6/14/2016

Summer Boxing Project

Beautiful early summer days are here in Rockland County, NY, too.

When it was still snowing and cold, the museum was busy with preparing the exhibition past/forward.
Now it is no longer a time to long for the blue sky, and the exhibition has been open to the public since early May.
The museum has gained a lot of favorable responses and the exhibition is successfully going on.


Although, the museum is all done with the busy preparation time, museum staff have a lot to do outside the galley.

One of the projects which I have been recently involved with, is called "Summer Boxing Project."
To take care of this project, I went to the Salyer House with another museum staff member this week, bringing some supplies and a big book with the museum collection information with us.

The Salyer House has the museum's storage space, besides its beautiful galleries. A large number of historical objects, which the museum has acquired, are stored there.

What we had to do at the Salyer House's storage was going through the collection and checking if each object was properly stored in the right place (box, shelf, room) in the right way.


On that day, we mainly worked on a few large boxes which consisted of textiles such as women's dresses, jackets, skirts and match-up accessories.

We carefully opened the boxes, removed the textiles and checked the condition including wrapping and tagging.
Some textiles, such as a silk wedding dress and its tulle veil, were extremely fragile... They required extra attention during this project.


After checking the objects one by one, we also had to remember to make a note for all the small information found, so that the information in the digital archive on the computer was also going to be updated properly.

It was very time-consuming work, so that we could not finish many boxes at once.
However, it was also an interesting project for me to join because this is a great chance to see the museum's precious collections which I have never seen yet.

Also, I personally feel that this project reminds me of the monthly inventory day during my managerial career in retail industry.
This collection management "Summer Boxing Project" seems a little more complicated because of the location information, but at the same time, it is more simple because we do not deal with calculating the value based on each price, unlike retail's inventory.

I do not mind continuing working doing similar procedures again and again, as long as I can see that I am making progress and getting closer to having everything make sense.

So,,, I think I can enjoy the project this summer :-)

Even when the museum's exhibition is all set and smoothly running, we have many tasks to do.
There is one more project I have been working on recently. I will talk about that another time♪



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