Vietnam

Work on the Vietnam booby trap panel is coming along. I have a preliminary design created on Adobe InDesign 5 now. However, the majority of the museum staff is at The First Division reunion in Nashville right now and next week I will be on vacation so work is at a bit of a stand still for now.

Case approved

The WWI case has officially been approved by the museum's executive director and its set to be installed when the museum closes down for maitenance in the month of January. Should be really cool to see!

Onto Vietnam

With work on the Women in WWI case done for the moment I now have a short project to create a text panel about landmines and booby traps during the Vietnam War. The museum already has fake mines mapped out along the path and an empty grenade with a trip wire. This should be a relatively short project that should wrap up my internship.

July is nearly over

I've been working at Cantigny for almost 3 months now, its hard to believe time is flying this fast! The WWI case is finished being designed, all that needs to be done is to have the text panels ordered and then proceed with installation. Unfortunetly, the installation process may not begin until after my internship ends next month.

The setup of the women in WWI case is coming along good. Artifacts from the collections dept. are being selected and the photographs are being obtained. It should be a matter of weeks before the setup of the case is under way.

The World War I case's info panels have been designed, im not sure what the next step in the process is going to be.

I have also been watching oral history videos the museum has to find interesting stories for next years summer exhibit on the experience of the common soldier WWI to the present.

The museum is also looking into possible expansion in the future so I have been able to come up with a few concepts for it. Of course the ideas will eventually end up in the shredder its still really fun putting them all together.

The museum is currently looking into re-doing the section on reporter from WWII and changing it to a Holocaust/Nuremburg Trials section. To do this I had to take measurements of the room and create a 3D model of it, which is a very complicated process for me since i do not have prior experience in computer aided design.

The exhibits department is working on a 5 year plan of museum improvements and believe it or not two of my suggestions are actually being pitched to the head of the estate to see if they can get funding to go through. My first idea was a re-organization of the museum's section on the Revolution, Civil War, Spanish-American War and pre-WWI. the way it is re-organized would allow for a proper conclusion to the museum after the Desert Storm section. When I pitched the idea to my supervisor I had no idea it would actually get anywhere.

My second idea was to re-do the entrance to the begining of the Vietnam War exhibit. The problem with the exhibit is the light abruptly switches from very bright to very dark allow no time for your eyes to adjust. My idea is to re-do a small section into a transition hallway with medium lighting to allow for a gradual transition.

Both ideas are really hard to explain unless your actually in the museum and see the areas in person...

Now that the summer exhibit is up and running I am working on re-doing a case in the World War I section of the main exhibit hall. The case is going to be about women in the military during the first world war. I have done a great deal of research in the past week on the topic and have narrowed down to three main points: women as nurses, telaphone operators and salvation army workers. I have been told I am working faster and better than they expected so that's good to hear because I may have time to work on a second project if I finish this one in timely fashion.

Picture of the temporary exhibit hall on comics of WWII.

Begining of the idea proposal for the new case in the WWI exhibit.

Completion of the exhibit

The exhibit is almost finished with three days left until it opens. All the artifacts have been setup inside cases and all that remains to be done is touch up work such as cleaning figure prints off of glass cases and painting over small chips on cases. In the process of setting up the artifacts in cases I learned how much care needs to be used to transport artifacts from storage to the exhibit halls. Even strudy object like helmets and bayonets needed to be handled with extreme care.

So far so good

On my third day of the internship now and its been a great experience so far. I have come into The First Division Museum just as they are starting to setup a temporary exhibit on cartoonist Bill Mauldin's works while serving in Italy and France during World War II. Although I have had a lot of experience in woodworking and assembling objects this has taken it to a whole new level. I never realized how much precision work goes into putting together an exhibit but I am really enjoying it.