May 02, 2019
Diary of an NUS Museum Intern is a series of blog posts written by our interns about their experiences during the course of their internships. Working alongside their mentors, our interns have waded through tons of historical research, assisted in curatorial work, pitched in during exhibition installations and organised outreach events! If you would like to become our next intern, visit NUS Museum’s student development page for more information.
Charmaine is currently a JC1 student at Temasek Junior college. She joined the NUS Museum for three weeks as part of Temasek Junior College’s Work Attachment Programme. In this post, Charmaine shares with us her experience studying and understanding our exhibitions and cataloging our NUS Museum’s Resource Library.
Prior to my attachment at NUS Museum, I confess that I had no idea how a museum worked or what they did, besides displaying art for visitors to see. As someone with little to no experience dealing with the arts before, I remember feeling a little apprehensive when I first stepped into the museum, worried that I would not be of much help or that I would not feel welcome. At the end of my attachment, I can gladly say that my experience at NUS Museum was one that I did not expect, but more importantly, it was one that was unforgettable.
I remember, on the first day of attachment, the first thing I saw was the exhibition, ‘Radio Malaya’. I clearly recall how confused I was when I walked around the exhibition with my fellow friends from TJC. I was looking for captions, explanations of the artworks or some story to the exhibition, but instead, I found none. Before, whenever I visited a museum, I would wander around with my brain on low-power mode, not stopping to think past the aesthetics of the art pieces displayed. I never tried to understand or view the exhibition in my own light, and thus, I had a lot of trouble trying to make meaning of this exhibition.