Hello once again! I apologize for the late post this week. I've found in my many adventures at the museum that aside from being wondrously insightful, kids are also the perfect vectors for illness. As a result, I've been various stages of sick for the past week. But never fear! I managed to go in and intern near the end of the week, and was really glad I did so.

On Friday, due to an unfortunate mix up of the schedules of the gallery educators (who normally lead the school groups), one of the classes was left without a tour guide. Thus, the opportunity presented itself for me to lead a group, if only briefly. I was able to take the class through a demonstration of the tour activity, which, as mentioned before, is the printing exercise. In the tour as a whole, I am most comfortable with this station, and because I was still a bit hoarse from illness, I was grateful that I did not have to lead the whole hour-and-a-half long tour (another educator came and eventually granted me leave). However, speaking and leading a group was fun and exciting, and a definitely something that I'd like to try more.

If you're reading the previous paragraph and asking, "Molly, what does this have to do with public art?", I would like to respond with the fact that a lot of my experience at the museum deals less with the philosophical nature of public art and more with the outcome. Instead of studying more historical instances of public art, the nature of my project seems to have shifted more towards the actual impact of the art upon an audience, and more specifically children, since this is the audience that I've witnessed for the past couple months. I just wanted to address this fact as I believe that I originally set out to explore the nature of public art itself. However, it seems that the reactions to public art are both more quantifiable and more accessible for me to explore. And as an aside, I would like to add that there is a sort of wonder in the first and second graders viewing the art at the museum, especially as a means to understand greater concepts. When the kids get excited at the expertly taken photographs of sharks or the fantastical photoshopped ocean scenes, the experience for me as a guide and an intern is gratifying not only for the sake of my project but also as an art lover myself.

Anyways, I know this was more reflection this week, but as I was sick, I had a lot of time to think. I also wanted to address the slightly different direction of the nature of my project, so I'm glad that I got to mention it. Thank you for reading and I'll see you next week!