Interns have a full summer at the Shelter Island History Museum
This summer the Shelter Island History Museum has had four college students working onsite to help organize and lead projects. Kathleen Carey, Charlotte Bruner, and Atticus Wimer are all returning after helping out in the past, with Chloe Johnson as the new addition to the team this year.
Their work has ranged from counseling at the theater camp to putting together exhibits within the Havens House, and organizing the popular Saturday Farmers Market.
This summer is Kathleen’s sixth year working at the Shelter Island History Museum, where she is now the operations manager.
However, Kathleen’s relationship with the museum goes back beyond her first summer interning there to when she attended one of the summer camps at age seven.
Charlotte has been interning at the museum for four years, focusing especially on cataloging and assessing the condition of various historical pieces from Shelter Island.
Atticus has also worked on cataloging various historical artifacts in order to make them more easily locatable for people researching in the museum. Most recently, Atticus has focused on the museum’s clothing collection.
Working along with Atticus in the clothing collection is Chloe, a first-year intern studying fashion and textiles at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, who has enjoyed “putting what [she] learned in [her] program into practice.”
This summer the interns have been especially focused on collaborating and finding intersections between their various fields of expertise and assignments.
For example, Charlotte works at a theater camp at the museum which has utilized much of the museum’s records and documents, culminating in a play performed this week. The documents are used to develop the play’s characters who are based on real residents of Shelter Island. Chloe was able to show the campers various clothes from the museum’s collection that would have been worn in the 1930s, when the play is set.
This joint effort is what has made the internships so valuable. Kathleen remarked that working at the museum is “just such a group and collaborative experience, that’s what I love about it.”
A large part of the interns’ work focuses on making the museum accessible and useful for the public. People often schedule archive appointments at the museum wanting to learn about their family’s history, or the previous owners of the land they live on.
It is a goal of the museum to make that process as efficient and productive as possible. Chloe noted how the size of the museum and its specialized focus on Shelter Island’s history allows it to be very effective at pinpointing the specifics people are looking for.
Additionally, Atticus noted how the museum’s intimate and welcoming presence distinguishes it from the impersonal experience associated with larger institutions. “The environment is very different from a big museum; I think people are less afraid to approach us.” It is the personal interactions with the general public that each of the interns spoke about as being one of their favorite aspects of the job.
Despite having worked at the museum for a majority of the summer, and in some cases multiple summers, each of the interns said they are still delighted by what the museum has to offer them. They encourage anyone curious to stop in and get a taste of what they have been working on.
