This past year I have been training as a docent at the Portland Art Museum. Every Monday I got to attend the amazing docent lectures featuring artists, curators, and other experts connected to the museum like the conservator and various professors. After the lecture I attended the training class where we got to work on improv deftness, open question asking, researching art, reading group dynamics, and many more skills.
The reason I started the docent program was to build another network. At SFC we are constantly thinking about who is in our circle and how do we connect with new people. One of the simplest ways to build new relationships is to start something new. Over the past 9 months I have gotten to know a ton of new people, fellow docents, museum staff, and members of the public. Our philosophy is to simply be ourselves, listen to the stories of others and tell our own story. Sometimes through that people become interested in SFC. If we are never engaging new people in new places we don’t have opportunities to meet people where they are and share God’s love in simple ways through our everyday actions and choices.
What I have found from doing the docent training program has been both a set of skills that easily translate to my work at SFC and a time of sabbath and renewal drinking in beauty and learning for the sake of learning. Asking good questions is pretty much the core of our community, so working on this at the museum has been such a great skill builder for me. Spending time with all sorts of different works and hearing others interpret and react to that work has helped me look at things in new ways and find space to respect passionate reactions to things that are different from my own reactions.
The feeding of my soul at the museum has been profoundly needed this chaotic year. I am totally spoiled getting to spend Mondays at the museum. You see PAM is closed to the public on Mondays. This means I can sit in front of a work for as long as I would like and just be. Other days I just go to the museum to work. I can sit and write in a smaller gallery tucked out of the way or just spend time praying in the European Galleries which are filled with images of Christ. Learning just to know more about our world has been a balm as well. So often I’ve learned for a grade or to improve my performance. This is all about just hearing ideas, learning to look, and being exposed to vast worlds beyond my own. I have particularly appreciated all the things I have learned from our Native American galleries and the photography series we have had.
This next year is a year of refocusing and reducing my commitments, but I am happy to say that I will be at the museums on Monday mornings to learn and on Thursday mornings to lead tours. I’m also going to be a scheduler next year, which means that I get to assign docents to tours each week. I can do this from home and it means I am contributing to the organization that has given me so much already.
Below are just a few of my favorite pieces. I’d love to give tours to folks, so let me know if I can share any of this work or other pieces with you.
-Eilidh
| China, Henan province, Anyang, Hu (Wine Vessel), 13th century/12th century BCE, cast bronze, Museum Purchase: Helen Thurston Ayer Fund, Caroline Ladd Pratt Fund, and Museum auction funds, no known copyright restrictions, 54.30 |
| Iran, unknown kiln, Eight-Piece Tile Ensemble: Flower Vase with Peacocks, Nightingales, and Angels, mid-19th century, stonepaste with polychrome decoration under clear glaze, in cuerda seca technique, Gift of M. Larry and Nancy B. Ottis, no known copyright restrictions, 2011.140.35a-h |
| Shreve & Company, Tea and Coffee Service, ca. 1910, sterling silver, The Margo Grant Walsh 20th Century Silver and Metalworks Collection, © artist or other rights holder, 2003.51.9A-F |
| Philippe de Champaigne, The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1640, oil on canvas, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Edwin Binney, 3rd, no known copyright restrictions, 66.83 |
| unknown Palmyrian artist, Funerary Portrait: Yarkhai son of Ogga and Balya his Daughter, 150/200 CE, limestone, Gift of Mr. Aziz E. Atiyeh, no known copyright restrictions, 54.3 |
| Martha Alf, Two Pears #8, 1988-1990, ink over Xerox on Arches paper, Gift of a private donor, © Martha Alf, 2013.8.7 |
| Edward Weston, Guadalupe, Mexico, from The Fiftieth Anniversary Portfolio: 1902-1952, 1924 (negative); 1951 (print), gelatin silver print, Museum Purchase: Caroline Ladd Pratt Fund, © unknown, research required, 52.149.7 |
| Teri Greeves, She Loved Her People, 2011, raw silk, canvas, wood, glass beads, wood beads, and mother of pearl, Museum Purchase: Funds provided by an anonymous donor, © Teri Greeves, 2014.146.1 |
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