Video Introduction

Here’s my introduction video of (who else but) me talking a little bit about how I got into the museum world. Seeing as though this is my very first edited video it’s nothing fancy, nothing I’d win an Oscar for, but I managed to add a few pictures and crop a few “umms” out of it. Enjoy!

Transcript:

Hi everyone, thank you for checking out my introduction video. I want to take the next few minutes to talk about myself, some of the things I have been studying, some of the things I’ve been up to, and I’m a little interested in seeing how this goes because I’m not actually too comfortable talking and recording myself like this.

So my name is Amanda. I am from Burlington, New Jersey which is only about thirty or forty minutes outside Philadelphia. I’ve basically been here my whole life, and I actually work full time down here as a waitress. For my undergrad studies I actually got to go away up to Albany, New York. I decided to go there to go to a university that had a little bit of everything, wanted to see what I could get myself into, some of the things I’d be interested in. It was up there where I discovered art history courses. I was really interested in not only how art was produced, how it was perceived, but the history that went behind it, why things were made a certain way, how things were made in a time period. So that’s what caught my interest and I feel like I clicked with it very well. I also studied European history and medieval and Renaissance studies up there and as interesting as everything was I didn’t know what I was interested in doing as a career after I graduated. I was checking out some other museum jobs, just front of the house stuff, kind of what was available in my area. So after a few months I decided to get some experience and start volunteering and that landed me at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, New Jersey.

I got to work with the fine arts registrar and follow her around, help her with some tasks, show installations and deinstallations, inventory work, and after a year or so there it kind of led me to working as a curatorial assistant to the executive director and fine arts curator; and that was exciting because it actually had me working with some of the artists, reaching out to them, and the show ended up focusing on artists recognized by the New Jersey Council on the Arts. So it was helping me more and more become comfortable working in a museum and kind of help me sort through what I like and didn’t like about different jobs they offer there. So while I was still volunteering and working there I decided to start looking at masters programs for museums and that’s what landed me at Seton Hall University, which is a good hour and change from where I live. It’s definitely been a whirlwind adventure there. I been keeping so busy with all of the trips and opportunities that they’re offering to get out and visit and talk to some professionals in the field. I am currently in my third semester, so the start of my second full year and I anticipate graduating in May. I have a lot going on this semester with different classes and also trying to work on my thesis paper. I am taking registrar courses as I anticipate trying to find a registrar career once I graduate. It’s more appealing to me than the other jobs because it’s a lot of the stuff that happens behind the scenes. You do, like, a lot of paperwork and a lot of the stuff that people perceive as a little boring but I’m a-okay kind of sitting around filing, sorting, taking care of objects. I grew to love that when I was volunteering and I would love to have a career in it as well.

So the program has offered me a bunch of exposure to other museums and projects I probably would have never experienced if I hadn’t had gone. Last semester I was working on a project at the Guggenheim museum, I’ve become comfortable traveling up to New York City, evaluating different museum, exhibitions, projects, and back in May I was a participant in the seminar abroad where we got to go to the Netherlands for ten days and we took the town by storm: visiting museums and churches and getting to experience what the field was like outside of the United States, and it’s an experience I will treasure forever. I loved going, I loved hanging out with the kids on the trip, and getting to see all the stuff behind the scenes of the museums that we were able to attend.

I am also an intern at the Morris County Parks Commission. I am helping them doing some stuff around the historic sites. I’m doing inventory, moving objects and cleaning, so again some more of the registrar stuff, but I’m love with how much they keep me busy and all of the stuff I get to do for them as an intern. It keeps me busy between working full time and doing the internship and having school, so I don’t have so much free time for myself. I am a homebody, I like being at home, I like lounging around and taking it easy. One of my secret hobbies is that I’m really interested in Japanese anime and manga. I am…really into that stuff, so it keeps me preoccupied when I’m home. I try to hang out with people as much as possible, try to go out, hit up a bar or two. I am very busy this semester but I am looking forward to all this so that I can graduate in May and have the experience, have the exposure, have all these tools I can use when I start looking into different careers and museums that I’m interested in. So that’s a little about me, a lot about what I’ve been doing, and I’m looking forward to more posts and more opportunities for doing things outside my comfort zone. So thank you for checking me out.