1 Life at the Museum T: Timothy Welsh A: Ari N: Narration P: Museum worker P: Hello. T: Hello P: Hey Tim T: How you doing? Good morning I ll take him to the lockers and we ll get rid of his bag and stuff like that. T: Hi my name is Tim Welsh, I m a security guard at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art. N: A couple weeks ago, I visited the RISD Museum of Art. While walking around, I ran into Tim. I asked him what I should see in the museum. What I got was a mini lesson in art history. In about five minutes, he talked about mid 20th century realist paintings, ancient Japanese sculptures, and the challenges of getting the public to appreciation art. I asked Tim if he d like to help me make an audio tour of the museum. He agreed, and the following week, he graciously came in on his day off to show me around. T: Ok we re on the sixth floor. Ancient Asia, ancient Egypt, textiles, and contemporary. A: And you re just turning on all the lights there, wow there it goes. T: So we ve lit the mummy up. Thats one of the fun things about being here. I get to see the art close up. I get to spend some time in the morning with nobody here. I get to put the shades up either side of a Van Gogh. Its great. Uh school groups coming in to see the mummy, that's one of my favorite things. They, they don't understand how old it is really. The teachers have a job to do there. Plenty of wall text, kids don't read that. They react beautifully to what they see. A lot of adults intellectualize the whole thing and they read everything and they barely look at the um at the object or the mummy. We try to get them to act more like kids. It s important that people look, and they ve kind of lost that. A: And uh how did you end up working here?
2 T: That s a good question. I might answer it. I ve been an art kid I mean from since I can remember. Always art always drawing always take me to the museum please. Always did that. I worked at the museum of fine arts right out of college. In Boston. Later on, changed a few jobs, and I ended up working at Harvard. A: The museum? T: Uh no, well no at the law school. N: Tim landed a job as a clerk at the law school. T: But they had a great art museum, the Fogg. So I was always over there on my lunch breaks. I took classes in the evenings in adult education. I ended up teaching there for ten years after they pulled me in and said A: What did you end up teaching? T: Drawing. Yeah projective geometric drawing skills for architects and city planners. N: Tim s drawing professor had noticed that Tim was no ordinary Adult Education student. After only one semester, the professor hired Tim as a teaching assistant. After 17 years at Harvard, Tim opened a gallery in Boston. Then we went down to Florida, where he worked at Eckerd College. After a while, he came back up to New England. But it was during the recession and museum jobs were hard to come by. T: Um things were rough. So I had a few friends here in Providence I decided that I would make my re entry after being away for a decade here. And uh I applied for other jobs here, but this was open and I said I m not a proud person and I enjoy it, but I would rather be doing more. A: What is your official title? T: Um I m a security guard. A: And so do you feel like you have a lot more art background than the other guards here? T: I do. some do some are painters some have degrees, some have advanced degrees in the arts. And I ve always taken time off and I go to museums I mean if I travel that s what I aim for. So I know a lot about a little and I know a little about a lot. And so I can cover the bases. But when people say to me do you know anything about 16th century woodblock printing or do you know anything about Greek or Roman funerary art, I might not know the numbers and the names, and the locations and the facts, but I can look at anything and I can discuss it in aesthetic terms. And that's where I think we re having a problem in museums, that people are
3 reading the labels they re not looking at the pictures, and I wish that I could just shake some people and just say why don't you just spend a minute and just look at it. I would love to talk to everyone who comes in here but that's not my job. N: Imagine how frustrating this is for Tim, to watch every day as simple people like me approach artistic masterpieces, read the label, and then walk away. He s like a sports announcer who s not allowed to actually tell people what s happening in the game. T: We re just entering the buddha chamber and the sort of allé that leads up to it, a room full of bodhisattvas. It s where people slow down. N: The room is dark, and filled with metal statues. The tallest are about four feet high. Then we enter a smaller room, where a twelve foot tall wooden Buddha sits cross legged against the far wall. T: The thing is, what a lot of people don t understand, is that this is not how it would have been seen. It s isolated. It s good for viewing, but it s not great for understanding. A: Understanding like how it was set up. T: In situ. That's right. and they don't get it. N: Currently, the statue is chipped and unpainted. The hands appear to have rotted significantly, and there are large cracks in the arms and shoulders. T: If I just start to paint a picture and tell them that it would have been heavily painted, lacquered, it would have had real cloth thrown over the shoulders it would have been covered with flowers and fruit over the lap. Offerings. Bodhisattvas and um smaller images of the Buddha would have been throughout the temple. Everything would be different about it. I m not crazy about the setting. Ropes had to go up because we had a lot of people just charge it. They love it. That s why the guards are here. We re not so concerned about theft as we are about accidental damage. And then in the age of the selfie the worst thing that people can do is approach an artwork turn around and then adjust they back up, into the artwork. A: And do you see that happen every now and again? T: Every day. I don't think a day has gone by since I ve been started here about a year and a half ago that's someone hasn t backed into or almost backed into something. We bark before they do they hit. That s all there is to it. And we have to be very careful not to use the T word. Touch. We don't want people to touch things, but you can t say don't touch if they haven't touched. So the key phrase is not too close please. [music]
4 T: What I think I ll do is take you up to European paintings to the impressionist gallery and we ll sort of, it will culminate the visitor experience will culminate there. For some reason, I mean there are quite a few of them, reasons, it s the most popular place in the museum. T: This is tricky. I m gonna just put one shade up and if that doesn t suffice then if I don't think the shades will do it and they might [shade sounds] and they won t. I m gonna go put some lights on. Well, we re gonna go put some lights on. This is what I mean. This is how I enter the room in the morning. The rooms. A: Yeah it s all dark. T: And I put the shades up put the lights on and it s fun. They belong to me. And that's a funny thing I ve heard other guards say that's too. You own them so, for the day. N: After turning the lights on, Tim and I walk into the Impressionist gallery. It s a small room with cream colored walls. T: So when people come up here and they walk in here they turn, they see the Monet word. Ahhh! And you hear that. You hear the noise. They haven t really looked yet, they just saw A: It s just a recognition that this a good T: This is the good stuff. Then they get a load of her. N: On the opposite wall, there s a large painting of a young woman in a white silk dress lying on a couch. A: And that's another.who s that is that Monet? or is that? T: Manet. And he s really, he s the king he stahted it all. There s my accent, stahted mahden aht. So anyway, she's also very comfortable, it s a bit of um off center, she's sprawling, it s not formal, the funny thing is, this is his sister in law. A: Oh really? T: Yeah. She married Manet s brother. Ok now. Ready? That s him. N: Tim points across the room to the portrait of a man. T: That s Manet. Where s he looking? A: He s looking right at her.
5 T: Where s she looking? A: She's looking at him. T: Brother and sister in law. A: Hmmm T: I m sorry but if my brother painted a portrait of my wife and it looked like that we would have a talk. We would have a long talk. Haha. And I you know what, you can t really say that to a visitor. I m making it amusing a little bit, and no one ever makes that connection on their own. A: Is it sometimes frustrating for you to see people coming in and not able to tell them about all the things you want to tell them about? T: Yeah yeah because I want to tell them, but then sometimes you know what you find that I ve learned to say, would you like to hear a little bit more about this painting? Because sometimes they do not. They don t have time, cause they don t know what they're gonna hear either they don t know it s good. You know they don t know that it s gonna be well informed and rather brief. They just don t wanna hear it. No we re in a hurry, or, we re good. So that's why you have to sort of gently just be around and watch people I I constantly make allusions to like the faces they make. They make a face, then I open up mine and say you need a little help. [music] N: So if you find yourself with some free time in Providence, Rhode Island, think about visiting the RISD Museum. If you do go, forget about the labels, try simply looking at the paintings and sculptures. And, if you make the right face, you might end up learning a thing or two.