Personal Narrative: My Visit To The Swedish American Museum

There are millions of people around us, the sound is so loud it’s almost unbearable. Everyone is waiting in line to board the SS Nevada, the ship that is going to take us all to Ellis island, the gateway to America. I can hear the chatters of excitement echoing about their freedom in America, but I’m having mixed feelings about leaving. I’m excited to go because I will receive my freedom and be reunited with my mother and father, but I’m also devastated that I have to leave you and the rest of Ireland behind. Tears escape my eyes just thinking about not being able to talk to you every day, but I promise I’ll write like this often once I reach America.

The artifact represents personal objects and meaningful moments, person influence on our own life. This is one of the assignment in our program to share our artifacts toward our colleagues and professors. This will take in more about different culture, uniqueness, identity and values of our schoolmates and how they reflected in their life.

I looked forward to this trip every single year. Driving to get there was almost better than the camping trip itself. The road had big hills that made your stomach drop on the way down, and I always pretended I was on a roller coaster. At the top of one of those hills, there was a wooden sign, painted brown with yellow letters, all in capitals, that said “WICKLUND’S CAMPGROUND”. The driveway was a simple, downhill dirt road that had a bend at the bottom of the decline. Driving around that corner, you could always see the lake sparkling through the thin line of trees because the sun was always shining. It was cloudy that day.

While some may view museums as homes of the dusty, decrypt, and decaying, I think back fondly to the memories I've made in them. When I was four and living in a small apartment in Shaker Heights, Ohio, my father would take me to the Cleveland Museum of Rock and Roll on the weekends when he wasn’t busy working on his MBA at Case Western Reserve University. Every time we visited, I would tell my father that I would grow up to be just like Elvis, to which he would laugh and scoff affectionately. When we moved to Glen Allen, Virginia when I was six, we would occasionally drive up to Washington, D.C. to the Smithsonian Museums. On some Saturdays, we would walk for hours through the halls of art I didn't understand (and still don’t really understand) at the Museum of American Art. On other Saturdays, we would go to the Library of Congress, where I would press my forehead against the glass of the observation deck—much to the dismay of security guards. But perhaps the most significant "museum" I've been in is just a short three-minute drive or seven-minute walk from my suburban home: the Twin Hickory Public Library.

For my pilgrimage, I chose to go to the Burke Museum to see the piece of art that inspired the Seahawks’ logo. On our way to the museum, we encountered some challenges. For instance, my pilgrimage group almost got in a car accident while exiting I-5. Additionally, it was very difficult to get to the Burke Museum on time, because we had underestimated the amount of traffic and the amount of time it would take to find parking. It is ridiculous how parking around the Burke Museum costs $15 and entering the Burke Museum, as a student, costs $7.50. I was disappointed at the total cost of entering the Burke Museum. Often, museums are the best place to learn and it frustrates me that not everyone will have the opportunity to appreciate history. Through the increased cost of gaining knowledge, society has made learning selective and optional.

My family moved to Brooklyn when I was six years old. One of my earliest memories was my father taking my sisters and me to the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza. To us it was much more than a trip to the library; it was an adventure. One cannot go to the library and not visit the Botanical Garden, the Brooklyn Museum, the Soldiers and Sailor’s Arch or last and my personal favorite the Garden of Eden. At least that was what I called it at the time. It wasn’t until my recent trip did I realized it was called the Bailey Fountain... Who knew?

“Are you packed yet?” These are the only words my mom say been saying to me for the last three weeks. We had been planning our trip to Disney World since Easter when my parents surprised me and my siblings with our plan tickets. That was seven months ago. There was now less than 24 hours before we would be heading to the Dubuque Airport and I was just deciding to pack. I was running through a check list in my head: shorts, tanktops, shirts, sweatshirts, jeans, shoes, hats, sunglasses, swimsuits, pajamas, underwear, and bras. Check! Now on to bath stuff: toothbrush, hairbrush, face wash, contacts, contacts solution, makeup and hair ties. Check! I hate packing because of all the dumb rules the airport has. Like the rule where you can’t have any liquids bigger than 5 oz. or whatever it is.

On the de Young Museum’s website allotted for the Art of Americas exhibit, it describes the background and the importance of the different cultures that it chooses to feature through their art. The site chronicles how the collection provides insight into the thriving civilizations of the North and South America before the actual Spanish Conquest, that brought many their demise. It points out the general themes of the entire exhibit itself, “human and divine rule, the importance of ritual life, relationships between this life and the afterworld, shamanism … and adoration of or curiosity about the natural world”. This gives the potential visitor an idea of the background, not only of the pieces,

The museum that I chose is the Philbrook Museum, and on the second floor of this museum is the gallery that I have chosen. It is a 20th century Native American Art gallery called “Identity and Inspiration”. The collection not only holds a very diverse assortment of contemporary Native art, but it also holds a well-documented selection of the artist’s motivations that influenced their creative process. I liked how the exhibit held a very wide range of space in-between each of the object cases. The white walls and clear cases made the gallery seem not as crowded, and the way the objects were spaced out seemed incredibly orderly. In some other museum galleries, the objects seem to be organized culturally or geographically; but in this gallery,

The trip to Washington DC was an amazing experience. Being my first time at Washington, I found it very interesting. I really liked the museums and the all the memorial we went to, but my favorite was the Holocaust museum. The Holocaust in is important history that everyone should know about because it involved millions of people. Because of the Holocaust, millions of blameless people who were Jewish, died. The Museum is divided into three parts which are the Nazi Assault, Final Solution, and the Last Chapter. Each floor explain the steps by which a group becomes the target of discrimination, persecution and violence.

The boat ride to America was long, 14 days to be exact, and the whole time I felt utterly dysfunctional. It’s as if I could see all my surroundings and I knew what was going on around me, but my body felt foreign to me. I couldn’t think straight. Hunger was nonexistent. I soon forgot what it was like to sleep. My eyesight got blurry. Oppressive grief hung like a cloud above my head, following me everywhere I went. I felt strange. I was brought back to reality when a hand, of a white man in a white jacket, waved in front of my face. I blinked slowly and frowned. When did I end up here? I don’t remember walking here. I racked my mind for answers, but all I was left with was a blank space. He quickly examined me and unlike most, he took a piece

An internship at the High Museum in the modern and contemporary department will help me gain experience working with works of art and working in a museum with other people. This will help with my future plans of working in education and research on art, whether that is in a university or museum setting. I want to be able to research art and tell people about my research, or just telling people about famous works of art. Ideally, I would work with both religion and art and how the two have influenced each other throughout history. Working in the modern and contemporary section would assist with this, as there is not always outright religious imagery, but religious themes are still prevalent in these works. I would like to work in a curatorial

April 8, 2017. This is the day that my mom and I went to the MVA, and I got my drivers permit. The excitement hit the day I had gone to get it. My cousin and sister had both told me that I wasn't well prepared and that I wouldn't pass the test. Little did they know that I would prove them wrong. All night I had studied and eventually I started to doubt myself. I felt like my cousin and sister were right about me not passing the test, but I prepared myself anyways. The morning of I had waken up early and began to study for yet another time. At around 12 p.m I gathered all the documents I needed and left my house. On the way to the MVA, I started to laugh and smile as I usually do when I get nervous. I went inside the building and stood in line

The Nordic Heritage Museum was a lot more than I expected, I very much enjoyed it. I went a couple of weeks ago with some of my roommates and at the time they had Yulefest going on which was something very new to me, I had no clue what it was so I did more research on it and asked some of those who were there about it because there were many vendors there selling different products. The many exhibits that they had there were cool, there were many visuals its one of the better museums that I had been to. I believe that there were some things that have had an impact on American culture.

Last summer, a small group of my friends were selected to travel to Washington D.C. for a week. It was a hot, bright Monday morning when we departed. As the trip set out, everyone was silent, and they refused to talk to one another. After a few hours of driving, the students started to talk to each other but only from the same school. Before we arrived at the cabin we were going to stay at, the instructors that were hosting the trip wanted to go to Walmart and stock up on food.