Students find their muses: An inside look at museums
By Elyse Foreman and Olivia Moss
As San Francisco residents, Lowell students live in a city full of educational opportunities. We live in districts rich with history, from the Mission’s murals to the Castro’s LGBTQ pride flags. The many museums scattered throughout the city offer us insight into culture, science and history.
Some Lowell students are using these museums to pursue their passions. Among them are seniors Julianna Eng, Nicholas Fung and Karen Chen, who have found communities and opportunities volunteering or working in museums around the city.
Eng has a paid internship in the Art Speak program at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Since the beginning of last school year, Eng has been working in the museum’s education department for youth outreach, where she meets with local artists and exhibition curators and organizes family programs for the museum. Last summer, she worked with the curatorial department.
Eng discovered her passion for art and history after taking AP World History in her sophomore year at Lowell. Before taking this class, Eng was focused on pursuing a career in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, but she credits Lowell’s social studies department with opening her mind to other opportunities.
After working at the Asian Art Museum, Eng says that she has developed a deeper connection to her own culture. “I think I was going in with a very superficial view of Asian art and just history in general before I started working here,” Eng said. “The museum has really taught me to understand my culture a lot better.”
To Eng, the museum is much more than just a collection of objects. “I think that the Asian Art Museum might seem boring at first glance because it’s a bunch of old artifacts locked away in darkly lit encasings that don’t really explore the full potential of what they are,” Eng said. “But I think that it’s really important to go on tours with docents because they’re super knowledgeable and you get the history and the story behind [the artifacts].”
“The museum has really taught me to understand my culture a lot better.”
These artifacts are only a fraction of the Asian Art Museum’s collection. Eng’s favorite exhibit at the moment is a digitized representation of Muhammad, the founder of Islam and a prominent figure in Islamic culture. The exhibit transforms Muhammad into a show of light and sounds for visitors. Eng also pointed to the K-Pop fashion bash that the museum held last November. Korean fashion influencers spoke at the event, which also included pop-up stations on fashion design, photography, makeup and accessories.
Eng hopes that exhibits like these will continue to attract other teenagers. “I just think that everyone should go to a museum now. Honestly they are much more entertaining than anything you’ll find on the internet,” Eng said.
Fung has been working at the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum, for four months. At the museum, he leads demonstrations such as cow eye dissections, flower dissections, plankton presentations and magic tricks. A big part of his job is entertaining visitors and enhancing their experience there, according to Fung. “It’s a learning opportunity and it’s an opportunity to gain work experience, so it’s not just a meaningless sort of job,” he said.
One of the things Fung loves about working at the museum is getting to meet people from all over the country and other parts of the world. “For some it’s their first time, for some it’s like their millionth time, but everyone is always just so excited to be there,” said Fung.
Because he had frequently visited the Exploratorium as a kid and because he lived nearby, Fung decided to search for summer opportunities there and ended up applying to the position.
“For some it’s their first time, for some it’s like their millionth time, but everyone is always just so excited to be there.”
Fung’s favorite area to work at is the drawing board, an interactive exhibit in which visitors move a board and then allow it to swing like a pendulum against a colorful pen, creating beautiful patterns. Tickets for the drawing board are free and are given out on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Fung’s favorite exhibit is “Out Quiet Yourself,” located in the sound section of the museum in Gallery 3. In this exhibit, visitors walk as quietly as they can across a gravel pit, often competing with their friends to create the least amount of noise possible.
Fung thinks the mouse exhibit in Gallery 4 is underrated. He likes to just sit and watch the three mice–Latte, Frappe and Algernon–run around and play.
While Fung loves the Exploratorium, his favorite museum is the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, which he used to frequent as a kid.
Because Fung has already been to most of the museums in San Francisco, he doesn’t visit museums very often in his home city. However, when he goes to another state or country he visits the museums there. Fung thinks museums are a great way to hang out with friends and be social while learning at the same time.
“You can spend the whole day [at the Exploratorium]; there are a million different things to see so it’s not like you run out of things,” Fung said. “There are so many great demonstrations that you can’t really see elsewhere, like I’ve never seen another museum do a cow eye dissection…the Exploratorium is just really a unique hands-on learning environment which not a lot of museums are.”
Another unique San Francisco museum is the California Academy of Sciences, where Chen has been volunteering for three years. Chen works in the Teen Advocates for Science Communication (TASC) program, where she works with other volunteers to create interactive ways to teach visitors about the museum’s exhibits. She is also in the leadership design team, a leadership position within the TASC community, where she designs and tests interactive lessons for other volunteers to teach.
To Chen, these programs are a “childhood dream-come-true.” She is passionate about making science education accessible to the public, and was inspired to join the program because of field trips that her elementary school took to the Academy of Sciences.
“We’re so surrounded by culture and art and science. We are where stuff happens. To be involved in that is the most amazing experience that anyone can have.”
Chen’s favorite exhibit is a new addition to the Academy’s aquarium: a coral reef exhibit that features flashlight fish. In it, visitors enter a dark dome lit only by glowing fish. Chen is also excited about a new coral reef segment in the museum’s planetarium show, which is voiced by Ming-Na Wen, the actress who voiced Mulan in Disney’s Mulan. “I was like, ‘Wow, Mulan saved us from the Huns and now she’s saving the coral reefs,’” Chen said.
Another exhibit that Chen hopes teens will visit is the Academy’s living roof. This roof is studded with seven hills which represent the seven hills of San Francisco. They’re decorated with native plants and edged by solar panels. The roof also provides insulation for the museum and collects excess rain water to prevent polluted runoff.
Exhibits like these are important for spreading awareness about important topics like sustainability, according to Chen. She thinks that teens should take advantage of opportunities to visit museums for free, such as neighborhood free days.
The next free days for the California Academy of Sciences are from September 23–25. The Asian Art Museum is free to visitors on the first Sunday of every month, and the Exploratorium is free 5–6 times a year, the next confirmed dates being September 22 and October 21.
These three museums are only a sample of the many museums that enhance the culture of San Francisco. “We’re so lucky to live where we are,” Chen said. “We’re so surrounded by culture and art and science. We are where stuff happens. To be involved in that is the most amazing experience that anyone can have.”
