If I could change jobs with anyone at the Hood Museum of Art for one day, it would be with Amelia Kahl, our wonderful Coordinator of Academic Programming. The Hood is a teaching museum and Amelia’s job is to reach out to faculty members from all disciplines at Dartmouth College and get them excited about the various ways that they can utilize the Hood’s vast collections to engage their students with the joy of discovery and inspiration that comes from learning and interacting with works of art. As a Dartmouth graduate, Amelia has a unique understanding of how to make close-looking and direct engagement with art objects an integral part of student coursework. She is a delight to work with and inspires her colleagues through her enthusiasm and dedication to the Museum’s mission, which is to create an ideal learning environment that fosters transformative encounters with original artworks. Thanks to the efforts of Amelia and her colleagues, during the last academic year, 1,967 Dartmouth students took classes at the Hood and 2,363 works of art were pulled from our storage for them to study.

I think this photograph of Amelia teaching with the Assyrian reliefs at the Hood just about says it all.  She is the living embodiment of the old adage that if you choose a job you love, you will never have to work a day in your life.

If I could trade jobs for one day with a colleague, I'd pick Cecil Adams, the Wadsworth’s Head of Museum Design, who is currently in the midst of working on our ongoing renovation and reinstallation project (to be completed soon, in 2015!). To me, Cecil‘s job is like being the Wadsworth’s resident Puzzle Master, carefully piecing together the needs of multiple departments and diverse audiences to find the most elegant and effective solutions. I’ve heard it said that good design is invisible, and I think that’s true in this case—visitors may not always notice it, but Cecil and his team subtly set the stage so everyone can experience the power of art in a beautiful setting, free from distractions or frustrations. Cecil is excellent at his job, and I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to trade with him for too long... but I’d love to take a stab at solving the puzzle, using his cool rendering software to imagine the future of our museum spaces through this renovation and beyond.

In the middle of a difficult installation (and who hasn’t ever been in one of those) a call came from NEMA if and why I would change jobs with a colleague for a day. How perfect, I thought, and then there will be a time warp and the picky courier will be done and gone. Immediately, the Museum Store came to mind, I never get to spend as much time there as I would like, and the idea of chatting with people and leafing through the books and trying on some of the jewelry are attractive thoughts. I think I can sell stuff to people…

So I get there in the morning. Some books need tidying up from an event the night before, no problem. Our accountant comes down with the change for the day, opens the register and explains to me how to operate the machine. I get half of it, good grief, this is complicated! Fortunately, two experienced volunteers show up, I guess I’m safe on that end. I notice that some of the display cases are pretty empty – yes, display is my thing, I do that professionally. No sooner am I done (after some critique from the volunteers), a tour group descends on the store and the new displays are dismantled in no time. Aarghh – I’m used to displays to be looked at, not touched!  I’ll do it again a few more times during the day, slowly learning the difference between long term and good for the bottom line.

In the midst of tending to a group of customers who have set their mind on jewelry that is not very flattering for their age and shape, a sales rep shows up and I have to take care of new orders. Before we sit down there are visions of times past when a colleague and I were filling in between store managers attending the gift show in New York. The stuff we bought mainly suited our own tastes, and some 15 years later, remnants still surface. Fortunately, this sales rep says she’s a regular and knows the usual orders and quantities. She looks trustworthy…

Late in the afternoon a woman stops in with a large bag full of what looks like museum store merchandise. She dumps it on the counter saying she bought it all a few days ago, but changed her mind and wants full refund. “Especially without a receipt, ma’am, our policy is store credit only, no refund.” She’s fuming, stuffs her things back in the bag and storms out.

At long last our accountant comes back down to help close out, we count the money three times and it adds up within a few pennies. Thankfully I didn’t touch the register all day. This was a hard day and I really appreciate what my store colleague does. I can’t wait going back to my regular job tomorrow – I love it even on a bad day!