I took a sick day yesterday and stayed home. We are getting the museum ready to install a new exhibit, so we have someone there painting the gallery where the new exhibit is going. Normally, it doesn’t bother me too much, but he’s also painting the two offices on either side of me and the hallway outside my office. (My office did not need to be painted, for which I am very thankful.) With that being said, the paint fumes got to me on Tuesday and caused me to have a headache and get a bit nauseated. Even though I kept the door shut to my office, I do occasionally have to leave my office, so I could not completely avoid the paint fumes. When I woke up yesterday with a bad headache and still slightly nauseated, I just called in sick and stayed home. I knew it would get worse if I’d gone into work.
The new exhibit will be interesting. I usually only help when needed for exhibits, but because our exhibits person left and the new one does not start until January 3, I have been the one who has mostly curated this exhibit. With some help from my colleagues, I chose what paintings and objects we would use. I have also designed the exhibit layout. I hope it all comes together as I have it planned. Most of the times, exhibits are planned, but for various reasons things change here and there. Rarely do they look like what they were originally envisioned to be. I don’t think that will be the case with this one. It’s largely my vision, so I hope I get to implement it the way I want. Technically, it’s going to be two exhibits in one gallery, something else that was my idea. One of the exhibit and a small part of the other correspond to my dissertation research. I am excited to put that research to good use. I’ll even be presenting a lecture on part of my research in February.
If all of this comes together as planned and is not changed by my coworkers, then I’ll be taking pictures of it and creating a portfolio of my work. I need to do that anyway with the classes I’ve taught for the museum and the public programs I have organized. Now, I can add exhibit preparation to my skill set.
By the way, our painter is nowhere near as cute as the one above. He’s a nice guy, but he’s not much to look at.
Joe
The Closet Professor 
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