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By Savannah Smith I am very thankful to the Metal Museum for the opportunity to go to and represent them at the International Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art in Berlin, Germany. I didn’t imagine going until I learned that there was a grant available to the apprentices here, without which I would not have been able to attend. This was a very special trip for me and something I will never forget. I learned a lot over the week I spent in Germany: I saw a sculpture by someone who influenced my path in metal work, expanded my community of friends and peers, was taken aback by the beautiful art in the gallery shows, listened intently during the theoretical panels, and was in awe of a fabulous bronze foundry where an iron pour was taking place. Of course, more than just those things went on during my trip that made it memorable and thought-provoking. The influence that this trip has had will inspire my work and how I interact with learning, teaching, and making art for the rest of my life. As artists who make heavy work, we know that it takes a team to bring our ideas into reality. The idea of helping, learning, and growing alongside one another was further galvanized by my experience in Berlin. Attending this conference ultimately made me more appreciative of the Metal Museum and other arts organizations like it. It is a place where everyone is welcome and wanted: artists and non-artists.

"Hope" is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul - Emily Dickinson When Blues Bird outside the Cossitt Library in Downtown Memphis was injured earlier this year, one of its wings damaged by a falling branch, the Metal Museum was at the ready, mending the new public sculpture to allow the songbird to fly high again. The piece is an original artwork designed by Portland-based firm rhiza A+D, which drew inspiration from Memphis as well as the Father of the Blues, W.C. Handy. A haven of creativity and imagination, the downtown library was the perfect place for "Blues Bird" to perch, sharing its pop-up storybook pages with passers-by. Commissioned by the City of Memphis Percent-for-Art Program with the Urban Arts Commission, "Blues Bird" invites the people to become immersed in its pages, reading words composed by Memphians young and old. After some TLC to the wing, which is around 20 times the length of an average mockingbird wing, the Metals Studios team brought it back to its original home, reaffixing the wing so Blues Bird can soar once more outside Memphis' first public library.

As a rather new employee at the Metal Museum, I have recently been exposed to a myriad of metal artwork. While I continue to learn more about this particular kind of art, it is safe to say that the Metal Arts is an incredibly unique and innovative field. Upon my arrival to the museum, the exhibition From Artisans to Artists: African American Metal Workers in Memphis was just beginning to operate in full swing. The exhibition, specially curated by the brilliant Dr. Earnestine Jenkins, quickly piqued my interest. Fortunately, the museum staff was given the opportunity to have a guided tour of the exhibit- an opportunity that I am grateful to have been offered. The artwork itself is a beautiful collection of African and African American pieces that have made statements in the metal work community. I was excited to see artwork from West Africa featured in the exhibit as I studied the art of this region during my last year of undergrad. To know that these foreign pieces could be connected to the work created by Black metalsmiths right here in Memphis was mind-blowing. With Dr. Jenkins being a proud native, it is understandable that one of the focal points of this exhibit is Black pioneers of Whitehaven. From Artisans to Artists: African American Metalworkers in Memphis offers a detailed perspective into the forgotten history of the city and the African American metal workers who greatly impacted the development of the area. The exhibit provides information on historical figures that may not have been discussed in primary school. For example, photography and biographic information is presented for Blair Hunt and David Carnes–two extraordinary blacksmiths and entrepreneurs. There is also artwork from incredible contemporary artists: Richard Hunt, Lorenzo Scruggs, Desmond Lewis, and Hawkins Bolden. I was impressed by the creative genius of each metal worker’s artistic decisions, i.e. Lewis's choice to include music as a way to enhance the meaning of his artwork. As We Come To An End... At the end of the tour, I was left in awe as I reveled in such an enlightening experience. As a young African American woman and Memphis native, I realized that From Artisans to Artists was a collection of profound work that would forever change my perspective of Memphis and the communities that have brought and continue to bring life into this city. This is an amazing exhibit and as it approaches an end on September 11, I am highly anticipating the next event where Dr. Jenkins discusses more about her research. From Artisans to Artists: Art in The Park will be held on September 10 from 10am-2pm, at David Carnes Park; this is a free community event that will commemorate the namesake exhibition a day before its closure.

A commissioned project takes more work than many may realize, especially if it is a large piece like the Harding Academy donor tree. This tree was created and installed in several steps over the course of several months and involved a multitude of skills in addition to blacksmithing. This project began with a consultation with Harding Academy to gather ideas. One of the requests on the wish list was the ability to add more donor names over time. A pencil was put to paper to create a rough sketch of the vision. To turn an idea into a drawing, much less a tangible object, takes a special set of skills. An idea takes shape ... and takes root There is much inspiration to be found in nature. For Shop Foreman Jim Masterson, that inspiration came from a tree on the grounds of the Metal Museum. A tree represents so many things across many cultures - life, wisdom, courage, endurance. The leaves on a tree represent growth and the cyclical nature of life. For Masterson, a leaf is one of many, representing unity. On the Harding Academy donor tree, each individual leaf contains the name of a donor—one of many. More than 150 leaves were forged for the tree. Then came time for building the tree and its branches to hold the leaves. This is the point at which structural engineering skills come in handy. The 150 metal leaves needed as sturdy a base as possible. The tree trunk itself, also metal, was hollow in order to slide onto a base and lock with two pins. Names of other donors are affixed to the trunk, becoming its bark. All in a morning's work This project, like all Metals Studios projects, isn't complete until the work is installed on site. For this particular project, a telescopic loader was necessary to get the tree to the proper height to then lower it onto the base. The Smithy 3 - Masterson, Lead Blacksmith Jake Brown, and Blacksmithing Intern Ian Skinner, made the installation look like a stroll in the park. The finishing touches will come later with landscaping and lighting.

Like Thor’s Mjölnir (or Jane Foster’s, if you are staying current with superhero cinematic happenings), a hammer is rife with symbolism representing power, self-reliance, and honor. It’s also a tool whose origins date all the way back to the Stone Age. For Eve Schauer, the Summer ’22 blacksmithing resident intern in the Metals Studios, the hammer captures a moment in her metalsmithing journey, one that delivered learning, working with a team on large projects, a connection to the metals community, plenty of camaraderie, and the opportunity to explore and expand her limits. A blacksmith’s hammer is often an extension of themselves, and nothing makes you respect a tool more than making it yourself. It is understandable that Eve would want to create her own. The Metal Museum offers a hammer-making class, and Eve was able to seize the opportunity and take part in the class. Eve has a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and design, is a part-time staff member at Stonybrook Metal Arts and Sculpture School (Boston, MA) and is currently interning at Sculpture Trails Outdoor Sculpture Museum (Soldberry, IN). Eve has learned iron casting and other forms of metalworking. At the full-time resident internship, Eve took her practice to new levels, which included creating a weathervane out of copper sheet and forging her first hammer out of tool steel then “hardening” the steel so it would be hard enough to use on steel and an anvil and not crack or break. Which brings us to that object. As every good blacksmith knows, the hammer is an essential tool and probably the most used one in their toolkit. Simple in its appearance, a forging hammer can be fashioned for an individual’s preference in shape, size, weight, and balance. Forged correctly, a hammer will last for an un-nameable amount of years. Made with the durability to withstand heavy and repetitive blows and repeated ones at that, a forging hammer is a go-to tool to shape hot metal. Eve crafted her hammer to fit her frame – nothing too cumbersome, heavy, or awkward. The result is a sturdy, well-made, custom tool. Jane Foster would be lucky to wield a hammer forged by our talented intern, Eve. Sign up for the next hammer-making class in Spring 2023. Only six spots available.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" You hit a certain age when this question crops up more and more. And it's OK to not have a concrete answer. Some high school students may know a general field they want to enter such as the arts but may not know much about the type of careers out there. Contemporary Arts Memphis provides a program that gives these teens an in-depth look at the various careers in the arts for teens in the greater Memphis area. The Metal Museum hosted a group of young aspiring artists from Contemporary Arts Memphis to share with them the type of careers that exist in the arts and museum fields, from curators and preparators to artists and designers. The group was able to get a final look at the RINGS! exhibit before it ended and participate in a Q&A session with Brooke Garcia, Director of Collections and Exhibitions. The teens learned what curators look for when viewing an artist's portfolio as well as the importance of showcasing their work online. Students also got to learn about the many forms that metal takes and the importance of finding quality art programs that provide internships and apprenticeships from Lead Blacksmith Jacob Brown. The biggest takeaway from the visit was that with grit, a healthy dose of encouragement, and some research, these aspiring young artists discovered the future is theirs for the making. If you are interested in bringing your school group to the Metal Museum for a tour, please contact Portia White at portia@metalmuseum.org. If you enjoyed reading this blog post, please consider supporting the Metal Museum now with a tax-deductible donation or by joining as a member. metalmuseum.org/support

“Jewelry is not just fashion or fad for Mary Ann Scherr, it is a way of life. As jeweler, teacher, and pioneer in methods for working with exotic metals, her contributions to the jewelry industry span [70] years.” – Blue Greenbery (1) To finish the Metal Museum’s month-long celebration of Women’s History Month and our participation in the #5WomenArtists campaign, organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts (see below for more information), we are celebrating the life and work of designer, jeweler, educator, and innovator Mary Ann Scherr (American, 1921-2016). “My own background reads like a telephone book, because once the work became too familiar, I had to move on and on.” – Mary Ann Scherr (2) Scherr was born in Akron, OH, in 1921 and began her artist career in middle school, selling portraits on bottle corks to a local department store. She attended the Cleveland Institute of Art (Cleveland, OH) until the outbreak of World War II, when she dropped out of school to work as an illustrator and cartographer. After the war, she married Sam Scherr and became one of the first female interior and accessory designers at Ford Motor Company. In the late 1940s, the Scherrs moved to Akron, OH, and opened a design firm, where Mary Ann worked on designs for everything from clothing and appliances to toys and graphics. Soon after, following the first of her son, Scherr was introduced to metalsmithing. “[Metal] was an open, alluring canvas of possibilities.” – Mary Ann Scherr (3) It was not long after she began learning metals techniques that Scherr also started her career as an educator. In 1950, she was first exposed to these techniques in an evening jewelry course at the Akron Art Institute (Akron, OH). Shortly afterwards, she was hired by Kent State University (Kent, OH) to teach design courses and later took on metals classes as well. She taught at Kent State and built up their metals program until the late 1970s, when she moved to New York City and eventually became the chair of the product design department at Parsons School of Design (New York, NY). From 1968 onwards, she also taught summer courses at Penland School of Craft (Penland, NC). Mary Ann Scherr (American, 1921-2016), Electric Oxygen Pendant (closed and open), 1974. Sterling silver, electronics, amber, oxygen mask. Courtesy of the Scherr Family Collection. Photo credit: Jason Dowdle. All throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, Scherr continued to make and exhibit her work. Her elite client list and collectors included Vice President Walter Mondale, the Duke of Windsor, and Andy Warhol. “Scherr is perhaps best known for her body monitor jewelry—decades before the Fitbit or Apple Watch, she envisioned wearable devices that would monitor vital signs or air quality using electronics and liquid crystal displays, housed in ornamented metal pendants, bracelets, and other forms of adornment,” says Rebecca E. Elliot (4). “She conceived the first body monitor in 1969, developed other ideas into prototypes in the 1970s, and continued working on them intermittently into the 2010s.” The Scherrs decided to move from New York to Raleign, NC, in 1989. There Mary Ann continued to teach classes and workshops at Penland, Duke University (Durham, NC), Meredith College (Raleigh, NC), and NC State University (Raleigh, NC). During this time, she served on several non-profit boards and maintained her studio practice, experimenting with the use of exotic metals (like titanium) in her work. She passed away in 2016 after living twenty-seven years in Raleigh. During her lifetime, Scherr won numerous awards for her work, including being designated a 1983 Fellow of the American Craft Council and receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG), a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Museum of Women in the Arts, a North Carolina Medal of Arts Award, and a North Carolina Governor's Achievement in Fine Arts Award. In 2014, she was a nominee for Cooper-Hewitt's Lifetime Achievement Award. Scherr's work is in a number of well-known private collections including Liz Claiborne, Helen Drutt, the Knapp Jewelry Collection, U.S. Steel Corporation, and the Alcoa Company. Her jewelry can also be found in institutions around the globe, including the: Goldsmith Hall (London, UK) Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY) Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY) Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, TX) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, MA) Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.) Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT) Vatican Museum of Art (Rome, Italy) In 2017, fellow jeweler Mary Lee Hu donated this brass cuff bracelet made by Scherr to the Metal Museum. It features a stylized $1000 dollar bill, with Hu listed as the U.S. Treasurer. Scherr made this bracelet as a gift for Hu using photoetching, or photochemical machining, a chemical milling process that corrosively machines away selected areas. To learn more about the process, read this 1983 Metalsmith article called “Photoetching for the Studio Jeweler” by Allan Liu and Carol Webb. In 2020, the Gregg Museum of Art & Design (NC State University, Raleigh, NC) organized a retrospective exhibition of Scherr’s work titled All is Possible: Mary Ann Scherr’s Legacy in Metal, curated by jewelry historian and educator Ana Estrades. The exhibition contextualized Scherr’s early career in industrial design, illustration, and fashion during the 1940s-1950s, and showed the breadth of her jewelry design, including chokers, necklaces, cuffs, bracelets, and titanium work. To learn more about this exhibition, click the link above or read Rebecca E. Elliot’s exhibition review on Art Jewelry Form, and to see more photos of the artist and learn more about her life, watch this video made by the Gregg Museum: If you would like to see and hear more about Mary Ann Scherr and her work, check out her 150+ entries on our SNAG Slide Archive or watch this brief 2011 PBS profile of her on YouTube: It started with a seemingly simple question: Can you name five women artists? Since 2016, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) has been asking this question on social media each March during Women’s History Month. Using the hashtag #5WomenArtists, the campaign calls attention to the fact that women have not been treated equally in the art world, and today they remain dramatically underrepresented and undervalued in museums, galleries, and auction houses. Each year, hundreds of cultural organizations and thousands of individuals take to social media to answer the challenge, sparking a global conversation about gender equity in the arts. Since 2016, over 1800 institutions in from 57 countries have participated in the #5WomenArtists campaign. ABOUT NMWA: The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is the only major museum in the world solely dedicated to championing women through the arts. With its collections, exhibitions, programs, and online content, the museum seeks to inspire dynamic exchanges about art and ideas. NMWA advocates for better representation of women artists and serves as a vital center for thought leadership, community engagement, and social change. The museum addresses the gender imbalance in the presentation of art by bringing to light important women artists of the past while promoting great women artists working today. Blue Greenberg, “Mary Ann Scherr,” Metalsmith 1991 Spring (1991). https://www.ganoksin.com/article/mary-ann-scherr/ Mary Douglass, “Oral history interview with Mary Ann Scherr, 2001 April 6-7,” transcript of an oral history conducted in 2001 by Mary Douglass, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 71 pp. https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-mary-ann-scherr-12648#transcript Ibid. Rebecca E. Elliot, “All is Possible: The First Museum Retrospective of Mary Ann Scherr,” Exhibition Review, Art Jewelry Forum (January 25, 2021). https://artjewelryforum.org/all-is-possible

The Metal Museum Blog will be spotlighting Museum Store artists, guest demonstrators, makers, and all who are part of the Metal Museum community. Q: Can you share a little bit about your background, training, and experience as a metalsmith? A: I’m a jeweler who focuses on work in alloys such as brass and sterling (but mostly brass). I love texture, so I try to make different textures with various techniques using heat and acid. I’ve taken jewelry making classes as a child, but didn’t revisit it until I enrolled in the metals program at F.I.T. (1). After I graduated, I worked for some amazing makers, including Philip Crangi. I was able to learn more about making and the business side of things after graduation, you know, when things get real! Q: When did you realize that you wanted to make a living as an artist? A: I don’t think I really had a choice! When I got jobs working in office spaces at jewelry companies, I was only going to be allowed to go so far. We sometimes think the dream is to design for these companies, to have your work in all these stores, but that wasn’t it for me. I was always creating my work after hours and on the weekends, selling when I could. Q: What inspires you? A: I’m inspired by nature. That seems very broad, but you can’t really escape it. My love of beetles is very strong, and I just love the world of insects in general. It’s a humbling experience to be reminded that our human world is just a fragment of life on this planet. Q: How has the pandemic affected the way that you approach your business? A: Phew! It all happened so quickly! I went from planning to fly to my next show to getting an email the day before saying the show was cancelled. I am grateful that I am more fortunate than most in that I already have a website, so I doubled down a little bit and really focused on my Instagram presence and my email list. It hasn’t been a major shift; I just go to the post office a lot more. I call it “Club Post Office” (and it’s open till midnight!). Q: Why do you feel the Metal Museum Store is a good fit for your work? A: The best of the best are in this shop! I’m so honored to have my work sitting along my faves, it’s so nice. I also love how unpretentious it is, with the “serious” jewelry being displayed the same way the “fun” jewelry is, every piece gets the same amount of love and respect and I’m down for that. Q: What is your favorite metalsmithing process or material to use and why? A: Hmmm, funny enough, I really love carving wax, but don’t find the time to dedicate to it. I love acid etching my metal. There are different ways to do it, but I love to just leave the metal in the acid and let it do its thing, so it just looks super random. I love using brass, it’s a difficult material to work with, but I’m so used to it, I don’t even notice until I have to work with silver or gold. Q: Who are some other artists or jewelers you admire? A: Jewelers I love: Carin Jones (Jonesing for Jewelry), Octave Jewelry, and all the mask makers and artisans throughout the continent of Africa and also Papua New Guinea. I also deeply admire Harry Bertoia, whose work I would visit weekly when I lived in New York City. Q: How much time do you spend creating? What does your daily routine look like? A: Sometimes I spend more time drawing and sketching than I do sitting at the bench! I don’t have a good daily schedule. If I’m not packing orders I’ll take time to solder all day or throughout the week, so I can send things out to my gold plater. When I can clean off my bench, I will work on wax and metal models so I can have new things ready, but it takes a lot of time, as I like to overthink a lot. Q: Do you have a favorite piece of jewelry you wear every day? A: Recently I found my gold Mexican filigree hoop earrings my parents got me for maybe my fifth birthday that I wear nonstop along with whatever other earrings I want to wear (my ears are stretched!). I also don’t go anywhere without wearing at least one of my dear cat Bruce’s claws around my neck. Q: What is most important for you at this point in your career? A: I need to be comfortable. I don’t work too hard these days, but apparently I still work too much! It’s important that I get to make what I want. Having people appreciate my work enough that I make a living is pretty incredible, so I try to just keep my voice and style genuine and unique. 1. The Fashion Institute of Technology (New York City, NY). Alicia Goodwin's line of jewelry has been featured in the Museum Store since 2020. To shop a selection of her work, visit the Museum Store Online.

By Theresa Smith, Arts Intern in Collections The J.G. Braun Company was an architectural, ornamental metal business specializing in producing architectural ironwork such as railings, storefronts, door frames, stairways, fences, and elevator enclosures. The company was founded in 1886 by German immigrant Jacob Gottfried Braun (1857-1921). The Metal Museum’s J.G. Braun Collection mainly consists of 280+ wrought iron ornaments, and about half of the collection is on display in the Museum's Keeler Gallery from October 4th -December 6th, 2020. Jacob Gottfried Braun was born in Mönchengladbach, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany on February 28, 1857. From 1870 through 1880, Braun received his Certificate of Performance and Expression of Service from an art metalsmithing and ornamental décor school. In 1884, his father, Friedrich Herman Braun sent him to the United States to sell the families “smithing” wares made of iron, bronze, and copper. Jacob G. Braun founded his firm in Sioux City, Iowa, on October 22, 1886. Originally, his company made metal prison beds; ventilations; markers for cemeteries and churches; and ornamental fences, gates, and railings. In Chicago, orders for “Braun’s superior Wrought Iron Mouldings” skyrocketed. Before the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, most of Chicago’s buildings had cast iron elements, the majority of which melted in the fire. Because Braun found his architectural ironwork in high demand, he moved his company’s headquarters to Chicago in 1980. “My Wrought Iron Mouldings are especially adapted for storefronts, stairways, stringers, elevator enclosures, fences, roller shelving, bookcases, door frames, and the like. Whoever uses the Wrought Iron Mouldings once will never use cast iron for such purposes again, as Braun Mouldings are light in weight, better looking, and much cleaner than cast iron; they never can break because they are made from the best stock and are indestructible, which makes them exceptionally good if work is to be transported from one place to another.” — J.G. Braun (1) The J.G. Braun Co.’s elaborate architectural ironwork gained recognition all over the world. In 1896, the company was awarded the Nurnberg Silver Medal of Excellence from Prince Leopold for metal shears and punch machines with wrought steel bodies, and two years later, Prince Leopold awarded the company with the Munich State Medallion and Diploma for shears and punch machines that had indestructible bodies and a larger capacity. In 1899, Braun also received U.S. patents for a forged steel punch machine with shear, universal plate and shape iron shear. The company became an important fixture in American business, and by 1904, they were the largest provider of handmade and pressed wrought iron and brass ornaments. The story of how our J.G. Braun Collection came to the Museum is an institutional legend. According to the Metal Museum’s Founding Director James Wallace, Ernest Wiemann of Wiemann Metalcraft in Tulsa, Oklahoma, discovered a seemingly forgotten warehouse in the early 1970s. There, behind a wall, he found this large collection of wrought iron ornaments that were likely hidden to prevent them from being melted down during WWII. Wiemann later donated the ornaments to the Metal Museum. The J. G. Braun Collection includes over 280 objects, the majority of which are drop forged, wrought iron ornaments in the shape of rosettes, leaves, crosses, and animal/mythological creatures. The collection also includes nearly 30 perforated sheet metal samples for fire screens and radiator covers, several lighter, stamped steel ornaments, and a group of cast iron finials. An interesting piece in the collection is this wrought iron ornament that resembles a dragon head with an acanthus leaf on top. This object, like many in the collection, was used to decorate architectural ironworks such as railings, door frames, and fences. To view more of the J.G. Braun Collection, please click here. If you have more information about the J.G. Braun Company, please email us at info@metalmuseum.org. Theresa Smith is the Summer 2020 Arts Intern in Collections at the Metal Museum. Smith is a senior at the University of Memphis, majoring in Anthropology and minoring in History. The Arts Intern program, which offers paid internships in the arts to undergraduate students in financial need, is one of many arts programs run by the Studio Institute. Works Cited Tony Leto, “History of J.G. Braun Company by J.G. Braun III.” Wagner Companies blog, March 20, 2017.

By Theresa Smith, Arts Intern in Collections My name is Theresa Smith, and I am a senior at the University of Memphis. I'm majoring in Anthropology and minoring in History. I was the Metal Museum's Summer 2020 Arts Intern. This program is run by the Studio Institute and offers paid internships in the arts to undergraduate students. Here is a quick overview to show what I did throughout the summer. The Arts Intern program usually spans over nine weeks, but due to COVID-19, it was shortened to seven weeks. I worked Tuesday through Friday from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm at the Metal Museum for a total of twenty-eight hours per week. During the week, I would meet with the Arts Intern Program via Zoom and have weekly virtual visits with arts professionals from different museums. We met with conservators at The Cleveland Museum of Art, a curator at MoMA, and a panel of education directors, including one right here in Memphis at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens. I would like to give special thanks to every arts professional who took time out of their busy schedules to entertain us and give us useful advice. An upside of interning during a pandemic was the opportunity to virtually visit museums we wouldn’t have normally had the opportunity to go to in person. My project for the Metal Museum was inventorying, cataloging, photographing, doing condition reports, researching, and co-curating the Fall 2020 exhibition of the J.G. Braun Collection. The 280+ objects in this collection were donated by Ernest Wiemann of Wiemann Iron Works to the Museum back in the 1970s. The J.G. Braun Company (1887-1997) produced elaborate metal ornaments, railings and fences, which became a sensation in the Victorian and Art Deco buildings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Museum’s J.G. Braun Collection only represents a small portion of what the company produced. To learn more about the J.G. Braun Company and collection, read my next blog post. My first and second week, I met the Metal Museum staff, received a tour of the grounds, attended demonstrations at the Foundry and Smithy, and read articles on museum practices. During the demos, Foundry Operations Manager James Vanderpool created a Hershey bar bottle opener for me, and I later gave it as a gift to my dad who he loved it. Early on in my internship, I also began to research how to write a press release and worked on inventorying and writing condition reports for the first half of the collection. In the press release, I included information on the J.G. Braun Company, the Metal Museum’s collection, details on the exhibition, and information about the Arts Intern program. In week three, I continued to work on the first half of the collection. This half, 139 objects in total, was originally cataloged and conditioned in 2016. My job was to check if the conditions of these objects had changed, put them in trays, find their old number in the J.G. Braun Company's 1928 catalog, and record all this information in an Excel spreadsheet. Condition reports are used to track an object's health; these reports typically consist of the name of the object, collection title, artist, object number, date, dimensions, material, and a brief description. In week four, I started to document the 141 unknown objects from the second half of the J.G. Braun collection. Because this half of the collection wasn’t fully documented like the first half, I had to write object names and brief descriptions, in addition to writing condition reports and finding the old numbers from the 1928 catalog. In weeks five and six, I photographed the objects from the second half of the collection. During week three, Marketing Manager Kim Ward taught me how to take museum-quality object photos and tutored me on how to use a camera, light box, and the photo editing software Lightroom and Photoshop. This task was a little daunting due to the sheer size of the collection and because I had never used a professional camera before. I had to learn about shutter speed, focus, and lightning. Luckily, Kim was a great teacher, and I was able to produce great pictures. My final week I spent finalizing the cataloging spreadsheets, writing this blog post, and selecting objects to be represented in the Fall 2020 exhibition of this collection. The objects I picked were based on similar object factors and condition. I made sure to choose the best and the most interesting pieces. Next, I laid all of the chosen objects out and asked both my supervisor Brooke Garcia, the Collections & Exhibitions Manger, and Kevin Burge, the Preparator, their thoughts on the objects. We added a few and changed out some, but overall, the objects I selected were great representations of the J.G. Braun Collection. Once everything was finalized, I made a chart with the groupings and object numbers for Brooke to use in later exhibition planning. This wraps up my internship at the Metal Museum! I’m excited to see the collection I worked on this summer on display in October. I’m grateful for all the experiences I had as being the Collections Intern at the Metal Museum. This summer has taught me so many things about museum work and what it takes to come together during hard times. The knowledge I gained will be helpful in continuing my education in Museum Studies as well as finding a career in museums.