distribute a product that helps defy tradition and works to expand one’s worldview and concepts regarding art. But this frustration of being caught up in the logistics is my biggest challenge at the Hirshhorn Museum. I have yet to come into contact with any staff member with whom I butt heads, any supervisor or boss hasn’t yelled me at, and I haven’t felt belittled, insignificant, or worthless. On the contrary, I have been brought into a close-knit family that truly values the contributions I make on a daily basis. But, every night I come home, open up the two or three magazines, like Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, ARTnews, Art in America, Wallpaper, Elle, Interior Design, The Washingtonian, the New Yorker, or Artforum, which have been assigned to me by my supervisor to keep a keen pulse on the contemporary fashion and art world, and I can’t help feeling lost. I’m lost because I am trying to cram so much information on trends, threads of style and form, and definitions that I am losing sight of my mission. I’m learning that Matthew Barney and Joseph Beuys share many of the same defining artistic characteristics of overt theatricality and anti-minimalism. I expanding at an increasing rate, and yet I can’t help but feel at times that I’m losing my vision and sense of direction. But, I think that this is all part of the experience of getting to know something so utterly foreign as modern and contemporary art is to my world. I cannot expect to show up every day and understand perfectly why we are showing a comprehensive collection of Wolfgang Tillmans’ photography, or the reasons why the Visual Music exhibition from two years ago was such a complete success in the art world. I’m still completely in the beginner stage, but I cannot help but feel lost and frustrated at times because of my lack of familiarity with the space around me everyday.