Bridging the Valley: Building Connections at the National Parks
Image: World's Most Beautiful Office: Yosemite Valley.
By Heather Glenny
B.A. Art History, 2016
Summer Intern at Yosemite Museum
Read about our summer interns on the Out West student blog. Throughout the summer, the Center's interns and Research Assistants will be sending in virtual postcards, snapshots and reports on their summer work.
The Yosemite Museum is a microcosm of the Park Service. Though we don't wear the green and khaki uniform, we are charged with the same duty as any park ranger: to conserve and protect, to enable enjoyment for all people and for all time. The museum may only have a modest plot of two galleries, but its collection contains over 4 million items. I get to put my (gloved) hands on the entire collection. I'll often assist coworkers in inventories or rehousing objects through which I've been learning how to safely handle delicate art and artifacts. However, the project I've designed for my summer is primarily research based so I spend the majority of my time in the Research Library. Here, I investigate sources to create Wikipedia pages for figures and events related to the park and also am developing a blog for the park website that will be a sort of 'Curator's Corner' where I choose interesting item(s) from the collection and write about why they're so important, historically rich, or just plain cool.
It's a pretty cool year to be at Yosemite. June 30, 2014 marked the 150th anniversary of the Yosemite Grant. When Director of the NPS, John Jarvis, came to speak to employees on the anniversary, he emphasized a new aggressive push to appeal to the millennial generation. He played a video promoting youth to 'find your park' (made by a famous ad agency). It was fast, vibrant, engaging, and utterly corporate-sponsored. Afterward, a number of rangers ran up to me; “You're young. What'd you think?” I told them honestly that the video itself seemed to be trying a bit hard—it moved so fast even I felt old—but that the message and the intention are all great. There's no question that America's millennials would love the parks if they just got out to them. Many people in the park are averse to increasing social media or even making internet more easily available at the park. Their chief complaint is that it disconnects young people from where they are and isolates them with their glowing screens. But young people don't want to be isolated. They want to connect. They want to be constantly sharing the world around them. The park is finally seeing that connection can be an enormous tool. As my internship primarily involves digital media and finding ways to share the amazing collections and rich history of Yosemite, I feel I have an active role in helping the park reach these new goals.
On my first day at the Museum, I read a short chapter in a slim volume about curating cultural history. The message was simple: show people something they can relate to. People are interested in what they understand, in making connections to a world that at first seems so foreign. With my blog, I hope to ignite, expand, and fuse connections to the art of this amazing park.
Read more at the Out West Blog for Summer Interns »
