My Many Hats

You know when you go to a party or some kind of event where you meet strangers who may or may not become your friends and/or acquaintances, how, invariably (unless, of course, you’re like me, and you wear your name tag at all times – my boss, Mrs Van der Ree taught me that trick!), the conversation always comes to a point where someone says ‘What do you do?” Well, I am one of those people who do more than one thing, so this becomes a bit of a tricky question... I am the event planner here at the museum, I am an archaeologist who does archaeological research and write articles and reports, and I am also the collections manager at the MSA Museum. So what is it that I do? Well, since you asked…(you did, right?)

As the event planner I am the one who plans special events here at the museum. This includes such things as booking any entertainment, the decorator, vendors and food, buying supplies and anything that we may need for concessions, planning arts and crafts- or interactive activities for the general public, putting together back boards promoting the museum, pitching tents and so on, as well as setting the time, date, place and all that important stuff for the event at hand. I also have to maintain the cost analysis for each event, search for sponsors, manage a float during the event, help a bit with some of the advertising and finding and managing the volunteers for each event, create a footprint of the site, create and stick to a time line, report back to my ED with all of these details and…there are probably a number of things that I’m forgetting to include! My most important tool for this job is probably my truck. I can drive to pick things up and meet with people, and I can haul big tents, signs and boxes and boxes of stuff we need for on- and off-site events.

Although I do wear three hats, I don’t wear a fedora. My name is Christina Reid, no relation to Harrison Ford whatsoever, actually, nor to some guy named Indy or some girl named Lara Croft. And no, I don’t “do” dinosaurs (people, seriously, I am an archaeologist, not a paleontologist).

As an archaeologist, at the moment I do mostly research in metrology, and mostly after I’m done my day here at the museum. Because I am working here at MSA, I don’t currently have a task that entails excavating, but I do use my skills in archaeology for this job, too. Archaeology entails an awful lot of interpreting objects, cleaning them and generally giving them TLC, and that I do do here. The archaeology training complements the conservation training nicely, as it is immensely valuable to know how to write a proper report, journal article or a paper, how to do a condition report, take a photo of an object in the correct manner, know how artifacts are best stored and cared for, how to draw an archaeological object and all of these other things that are drilled into you while you train to be an archaeologist.

It is through archaeology that I have learned how to do something called public archaeology, something that I draw from a lot in my work here. It is, among other things, how to present archaeology as a whole, but also how to present each artifact or object to the public, and how to present the context surrounding it in a valuable way.

My most important tool for this part of my job? Sorry, dear beloved precious, well cared for and massively expensive Trowel, but it’s my knee pads. I can excavate without a trowel, but I can’t walk afterwards without my knee pads. I love them almost as much as I love my dog. (I have the best supplier of knee pads ever: my mom. I love her more than my dog, though!)

Obviously, the collections manager does a lot of research and a lot of conservation work. Conservation work includes such things as taking care of the objects in the collection in general, making sure they don’t suffer damage while they are in my care, cataloguing them all, setting up environmental controls and monitoring humidity, temperature, light and so on, installing and maintaining certain software programs and some hardware for the computers, tracking and recording all the objects within the collection and their details along with a number of other things that are made much easier in this day and age because we now have machinery of all sorts to help us complete the tasks. The research revolves around the objects themselves, the original owners, the time and place that it was created and used in and so on, but it also entails assembling the kits that I’ve written about before and the research around them, plus purchasing objects, ephemera and so on for them, all of which gets put into lesson plans and written documents that are gathered up in a big binder that goes with each kit full of artifacts. Then, of course, there is the planning, mounting and dismantling of the exhibits. That includes creating a layout of the display and a number of exhibit notes and programs as well as transporting the objects to and from our storage facility. In the past, it has been my job to plan and arrange that storage facility together with a number of great volunteers. We’ve still got some fine tuning to do, but it’s livable now!

In my case, I try to plan an event to go with the exhibit, or an exhibit to go with the event. For International Museums Day the internationally flavoured Nordic Spirit photographic exhibit was teamed up with a complementary exhibit of objects and ephemera from our collection along with a living history event. At Christmas we will be doing an old fashioned European Christmas market and tea with the House all decked out for Christmas, and for Remembrance Day I try to create something in honour of out veterans and their fallen comrades.

Most important tool? The computer. Can’t live without it. Or maybe it’s out volunteers, but then again, far be it from me to call my volunteers tools…I’ve learned that in Canadian, that’s not a nice thing to call someone!

So, Dear Reader, what does your hat look like?