Tale One: Sheep, Fairies and Monet

I was fortunate enough to work for one of the best museums in the business - Winterthur. I admired and learned a great deal from many of the people I worked with there. It certainly holds a special place in my heart and I look back at the work I got to do there with pride... but it is truly a perfect example of what a weird place the museum world can be.

While at Winterthur I worked to bring historic breeds of sheep back to the grounds, I was in charge of the fairy corps (teenage volunteers who roamed the Enchanted Woods delighting children visitors), and planned programming for exhibitions. One of which included a Monet painting.

When I attended the Cooperstown Graduate Program it had been with the intention of preparing for a world where the third example in the above paragraph would be the norm. Instead, I found myself dealing with a wide variety of tasks that were never less than interesting.

My assistant was a witch (really!) and my immediate supervisor a bit more literal in her understanding of the bible than I was. What I learned (good and bad) from these two can't be fit in a short blog entry. Suffice it to say balance is good, very good. Patience is a gift not to be refused. A person can be incapacitated by niceness. Jumping on the bandwagon so you can be someone's "peep" is not worth it - that's for high school. And everyone has a point of view that they would love to jump to - the key is looking before you jump to make sure you got it right and to keep checking that viewpoint to make sure nothing has changed...

Another opportunity for growth at Winterthur was firing Santa Claus. Every year the museum hosted "Breakfast with Santa" on Saturdays in December. They had used the same Santa for a number of years and he had a special sense of humor. Unfortunately, he said the wrong thing to the wrong person. It was obvious that he had intended it as a joke but the person he shared his humor with - well they didn't get it. Unfortunately, this person was a VIP and I found out we were firing Santa the following Thursday afternoon. I walked through the woods to the restaurant to do the deed quietly singing, "I'm gettin' nothin' for xmas, I'm gettin' nothin' but coal..." Thank God for a wonderful volunteer coordinator and her assistant who made it possible for Santa to be in place with under two days notice!