So this past week, things have slowed down a bit here at AMOCA. My main focus before the Warashina exhibit was to scan images for our upcoming Mettlach show, which consisted of 8 binders, each of which contained at least around 200 images of works. That’s a whole lot of pictures. Now that things aren’t so hectic my main priority is labeling each image with its corresponding date and mold number used to create it. Not so easy when some of these were created hundreds of years ago. Never have I ever dealt with so many numbers in my life. Although what I’m doing now may sound trivial, it’s definitely helping take out a good chunk of the work out of the way. It’s interesting to see how an exhibit is put together from start to finish. I feel like I’m getting a first-hand look at how everything is put together. First, you have to come up with ideas of what shows you’d like to exhibit, and you have to do it months, sometimes years ahead of time. Next, you have to start acquiring all the works you’d like to put in the show. I feel like this is the hardest part because getting an artwork to and from a museum isn’t the easiest thing in the world. It takes a lot of time and a heck of a lot of money to do it. Who knew shipping artwork cost as much as a brand new car? Not only do you have to worry about bringing pieces in, but you also have to consider how big they are and where they’re going to be placed, especially if you’re a smaller museum like us. After all of that, you then start the moving process, which is basically moving out the old pieces and bringing in the new ones. Then, you have your exhibit. Now these are just the main steps, so this doesn’t include talking to the artist, conditioning artworks, sending out invitations, etc. There are so many more things involved in the process I could go on and on about, but I won’t because I’m too excited for tomorrow and what our field trip to the Mingei Museum in San Diego holds in store :)