El Paso Museum of History - Week 4 [Connor Kaufmann]

Time has really flown by. I still cannot believe this last week is already over. Now it is time to reflect on it all as a whole and begin the tedious process of packing and getting everything ready for moving off to college. The lessons, skills, and work ethic I learned throughout the duration of my internship, accompanied with the fun times I had, made it an unforgettable experience. I really am going to miss my coworkers, my office, and the tasks they made me do. I am also going to miss all of the fun events the staff would put on. Anyways, my last week was just as busy as the previous ones, with the approaching opening days for two new exhibits at the museum. These two new exhibits are named Pasos Urbanos, and Chicano Power. I spent most of this week either working in exhibit prep, or working with the summer camp hosted at EPMH. 




The two pictures above depict the brand new Pasos Urbanos exhibit before it opens to the public! All of the pictures are lined up and ready to be mounted on the wall! I would like to highlight second picture, which depicts the famous Ciudad Juárez X that we can see from both sides of the border. This picture was taken from the border highway that goes right alongside the U.S. Mexico border. 

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday all consisted of me helping out with the summer camp by rounding up the kids, making sure they got picked up safely, and making sure they understood the tasks at hand. As I briefly stated in my previous blog post, the kids in the summer camp spent most of their week working on the 3D scanning of their faces and museum artifacts. Yes, that's right, they also practiced scanning museum artifacts! After discussing the summer camp a bit with my supervisor, she explained to me that the summer camp was the beginning of a big project that the museum had in mind, which was to start 3D scanning and printing certain artifacts at the museum so that people could touch them and have a more interactive experience. This immediately lit up a light bulb in my mind because I had seen and heard about something like this before. If you all remember, we experienced the same interactive 3D printing of museum artifacts at the ¡Pleibol! Exhibit in the National Museum of American History during Washington Week! When I heard about the El Paso Museum of History’s plan of making this happen, it made me genuinely very happy to know that small museums and cultural institutions around the U.S. are taking the same initiatives that the Smithsonian and its Institutions are also taking. I feel relieved that the history  museum in my home town of El Paso is working very hard to be just as accessible as the Smithsonian. Speaking about accessibility, the camp also brought in a special guest speaker who was from El Paso’s Council of the Blind, and she spoke about the need for everyone to stress the accessibility for blind people in all public spaces. She also spoke about the necessity for braille in public spaces, which inspired the summer camp students to learn a bit of braille so that they could make their pop-up exhibit accessible to the blind. On Friday, their summer camp sadly came to an end. However, the students left with large smiles on their faces, and new knowledge that will prove to be useful at many points in their lives. Aside from helping out with the camp, I also assisted the staff with many miscellaneous tasks having to do with exhibit prep. These tasks ranged from helping patch walls with drywall, to painting, to sanding, bringing artifacts to the exhibit areas, and even interacting with local photographers who dropped off their pictures for our Pasos Urbanos exhibit. This exhibit highlighted many local photographers who won the contest EPMH put out a few months ago. The competition asked all local photographers to take the best pictures possible of our beautiful borderland and submit them to the competition. Our team at EPMH is so great at teamwork that we are able to get everything done quickly and efficiently in hopes of having a large turnout for opening day. Thanks to all of our hard work, we almost always have large turnouts, which makes it all worthwhile. To end off that week, I also conducted some research on other institutions in the El Paso area that tell the WWII story, and offer activities for children. It was quite difficult to find some organizations that had this, but thankfully I was able to find about two prospective institutions that EPMH could reach out to for future projects.





The first picture above depicts the finished opening sign for the Pasos Urbanos exhibit, and the next two pictures depict exhibit prep work being done in the Chicano Power exhibit. 


Blowing through the weekend, my last two days of Monday August 1st and Tuesday August 2nd came upon me. On both days, I continued working on exhibit prep, but I also assisted with my last few marketing projects that concluded my capstone project at EPMH! These projects consisted of making sure letters of notice for our new exhibits were sent to donors, and doing more research on nonprofit marketing tactics. Right before I was about to leave Tuesday afternoon, I was called into the meeting room which was completely dark. I was confused because I saw there were some people in there, but my supervisor told me to just go in and turn on the light. I did as I was told and to my surprise, the office and staff had thrown a party for me! It was so sweet and unexpected, which made it even better. They gave me a beautiful thank you card, sweets, and great advice for my first year in college! With this, my internship went out with a BANG!




Last but not least, the two pictures above are from the little party the EPMH staff threw for me on my last day. Thank you all for everything! 

Thank you EPMH for an amazing 4 weeks, and memories I will cherish for a lifetime! I would also like to thank everyone who has stood by me and helped me throughout the duration of my YAP experience. I am truly ever grateful for this unbelievably amazing opportunity, and I can not physically express how much I have learned from this whole experience! From the day I received my acceptance email, to the day I left for Washington Week, to the time I have spent at my internship, I have felt the love of my new YAP Familia through and through! I would like to express my sincerest thanks to the administrators, support staff, fellow Yappers, and internship staff for everything. I am most grateful and thankful to all of you. I hope I will see you all soon once again, but until then… do as Christopher Rivas once told me, and “Stay Rad”!


Love,


Connor Kaufmann

YAP 2022

El Paso Museum of History

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