Hi, I’m Rachel. I have done my work experience at the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street in the Art and Design Department.
On Monday, Clare, the Department Administrator, gave me a tour of the offices and after that, Xavier, Keeper of Art and Design, gave us a tour of the Art and Design Galleries in the museum (we took the old lift there which was smashing) and we visited Body Beautiful which was interesting as it was unusual.
At 12:30, I had lunch. Then from 13:00–16:00 I did indexing, which was adding to the collections database so that researchers can find information on objects.
On Tuesday, I was looking through letters from the 1960s for the year, date, donor name, donor address, brief description of objects, additional information and terms of gift of the item so I could record and log it. Then I had my lunch and talked to Stephen, Senior Curator of Furniture and Woodwork, about the furniture and showed him some photos of furniture in my own collection. In the afternoon I finished off logging the letters and did some more indexing.
On Wednesday, I continued indexing and went to the department meeting, which was an interesting experience. It was the first meeting I’ve been to and I tried taking notes. After the meeting I did a bit more indexing. Then I had my lunch followed by more indexing.
On Thursday, I went to the National Museums Collection Centre in Granton with Carys, Assistant Curator of Modern & Contemporary Design, and Sarah, Curator of Modern & Contemporary Design, which was fascinating. There were some cameos but not as many as I thought there’d be, however, there were a lot of interesting pieces of glassware and ceramics.
On Friday, I wrote this blog post and did a little bit of research on objects in Haddington and a bee brooch that I saw on Thursday that was possibly painted by Frederick Cook. Then I had lunch and finished off indexing. Overall I have really enjoyed my work experience.
Header image: The Body Beautiful exhibition © Andy Catlin.