ASU Art Museum - Week Two

Much of my second week at the Arizona State University Art Museum shifted from tasks like taking handling art from our museum's print collection to administrative assignments such as researching artists and compiling information to be used on text panels, among other things. While it didn't seem quite as exciting at first, my supervisor would later explain to me how integral every minuscule task is to creating a cohesive experience to visitors.

One of the first things I was given to do during the week was reorganize two large bookshelves in a space that is currently being flipped from the old gift store to a community area for visitors to lounge in. Over the course of two days, I gradually took down every single book from the shelf in order to rearrange them based on color, which I had to do twice after my supervisor found that a different arrangement would look nicer.

While the arrangement looks a bit funky due to me stretching out the very small number of colored books we had in our library, it turned out looking nice. Some of the children that have visited the space are very easily entertained by the color and the museum's marketing team has used it as a backdrop for a video interview they did with a local artist, so it seems that others like it to some extent too!

This simple, yet grueling, task has allowed me to see how simple visual details like this can help tie together the entirety of the space it's in. In the remaining two days of my week, I researched ceramics artist Michael Sherrill, who will be having an exhibit in our museum later this fall.

See y'all next week,
Brian Mecinas