The past few days have been absolutely insane! I've barely had time to breath. After we got back from the trip all over Austria, there was a group of seven of us that all had a mini internship working for an art curator.
The first morning we met at an old, small, unused apartment that we were going to transform into exhibit of sorts. There was a lot of cleaning involved, especially on the first day. It was interesting to see what goes behind exhibits and all the work that is put into it.
We were there for a few hours then were taken to a physiatric hospital (no, they weren't checking us in). There is a famous church there by the name of Kirche am Steinhof. It was designed specifically for the patients at that hospital. So unlike other churches built at that time, it was full of light colors, a lot of white, and at the time it was made, was built so that nobody could hurt themselves.
We met a man named David who was going to be opening an exhibit in the church. He gave us a tour around the exhibit which started in the crypt. The idea was that people would enter the exhibit through the crypt, it represented Madness. There were a lot of pieces of art that were different and required a lot of pondering to try to get the message out of it. David had decided not to put any text anywhere so that people would really have to think about the artwork.
David gave us a tour throughout the crypt explaining art pieces as we went, I wish I could've recorded it, because he did a beautiful job explaining it all to us. I think every single one of us was hanging onto every word he said, it was super interesting! After you go throughout the crypt, you go upstairs into the actual chapel which represented mysticism. That part of the exhibit hadn't been fully completed yet, but he gave us a brief overview of what it was going to be.
After that he had us help with getting ready for the opening night for the next day. We carried wine glasses and made sure everything was set up with the drinks. Then he wanted to complete an art piece containing 50 GIANT balloons that were suspended in the air by a book about diagnostics for the physiatric patients. We spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how we were going to do it. But it ended up behind really cool!
The next day we went back to the crypt for the opening night. We were all a sort of security guard, just to make sure nobody did anything too crazy to the pieces and if anybody had questions we could answer them. (Let's take a minute and remember that Anna doesn't speak any German.) We were there from 6pm to 10pm, which was a little hard to be standing in a crypt for so long, but it ended up being pretty fun! A few people asked me questions in German, and I was able to pick up on enough words that I was able to answer their questions. So that was a confidence booster.
The night was really great,I ended up talking and getting to know some girls from my study abroad group a little better and it was a great experience to be able to work in a professional exhibit. Plus, David, the curator, is absolutely amazing. We all decided that we just wanted to be his best friend, because he's so fun to work with.
One example of this was when Becca and I were sitting at the table where people could come write their comments about the exhibit. Nobody had come all night. David came over and asked if anybody had written anything and we told him no. He then took a pen and said, "I know how to solve this." He then goes and writes, "HORRIBLE!" all along the top of the page. He told us that it would get people writing. Even though Becca and I had a good laugh of it, it actually worked! We had four to five people come write some of their comments (all of them were positive of course). He was great!
Random note: In between this time of internships, I had the opportunity to visit the central cemetery of Vienna. We went literally to see Beethoven's grave. We found it!
On the next day, (Saturday) a group of us wanted to ride bikes along the Danube River. We got there are about 10am, rented some bikes for a couple of hours and had a great time! It was so pretty! It was definitely a great way to start off a Saturday.
Other than that, I've just been attempting to catch up on homework, watching General Conference, and trying my best to get some sleep! I don't think next week will be as crazy, but I'm sure it'll hold it's own adventures that I'm not even expecting. :)
Cheers!
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