Meet your colleagues in museums around New England! It’s often too easy for colleagues to feel isolated in their own institutions—we hope this feature will help close the gap. We also hope that it reinforces your own joy in your work and encourages you to recognize your own positive impacts.
Florentina Gutierrez has been interning in the NEMA office this summer. She is helping with several different projects including updating the Museum Document Exchange program. Flor is a recent graduate of Wellesley College. She has completed internships at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, and the dA Center for the Arts in Pomona, CA.
You just graduated from Wellesley College: could you tell us about your studies there and how you got interested in museum work?
When I started at Wellesley, I thought I would be an anthropology major with a focus in archaeology. I was passionate about the idea of becoming an archaeologist, participating on digs, and working directly with artifacts. My focus became a little more defined my first year when I took Latin for the first time. I was fascinated by the language and history of ancient Rome, and I decided to change my major to Classical Civilizations with a focus in Classical archaeology.
With the help of the Classics Department, I participated on an excavation in the region of Umbria, Italy at the site of an ancient town called Carsulae; there we worked on excavating a Roman bath. With their help, I also studied at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies (ICCS) in Rome, where a great focus was placed on visiting archaeological sites.
Today, archaeology is still a passion of mine, but I do not see myself working directly in academia. The summer after my first year I had already started volunteering my time at an art gallery in my hometown and I enjoyed it a lot. Museums and galleries have always had a soft spot in my heart as the places where, as a child, I was encouraged to be curious about the world around me. My junior year of college I decided that a museum career could be a fulfilling path that would still give me an opportunity to directly interact with artifacts and art in general.
What do you find most appealing about museums, and what do you want to learn more about?
My answer might be a little more biased towards history museums, but what I find the most appealing about museums is the fact that most often exhibitions do not just tell you about history, but history is made real by the presence of objects that were a part of it. I believe museums are great resources for people to understand our shared history as we go forward, not just to appreciate but to learn from. They also offer the opportunity to learn about the history of other cultures, so that we can become more open to each other’s experiences.
I personally would like to learn more about efforts being made to advocate for museums. Advocacy for museums is not something I have thought of until very recently when I began my internship with NEMA. However, I believe it is important to support museums as relevant as well as necessary institutions.
Have you been to a particularly inspiring museum recently? What caught your interest?
I recently visited the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA. I had the opportunity to visit it for the first time last summer and I wanted to share the experience with someone else now that we have nicer weather.
I love this museum because you get to interact with most of their works as you stroll through the park. The opportunity to see them out in nature offers a different way to connect with the works rather than seeing them inside of a building—you not only interact with them differently as you look at them from different perspectives and in different light, but the works also become a part of the nature surrounding them.
How is your NEMA experience going so far, and what are you hoping to accomplish by the end of the summer?
My experience with NEMA has been great, and I only wish I could offer it more of my time (really). I love how passionate the people I work with are and that everyone has been very supportive. I also appreciate that it offers plenty of opportunities for professional development as well as for conversations on important issues concerning the museum field.
Just recently, the NEMA YEPs (Young and Emerging Professionals) had a conversation with Matthew Teitelbaum of the MFA, and many in the group were able to not only ask him about his career but to talk a little about issues that mattered to them. Coming up, I am looking forward to a Salary Negotiation Workshop for Women, also being hosted by the YEPs.
By the end of this summer I hope to have assisted NEMA in a number of tasks, including marketing the New England Museums website and updating our Document Exchange Program. However, besides very specific goals, I hope that I can grow professionally, connect with others who have a similar passion, and gain a larger awareness about issues that affect the museum field.
What historical figure would you most like to have lunch with, and why?
This is a hard list to narrow down…but one historical figure I would most like to have lunch with is Dante Alighieri. After taking a whole class on his Divine Comedy, there are countless questions I would ask him about his work and life. The work fascinates me because of its references to many different subjects, including ancient mythology, and its influence on the Italian language. I would like to know more about where his inspiration came from (real life, divine inspiration, his general knowledge), and of course whom Beatrice was really based upon!