32 MUSEUMS CONCENTRATION: STUDENT PERSPECTIVE MUSEUMS CONCENTRATION STUDENT PERSPECTIVE: NATALIE SANDSTROM ‘19J BEFORE I EVEN STARTED AT SMITH in 2014, I knew that I wanted to be a Museums Concentrator. This program—a chance to merge classes and work experience—was unlike anything I had heard of at an under- graduate institution. Once I arrived on campus, I realized that the concentration was only one of many ways in which SCMA is a student resource. In my first year at Smith, pre-concentration, I began volunteering at the museum by working at community events like Second Friday. Through this opportunity I learned about the Student Museum Educator (SME) program, in which students work as members of the education team to design and lead K–12 tours. When I became a SME in my sophomore year, I found that there was so much more to the job than leading visitors around the galleries. Soon I was learning about the balance between providing context and allowing people to organically explore the artworks through dialogue. As an English major, art history minor and education-focused Museums Concentrator, I was academically versed in the importance of conversation, and knew of the multitude of interpretations that could emerge from a text or object. Being a SME and working with a range of visitors gave me real-world insight into the value of the process. In my more than two years at the museum I have given upwards of 60 customized tours to visitors ages 3 to 83. Perhaps my most memorable was with a group of fourth-graders who debated the landscape sta- tus of Ed Ruscha’s screenprint Mocha Standard. Watch- ing those students confidently discuss this artwork on the final stop of our tour made me realize the depth to which people of all backgrounds can engage with a work of art with just a little prompting and support. This led me to hone my interest in museum education to the concept of interpretation. Over the next year I worked on a series of object-specific activity cards for families. Over interterm, I participated in the course Collecting 101 and thought more deeply about how objects tell stories, and how people can come to hear those stories without needing a guide to explicitly lay them out. Cumulatively, this led to my Museums Concentration capstone, for which I designed and wrote an online self-guided tour based upon my gallery teaching experiences. It was the perfect way to combine my major, minor and practical experienc- es from the concentration. Using open-ended questions and accessible language, this five-stop tour gave adults and families the tools to move throughout the museum with confidence, without an in-person mediator. I have had the unique privilege of engag- ing with SCMA on many levels: in my classes across departments (including English, Spanish, art history and even chemistry), as a staff member and as a Museums Concentrator. This trifecta enriched my academic ex- perience at Smith, gave me a home on campus and led me to a career interest in interpretation by helping me realize that “education” is a dynamic category. For ex- ample, this past summer I worked as an editorial intern at Artforum magazine, where I had the opportunity to explore interpretation from the outside. I came to realize that critics, like the institutions they write about, dissem- inate content that helps people understand, acting in their own way as mediators. During my time at Smith, I have adopted as my own SCMA’s core value of connecting art and people. And through my multifaceted access to the museum, I have learned the invaluable lesson that this mission can be accomplished in many ways. Natalie Sandstrom ‘19J is an English language and literature major and Museums Concentrator