Museum Shenanigans

Well, I'm back at the museum. I've waited a whole year for this, and hot damn if it doesn't feel good to be back in my element. Now, for those of you who think museum work is stuffy or technical or just plain boring, allow me to enlighten you as to the reality. Working in a museum (or at least working at my museum) is like an episode of mythbusters on some serious crack. As per example, on my first day all those many months ago, my boss took me into the collections and showed me some of the highlights. The first thing he pulled out? A shrunken head. No I am not kidding. I later found out that there are, in fact, three shrunken heads in our collection, one of which is clearly european, suggesting that somebody's expedition/missionary work/vacation didn't end the way they planned.

At the moment, however, I'm getting down and dirty with a collection of very strange weaponry that looks like someone Frankensteined together Indian (as in the country of India) and Japanese fighting tools with some very messed up results. The brightly colored and ornate style of Indian art and the sleek lines of the Japanese aesthetic do not mesh well, if at all. So it's up to me to figure out what the hell happened with these items and, if possible, return them to constituent parts. I'll also be working on dating the various pieces of a suit of samurai armor that was apparently cobbled together at some point. And in between all of that I'll be filing away donut shaped rocks and mummy hands in glass cases, or even wearing a mask and gloves while transporting taxidermied animals that may or may not have mercury in their fur/feathers.

It's gonna be a hell of a summer.