strange comfort.

The past few days I have been at the National Museum of the American Indian, working on a de-install of the Brian Jungen exhibit entitled 'Strange Comfort', and yes, it is called a de-install, I am not just using poor grammar. My first day there was pretty exciting, I really love this museum, I think the way it is built is beautiful, and the gardens outside are lovely and quiet. I walk into the closed exhibit and met Gail and Ann, Gail is the Collections Manager at NMAI, and Ann is a conservator for SI. Both women were lovely, lovely people. They were cleaning the piece called Carapace, which was made entirely of trash bins in France. When it was shipped over to America, the artist wanted to alter the piece and make it a different shape, so a lot of the bins were cut in half to make more pieces to play with. It took several weeks to install. I took pictures of it, but they are not up yet, but to describe it, it was sort of a circular shape with two small entrances on either end, the inside had what looked like seats running across either side. It was MASSIVE needless to say. As soon as Richard from my office arrived, we began taking it apart, piece by piece, trashcan, by trashcan. In the end, it took an hour and a half to take it apart. It came down QUICK, we had pieces saran wrapped together and ready for load in at around noon. It was a very speedy process and I was so amazed by how quickly we worked, and how quickly each piece came down. After removing the Carapace, we moved on to taking down a few totem poles, very carefully.Followed by a lunch break, and let me tell you the cafe at NMAI is outstanding, they serve traditional native cuisine, and it is soooooo goood, go there and eat lunch one day, you will totally love it. Not to mention they harvest vegetables from the garden outside to make food for the cafe, I really like that idea.
So our day ended at 3, and I went home to do nothing of any particular interest. I went back to NMAI the next day to finish up, we finished our work by 11AM.

Whoa.11AM, how do I spend the rest of my day?
Well, Gail invited me to come see them take down the whale sculpture at 3PM, they were going to make a big event out of it for donors, guests, important SI people, etc, etc....I could not help because of some silly rules, contracts....but I decided I would come back to watch anyways..but how the hell was I going to kill time?I've already been to all of the museums on the mall at least once, some 3+ times...agh!!!And, it was hot, I was lazy and didnt feel like going far. So Jared and I went next door to Air&Space where we checked out a Wright Brothers exhibit, and parted ways with a hug, a few 'good lucks' and he told me to
'do good'

I really love when someone says 'do good'-it is so simple, yet it means so much.

So, I actually wandered into the castle after that,wandered around a few museums for the 1000th time, and headed back to NMAI to watch their dog and pony show. I met the curator Paul who was wearing a RUN DMC shirt underneath a blazer, which pretty much made my day. I watched as their staff took down this massive whale sculpture and gently place into back into the crates it was shipped in. It was sort of like watching a ballet, everything was so precise, timing was everything, it was so cool to watch. My experience was fantastic at NMAI and I would totally be interested in working there. I think if I were to ever come back to work for SI, I would want to work at ONE museum, be out of this world awesome!!


Soooooo, now it is Thursday night at 1016PM, Nate will be here tomorrow morning.
Holy.Crap.

Im pretty much going to be high strung as crap tomorrow, I was for about 5 hours this afternoon until I drank 2 beers....and now, I am okay.For now.
oh goodness!!!