Completing My Job at the Loveland Museum

When I started my job at the Loveland Museum in October, I knew that it would only be for three months. Today, those three months were up, although I will continue to work at the museum for a few hours a week as a volunteer.

It’s been an interesting three months, mostly working with the archival and art collections. Although the position title was Archival Move Assistant, I really did very little moving. For the first three weeks, we worked at the Loveland Museum, doing inventories and some packing.

On November 4, we actually loaded a U-Haul truck and moved most of what remained of the archival collection to the off-site storage facility. There were about seven of us helping with the move, and I was amazed that we loaded and unloaded the truck by noon.

The off-site storage facility has been dubbed “Panda,” and that’s where I worked for the remainder of the year. I spent most of my time compiling inventories of various collections, including magazines and sheet music, as well as items in the “DWI” boxes. DWI stands for “Deal With It,” and those boxes contained items that seemed to have no provenience.

Compiling Inventories of Dozens of Boxes of Magazines and Sheet Music

Later, I started helping with the museum’s art collection by sorting, helping to photograph, and wrapping the artwork. When Ashley, the museum’s collection manager, mentioned that she would like to have tags with photographs for each framed item, I offered to create the tags.

Creating the art tags was a fun project. Since all of the art is wrapped, having a tag with a photograph and description will enable staff to easily find what pieces they are looking for.

Creating Art Tags for the Hanging Artwork

Working at the museum gave me an interesting project to work on while Tim and I weren’t traveling. I also learned a lot about the differences between National Park Service museum collections and ones maintained by local governments. Earning a little bit of extra money was a nice bonus that will go directly into the travel fund.