A Blast From The Past Through the Eyes of an Intern

Alex Ross is a second year Journalism student at Durham College. He is completing his placement at the RMG as a communications intern.

Over the past two years in my program I have started to narrow down my niche as a reporter for the school newspaper, the Chronicle. I have taken the spot as an arts reporter in the class and even my teachers have gotten in contact with me about artistic events happening around town.

I had never been to the RMG before I started at Durham College because I only moved to Oshawa three years ago. Living in a new city can be difficult because I didn’t know anybody from Oshawa and all of my friends from my old town were away at university in places like Waterloo, Windsor and Kingston. Being a part of the arts scene in Oshawa, and the RMG, helped me make contacts I never had the chance to before.

The RMG is a local treasure that some people don’t even know about. There are so many important connections the Gallery has that help bring people from the community together.

Part of my job here was to schedule some special day posts for May. These special days included a Throwback Thursday for each week of May, as well as a Window Wednesday for each week. For the Throwback Thursday, the gallery has chosen to dig into its extensive collection of the Thomas Bouckley Collection. There is no theme to the Throwback Thursday so all I had to do was go through the collection and pick some of my favourite photos.

After scrolling through the thousands of photos in the Thomas Bouckley Collection, it soon became one of my favourite collections in the gallery. A couple images stood out to me in particular, one of an “amusement device” sitting on the lakefront in Oshawa and another of a plane crash right downtown at King and Simcoe.

“Ocean Wave” At The Lake
Thomas Bouckley, 1912.

These images caught my attention because of their oddness. Ocean Wave is odd because the men on the ride are all wearing suits, despite the leisurely activity. The plane crash is astonishing because of the proximity to the community. If a plane crashed today there is no way it would simply be suspended in the electrical wires running along the street and only knock a few bricks off a building.

Plane Crash on King Street West
Thomas Bouckley, 1918.

The Thomas Bouckley Collection is one of my favourite collections because it gives young people like me a look into the past. Being young makes me feel like I don’t have a connection to the history of the town because as far back as I can remember is the old Famous Players and Zellers that used to be in the Oshawa Centre. Being able to look back at specific events through the Thomas Bouckley Collection gives me a sense of community and connection to the history of my town.

The late Thomas Bouckley donated the Thomas Bouckley Collection to the RMG. He was a collector and history enthusiast of Oshawa and Durham Region. The collection contains more than 3,000 photographs of Oshawa and surrounding communities. The collection is a good source for understanding Oshawa’s past and helping people engage with the history of Durham Region.

The RMG is an integral part of the Oshawa community and it is certainly a great place full of great people, not only staff, but the visitors as well. Being an intern at the RMG is a great experience for anybody that has an interest in arts, in any department of the Gallery.

Experiencing the RMG through Inartistic Eyes

Samantha Pender is a Durham College public relations student completing her winter placement at the RMG as a communications intern.

Before I came to the RMG as a communications intern, I admittedly knew very little in the way of art. Being artistically challenged myself, I had never thought to explore art before coming here. But taking one look around the gallery immediately changed my thinking about art and how to appreciate it, despite lacking my own artistic skills.

Being a communications intern, I don’t get to spend much of my time looking through the galleries of the RMG. When I have been able to sneak away, however, I am always taken aback by the art surrounding me. While looking at the manipulated art and beautifully shot landscapes from Holly King, the wondrous abstract of Painters 11, and the many other different kinds of art throughout the RMG, I realized that you don’t really need to know that much about art to appreciate it.

Yes, understanding the style, medium or perspective of the artist can be helpful, but when it comes down to it, art is art. It’s a beautiful and absurd peak into the creative mind of a talented soul, and that is something I won’t be overlooking again.

Interning at the RMG has opened my mind to many things, not just the beauty of art. Researching content for Museum Week, was able to catch a glimpse into the history of Oshawa and see the familiar streets of today as an almost completely different town in black and white. I learned about architecture and came to appreciate different aspects of a building, something I knew nothing about. My supervisor, Sam, broadened my horizons by instilling the importance of learning things outside my comfort zone, something not to be taken for granted.

Working for a non-profit organization so deeply rooted in the community has been a great experience for me, as giving back to the community is something I care very much about. Seeing how the RMG dedicates so much time to the community through RMG Fridays – I worked on the RMG Fridays 5^th Anniversary – as well as weekend family activities like OPG Second Sundays has only grown my love and appreciation for the gallery over the past three months.

Samantha Pender, 'Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl' from the Other NFB

Samantha Pender, RMG Communications Intern, with ‘Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl’ from the Other NFB

Jessica Moffitt’s Internship at the RMG

Jessica Moffitt it a Public Relations student at Durham College and is doing her placement in the Communications department at the RMG.

When I walked through the doors of The RMG prepared to interview for a once a week internship, I didn’t feel the usual pre-interview stress that you would expect. Instead I felt excited and confident. The building was bright and full of natural lighting that made everything in the lobby shine. I knew I wouldn’t be able to find a better internship opportunity than this.

I am a second year public relations student at Durham College. As part of my program, I was required to find and secure a non-profit communications placement in the community to experience life in the industry. As soon as I saw the list of available placements I knew right away that the RMG was going to be the perfect fit for me.

For as long as I can remember I have always loved the arts. Whether it was printmaking, painting, drawing or playing around in Photoshop, art has always been part of my life. I visited the gallery quite often in high school (I was part of the O’Neill Visual Arts Program) and through many trips I became familiar with The RMG.

My experience here has been fantastic and I have learned so many things that I know will be an asset to my future endeavors. It is great to come to placement every Monday and be surrounded by so many creative and inspiring individuals who are all working toward a common goal. Taking part in different creative projects such as contributing to the RMG Blog, working with staff members to plan the Volunteer Luncheon and Membership Event, as well as working on the galleries various social media accounts has been a great way to take my education to the next level and gain experience.

I am very grateful for my time spent at the RMG and I would highly recommend applying to anyone that is in need of a position for their education. I guarantee you will go home at the end of the day feeling confident and proud that you were able to contribute to a vital part of the community and be a part of such an amazing organization.

My Curatorial Internship at the RMG

Alessandra Cirelli is a Museum Management and Curatorship student at Fleming College and this summer she completed her placement with the RMG.

During my undergrad, I completed a degree in art history and fine art, but when I finished I had that nagging question that most students have—what do I do now? I knew I wanted to work in an art gallery, but felt I needed the skills to do so. So back to school I went, to become a Museum Management and Curatorship student at Fleming College, a one-year program with a 14-week internship. There, I studied how to preserve and catalogue art, artifacts, and manage the daily operations of a Museum and Art Gallery institution. I learnt more than I could have ever imagined about the inner workings of a Museum and Art Gallery. The school year flew by and at the end of my second semester it was time for my internship. I changed my one-hour commute to Fleming College in Peterborough into a welcomed ten-minute drive to The Robert McLaughlin gallery where I spent the summer as a curatorial intern.

During my internship, I experienced a bit of everything, from cataloguing and rehousing photographic collections, helping create exhibition proposals, photographing and reorganizing the sculpture collection, I have been involved in it all. One of the many highlights of my internship was the chance to use my newly acquired artifact and artwork handling skills to take down and install new exhibitions. It was a proud moment seeing the loading dock full of multi coloured crates filled with artworks I helped pack and wrap waiting to be shipped to the next exhibition.

My main internship project was to reorganize and photograph the sculptures in the RMG’s sculpture collection. Sculptures were photographed using professional lighting equipment and Canon 5D camera. The pictures were then uploaded to the RMG’s online database for both internal use and, if copyright allowed, for the public to see and enjoy. After photographing, I reorganized and assigned locations to the sculptures in the vault. As good practice, each object should be locatable within 3-5 minutes and should be accessible by moving only one to two items to get to it. By reorganizing and assigning locations, the sculptures in the RMG’s sculpture vault are now more accessible for research and exhibition preparation.

I have learnt a great deal at the RMG, I now feel like I have the knowledge and the skills to work in a Museum or Art Institution. I extend a huge thank you to everyone here at the RMG for making me feel like a part of the team during my 14-week internship.

The Intern Files: Taylor Short

In this edition of The Intern Files, we hear from Taylor Short. Taylor is fourth year Communications student at Oshawa’s University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT). This week Taylor completed her internship with us. Here is her blog post about her experience working in an art gallery for the first time.

In attempting to conceptualize the space of an art gallery, I typically picture paintings hanging on blank walls with people browsing through works as they please. My recent experience as an intern at the RMG has changed my perspective of the use of gallery spaces. I have come to the realization that art, and gallery spaces alike, are creative tools for gaining a better understanding of various environments.

Having the chance of exploring works within the gallery and working with individuals who share a passion for art has been an eye opening experience. It has been exciting to learn about artists, attention-grabbing mediums, and the messages associated with various creative pieces.

The RMG gift shop has been one of my areas of focus during my time as an intern at the gallery. Norah O’Donnell and I have enjoyed exploring exclusive products beautifully crafted by local artisans. It has been exciting to be educated about the ways in which pieces are crafted and developed, to create exclusively striking jewellery, pottery, glass ware, and fine art alike.

(Pictured: New artist finger puppet/magnets in the RMG shop)

Art has a curious way of reaching into the deepest corners of our imagination. It seeps into our souls and allows us to experience a simple sense of bliss. I hope that the rest of my time at the gallery continues to allow my imagination to be exhilarated.

The Intern Files: Amy Weir

In this edition of The Intern Files, we hear from Amy Weir. Amy is a library and information science graduate student from the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. In the past, Amy has interned at the RMG Library and Archives, and is currently working on a special project for the Thomas Bouckley Collection.

Compiled by local historian Thomas Bouckley, the Thomas Bouckley Collection at the RMG depicts the history of the City of Oshawa – providing visual insight into Oshawa’s past. The collection’s catalogued component consists of over 2280 photographs and negatives, but in addition, the RMG possesses a wide range of supporting files from Thomas Bouckley’s personal collection: over 2000 items including uncatalogued photographs, documents, artefacts and ephemera.

As some may be familiar, much of the catalogued component of the Thomas Bouckley Collection has been organized and filed in proper storage, frequently displayed in exhibitions and accessed for research purposes by the public. However, the other items that make up the collection currently remain in the condition received in 1985, with little organization, improper storage, and a lack of archival-quality housing. The uncatalogued materials, while stored in folders that have been numbered and named, are also difficult to locate due to a lack of description in the accompanying finding aid. This is where I come in. Over the course of three months, I’m working toward the goal of establishing order and appropriate storage for the uncatalogued portion, with the ultimate objective of facilitating ease of access, longevity, and ongoing preservation for the entire collection.

Re-housing files in archival-quality folders, before and after.

Currently, the project’s first stage is just wrapping up: the records within nearly all of the files have been ‘re-housed,’ and placed in archival-quality storage to enhance their preservation. Some files have simply required new, archival-quality file folders, while others have required more careful intervention – removing damaged photos from dated photo albums, for example.

Damaged photos to be removed from unstable photo albums.

Doing so has involved an analysis of every item in the collection, which has provided a great opportunity to discover the treasures that Bouckley collected as part of his research. Items, such as the original postcard with inscription shown here, tell the stories of the families who lived in early Oshawa.

1917 postcard and note on verso. Man in photo is identified as Frank Mallet of Mallet House Hotel, Oshawa.
TBC File no. 013A

What’s more, some of the items within the collection speak to not only the history of Oshawa, but the history of other areas in Ontario, with research and artefacts dating as far back as the aboriginal settlements of today’s Durham Region and Southern Ontario. Once the collection has been properly re-housed, organization and the eventual production of a digital finding aid (and collection inventory) is created, access to the collection will be significantly enhanced while contributing to Bouckley’s endeavour to continually augment and to preserve our knowledge of the region’s history.

The Intern Files: Ashley Craig

Ashley Craig is an Public Relations Intern working in our communications department as part of her program at Durham College. This is a blog post about her experience working here in the past few weeks.

I am a public relations intern at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery and up until this year, the only other art gallery I have ever been to was the ROM. I went when I was six and I don’t remember seeing any of the exhibits. I just know that I held a snake while I was there. The majority of the artwork I have ever been exposed to were the paintings hanging in my grandmother’s old apartment. The paintings were mainly scenery, flowers and one of a little girl that looked like she belonged on a Cottonelle ad.

So it is safe to say, I have no artistic background. I can draw a stick person, if that. Now interning at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery once a week, I am exposed to all forms of art. Instead of thinking art was just paintings and photographs, I now see art comes in all different styles. I sometimes feel I don’t understand the art, however I am able to appreciate it for what it is, for instance, this piece from the new Micah Lexier & Kelly Mark: Head-to-Head exhibition.

So far my experience interning at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery has been educational, since I am gaining knowledge in the PR industry. It has also been interesting to see all the works, which I probably wouldn’t have thought of as art if I didn’t come here. I would say my experience so far, has allowed me to open my mind to different things.