What I've been doing

Well, for the last fifteen minutes, I've been using MS Paint's spray paint can to fuzz away any identifying information and the paint bucket to remove any physical context (terms of use for photos.  It may seem silly but the people it matters to matter to me, so there we are.)

But this is most of what I've been doing for the last two weeks:

I think a couple of boxes were being used when I snuck this pic, so it's not all but it's close.  Yay archival research!

At the end of today I was handed 296 pages of photocopied material, had a shit ton of pictures taken of both the galleries and miscellaneous documents, and an emailed pdf of the detailed layout of the part of the exhibit I'm working on.  These people were amazing.

I have 1.5 interviews on Monday, and I'll be done with I think everything I can do without broadening the scope of my project.  The idea of being "done" with this seems absurd, and I will admit that I did at least three "just in case I missed something!" reviews of most of those boxes, but I have to stop at some point.  I put in many, many hours and most definitely overstayed my welcome at the library.  (All those boxes had to stay out for upwards of two weeks.  My mother and my spouse are both cringing in sympathy for the librarian, since their homes are both like that...except ad infinitum.  Actually, my mother is probably scoffing at the idea that those measly well organized fourteen boxes are something to be concerned about.  She would kill for fourteen well organized boxes!  But they weren't stacked so nicely.  They were more spread out over a couple of sections of table, surrounded with bits of paper.  Trust me--those boxes were annoying.)

Yeah.  So, that's what I've been doing.  Hopefully that helps explain why I've emerged from the museum cross-eyed, dumb, and exhausted every day.  Now I have to spend the weekend getting ready for that last big interview, digging through my 290 pages to make sure I really didn't miss something, etc.

My first foray into serious archival research has been extremely productive.  I can't speak for certain about  success yet, but it was definitely productive.

More on that later.