The last post was tinged with gloom about the public humanities with the picture getting gloomier in the ensuing days. Even so, spending the last two semesters engaged with the Smithsonian Institution provided me with perspective on the behind the scenes life of an iconic organization.  As we worked through the “Meet Me at Mi Museo” piece, I learned about the history of the Smithsonian and its realization that as an organization it needed a better understanding of the Latino population it employed and how Latino history, arts and culture were (or were not) present in the museums. And in these challenging times, having an e-mail address with the Smithsonian, receiving the mail with leadership’s guidance and strategic vision also gave me an unexpected glimpse into how they are crafting a response to all the outside pressures. 

Over the past few weeks the struggle with mapping continued, with ArcGIS layers built for the “tour of salsa” stops and a map of 2025 salsa festivals to illustrate the worldwide reach of the music and dance. The vision of mapping locations in song defaulted to mapping the performer’s birthplaces, to demonstrate to unexpected sources of  music and inspiration. As I continued to pull on string, the secondary music challenge became the lack material, as much of it was in draft or incomplete for the upcoming exhibit. As a result, instead of a fully blown story in story maps, I have developed a framework that can be fleshed out as content in determined. I have also developed a quick guide to help them access and work with the content in the Smithsonian’s ArcGIS hub. I am a little disappointed to not get it over the finish line, but I do think it is in a useful place.

After this internship I am better educated about museum beginnings and hybrid museum models. I have taken classes about exhibit development and experience, but rarely seeing how museums come into existence. We all see events such as the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian or the National Museum of African-American History and Culture (NMAAHC), but short of reading Dr. Bunch’s book about bringing the latter to life, we rarely get to see how they begin. I reviewed legislation, committee reports, the report on how the Latino story was ignored and underrepresented and was able to see the positive initiatives to overcome the bias. The research into museum websites was really interesting, with all the different public faces they chose.

After this internship, I hope that I am a better public historian moving forward.

Heading into the homestretch of my time as a Smithsonian intern, I am inundated with what we called “big feelings” in talking to our children. As a historian and currently working as part of the Smithsonian, I am bereft at the Executive Order that was signed out recently. My experience has transformed from learning how the public humanities work institutionally to wondering what constraints may be placed on our work in the near future. Interning at one of the museums called out and threatened with funding cuts in the past, the world looks a bit bleak. 

 Most of my adult life has been sent in increasing levels of leadership. and I am nothing short of impressed by the incredible professionalism shown by the Digital Initiatives team I am working with. In spite of the uncertainty faced by the federal workforce and the Foundation funded staff of the Smithsonian, they continue to move forward with their work and the organization’s vision for NMAL. Everyone at my internship shares a clear vision of where the museum’s digital presence should go in the future. I am sure there is churn behind the scenes, however the kindness and guidance I have been shown, especially as we balanced the projects assigned, the ever worsening news cycle and a family health crisis I had to take care of, has been far greater than I could have expected. I think the next two years, at least, will be in the balancing act we will all have to do, continuing rigorous scholarship in the federal sphere with the sword of Damocles in the corner of our eyes.

My new questions are how do we preserve the rich complexity of American history, good and bad. The desire to erase certain success stories and whitewash the story of the nation is alarming. Where do we balance national policy and intellectual honesty? And how do we save and preserve the existing projects that may draw negative attention. While I am a digital public historian, I am running up against my own technical limitations in what I can effect.  

The first of the two projects I am working is complete, and by chance we had already reconsidered any language that might appear disparaging to the institution. The second project, developing maps to support the next exhibit, Puro Ritmo, is underway. Similar to the exhibit work, I was tasked with reviewing Smithsonian ArcGis projects and writing them up. It was an abbreviated report this time, recognizing where we are in the semester, but it offered a chance to delve into the ways that the Smithsonian uses mapping. Currently, I am looking at mapping the global origins and reach of salsa as well as thinking about how to use locations in song to build a story. I think that part will not work well, as most of the songs use location in the abstract — its hard to map unnamed places. We will see how it goes.

I just finished edits on a report I have been working on, meant to inform development of an online exhibit. The report covers case studies of a variety of virtual exhibits and the websites of multiple museums, based on a template provided by my internship. I found the template did not completely offer answers to what works and does not work, so I added a literature review on how virtual exhibits should be evaluated — and was surprised how thin the results were in JSTOR — and the NCPH guidelines for writing reviews of digital projects (NCPH Digital History Project Reviews ). Full disclosure, a discussion at my full time job’s weekly staff meeting covered the topic. So a success is using tools in one part of my professional life to influence work for the other.

I have been struggling with two challenges I did not anticipate. I started the semester with a plan for time management of work and internship. But, as the saying goes, no good plan survives first contact with the enemy, in this case, life in general. I allowed myself to get overly distracted by some challenges in my personal life, and fell behind. Paying attention to my personal life is important, I just became a little too laser focused and lost track.

The second challenge I am fighting through is communication with my internship supervisor. We had to reschedule a few weekly meetings, which would have been less impactful if I had asked for more guidance earlier. We have been using the Planner app in Office 365, which is great for tracking due dates, but I have repeatedly run up against not fully understanding what is expected. I asked at the weeklies when I was unsure, but need to improve at communicating questions and asking for clarification in between. I think that I am working on research and writing outside of business hours got too much in my head as not being business hours – sending an e-mail in the evening is all right, as long as the expectation of an answer is not expected quickly.

As I am catching up on hours and work, my goals going further are to get back on track with managing my schedule and get back into the habits of not being afraid to ask a question regardless of the clock.

I will be putting that in action immediately, as I started an assignment for the next part of my project and realized I have no idea of what they are asking for. So that will lead off tomorrow’s weekly update and my mental reset.

Teaching an Oldish Dog New Tricks

The fun and challenging part of doing an internship, and a large part of its value, is the opportunity to move from theory to practice. After years of reading about museums and exhibit design, I am working though how a proposal gets developed, with the people who will be considering the value (and as I write up iteration one of my proposal) practicality of the idea. Proposing an exhibition in a classroom is a good thinking exercise, as you know nothing will come of it. The possibility of a potential exhibit is much more stress.

I have been developing a report on websites and exhibits, delving into not just exhibits and collections, but how the museums present themselves and introduce themselves to the online visitor. The first part of the task was filling out an evaluation form from my internship team, and an assignment to look at and evaluate several sites. Over the past month, I have viewed around fifty sites, with fourteen of them in the report I am writing. This part of the assignment falls on old skill sets, reviewing websites against a checklist, albeit a somewhat poorly defined one. I added the criteria for NCPH reviews of digital projects to help frame my thinking.

The second project I anticipate working on after the awareness campaign will be a mapping problem, which I am looking forward to. I have taken classes on ARCGIS, and I an excited about putting it to use in a real study. I am comfortable with software, it’s building the dataset that intrigues me. Students are always given a predefined set, so defining and creating the associated data set will flex my abilities and learning opportunity.