The View from this Tower

I want to encourage everyone to do a something if at all possible: take a behind-the-scenes tour of your favorite museum.

I had the opportunity to take such a tour today at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. As anyone who has been to the museum knows, the building is not only incredible, it is also historic. Parts of the building that were open to the public many years ago have now been converted to other uses and are hidden from the layman's eyes. These parts of the building are beautiful and it was fascinating to see them and to hear them talked about by someone who clearly loves the building and knows more about it than I could ever hope to.

The best part of the tour, however, was being on the roof.



To be honest, I had been to the PMA's subbasements before. I knew that they had as much beauty as the rest of the building. But to see the view from the roof was to understand the building in an entirely new way. The view from the top of the building impressed on me not only the sheer size of the building, but also its height.



In short, find a way to take a behind-the-scenes tour of your favorite museum. Having seen the storage areas and hidden nooks and crannies of several museums and historic sites I can assure you that the most interesting stuff is the stuff most people never get the chance to see. I would also like to encourage museum staff to try to find a way to allow more people to see their museum from this unique vantage point. Don't limit this experience to staff and those with sufficient disposable income to purchase high level memberships. After all, you never know who you may inspire.

*My apologies for the less-than-stellar quality of the photos; rather than using a real camera I used the only thing at hand, which happened to be my cell phone.

Your Time Has Come

Lately I have been wondering if I will ever make it out of the world of visitor services and into collections management, the area of museum work for which I trained and in which I find the most enjoyment. Trying to find one of these positions is time consuming, frustrating and seemingly endlessly disappointing.

I was therefore thrilled to be handed a copy of Nina Simon's short article called "Doing Time on the Front Line" published in the July-August 2010 issue of Museum. (You can find a copy of the article here) It is so reassuring to hear someone say what I already think to be true - that working in the museum's front lines beneficial is not only beneficial, it can also lead to other opportunities in the future.

Selfishly, I hope that my time on the front lines at the Philadelphia Museum of Art will prove to be beneficial in terms of future employment opportunities. But I also hope that this article can inspire in others what it has inspired in me: hope.