The Witte Museum - Xochitl Aguero, Week 3
It is officially been three weeks interning at the Witte Museum and I’ve been having such an incredible and engaging experience! I continued to help out at camp as well as helped out at public programs and shadowing a fellow Witte Staff member! For the camp focus this week, the 6-8 year old campers are doing “Engineer It!” and the older 9-12 year old campers are doing “Artventures.” I focused on the older campers this week and I made sure to follow their objective which is to explore the outdoors to inspire art with plants, pebbles, feathers, and more. They will also be using their imagination to express themselves through colorful canvases and artistic discovery. I continued to help set up the activities, supervise, and teach the campers about science, history, and culture at the Witte!
On Monday, the first thing we did is a drawing activity where had to draw what they think is under the rug from the picture shown below. The campers voted to visit the shark galley so we went there for some time and learned more about sharks. After the shark gallery I helped set up a shark art activity where the campers got to paint and draw their own sharks on a canvas. We then went outside and did a color scavenger hunt where the campers had to find things in nature that matches the colors in their color sheet. After lunch I helped set up the rest of the activities for the day which were water color art and painting with unconventional Tools. It was really cool to see the campers art at the end of the day!
On Tuesday, My supervisor wanted me to try out the “Public Programs” department of the Witte Museum to get more visitor experience and try other programs at the Witte. I shadowed some of the staff members at the Shark and Space exhibits in order to understand how to check people’s tickets correctly and watch for visitors safety. For the Witte, we have “Free Tuesdays” which makes the museum free every Tuesday to all guests, so it was extremely busy today and I spent a few hours monitoring the lines at the space rides inside the space exhibit. During my free time I got to check out the wildlife lab exhibit and saw snakes, quails, scorpions, tarantulas, and this cool lizard!
On Wednesday, I did the same thing as I had done yesterday; I helped with the visitor experience by checking in people by the shark and space entrances and roamed around monitoring the museum til the end of the day. I found myself to have a better experience helping at the camp as I felt like I had more responsibilities and got to learn more by teaching the campers, so I requested to my supervisor if I can go back helping at camp and she said yes so I’ll be spending the rest of this week and next week helping my supervisor at the camp!
On Thursday, I got to do something really exciting and new! Miss Casey who is a Camp Staff Member took me on a little field trip outside of the Witte in order to shadow her experience at representing the Witte’s History and culture at other places downtown. We went to a retirement home where I got to watch her do a presentation on rock art inspired by the people of the Peco’s gallery at the Witte. This presentation was a hands on activity for the seniors to learn more about the history and culture of the people of the peco’s and how their language was understood through rock art. They also got to learn how the Peco’s make paint to make the rock art in which Miss Casey would demonstrate with clay pigments,soap, and fat from bone and mix it all up to make paint that reflect the practice of paint making thousands of years ago. While she did her presentation, I got to help the seniors with making their paint, painting on the canvases, and helped Miss Casey clean up at the end. Everyone there had an amazing time and we got really good feedback from everyone on how they learned so much and would love to do another demonstration with the Witte in the future which will definitely happen! We then headed back to the Witte Camp where I continued to set up the activities and supervise the campers.
On Friday, the campers did a museum exploration in the morning and all voted to explore the space exhibit again and the shark exhibit. For the last day of camping, the campers got to finish up any of their art activities that they have been working on this entire week and for those that have finished I set up an “Art Win, Lose, or Draw” game, where there are two sketchers and two guessers, and the guessers have to guess what the sketcher is sketching in order to gain a point and whoever has the most points at the end wins. I then helped the Camp staff set up art sections that contained paper quailing, zentangle art, and a free draw area for the campers to spend some time trying out other art activities til the end of the day.
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