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The summary of the intern

I take 6 weeks intern in my city- Changchun, China. I choose the institution of a local senior citizens college. In the process, I was mainly responsible for two tasks, assisting two teachers in Fine Arts to develop teaching strategies, and to prepare annual China-Korea calligraphy and painting exhibition of the elderly. During the process of assisting teachers of the class, I have the chance to know more traditional paintings. This may help me in my future study and work, especially in China. Another important thing of the intern is to prepare the exhibition. I have the chance to join the whole process of the exhibition, which give me experience to learn how to prepare an exhibition. In some aspects, I have some problems and difficulties, teachers and supervisors help me a lot. I really thankful these people who help me, I also thank to them to give me the chance to join the exhibition. I can get more knowledge about the traditional art that both in Chinese and Korean. I also can get general idea about how to prepare an exhibition. We have some problems in my city for dealing with art, through this intern; I have more experience and idea about the situation in my country.

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The final thing of our exhibition is the distallation. We need to organize all artworks and catalogue. There are some Korean artworks which are as gifts to our school, so we also need to protect them and put them in our store. Other Korean works, we need to send them back. I need to connect with Korean staff to organize this work. The hard thing is hard to find suitable transport to send them back. They need special care in the process, however, in my city; it is hard to find a company which especial deal with artwork. We just can do some protection by ourselves, and then send them to Korean. After the distallation, we also need to create the database for our artworks. We need to take photos for all works, and then give them back. Some works are as gifts to the school, we just deal them as same as the Korean works, most of them are packed in the store. We also need to arrange the file of this exhibition and the event later. The exhibition and the event will be as a significant achievement of our school in this year.  We need to use this to apply more budgets from local government. The exhibition is the main point of my intern, after this, I still assist our teachers in the class.

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We make this exhibition open to public, so we also have an educational tour. Audience can book for the tour, they can learn more about traditional paintings and calligraphy in this exhibition. The family members of our students are the main part of the audiences. They can know more about their family member. This is also the strategy of the school; they can show the public their work in this year. We also have some talks with Korean artist during the exhibition. They visit some of our classes and have the chance to study Chinese painting. We also can have the experience to see traditional Korean art and crafts. These crafts are interested me, the technics and the colour are really different with us. The paintings, we have similar style, but their paintings are more in colour; they also explain to us their themes and skills. However, audiences are limit in special level. There are less young people attract in this exhibition, as I took the note, the average age of our audiences is over 38. This is really a sad thing. This is the situation in my city. We don’t have so many art exhibitions open to the public, and people not have chance to experience for art. Moreover, for traditional art, young people have no interest in it. The government and the environment not have efficient solution to deal with this problem.

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This year has a big celebration of our party. So, in China, almost every institution, company has an event to celebrate for our government. Our school also have the celebration in July; the exhibition is a part of the event. The opening of the exhibition is also in the same day of the opening of the event. We decide to do them together in our assembly hall. So, the prepared aspects of the opening are different with other exhibitions. We also need clean the hall, prepare the food and the talk, and invite news media. Besides these points, we also need to organise some shows that include play, songs and dances. These are normal aspects in Chinese show.  All of these are prepared by our students. These students are really had experience and interests to do this kind event. We just need to decide what kind of shows need to play early, then they will organise them as soon as possible. This process is prepared a month ago. For the opening, we just need to think about the food and the talk. The food is also not a problem because we have a cooking class in our school; the students can do that for us. We invite some famous artists who are famous in traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy to lead the talk. They can attract more audiences. The opening is successful, everything is great.

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The most important thing is display design. Just as I mentioned before, I really interest in the exhibition design. How can we deal with so much art works, how can we introduce them in this gallery? We have enough staff to prepare the exhibition, we ask for volunteers from students. The exhibition will open on Monday, we just need to meet on Saturday, and do the work. The gallery is on the fifth level of the building which just near the main building. We have clear signs for the direction of the exhibition, we also have poster outside. Everything looks great. We have half a level for the exhibition which is really big space. The interesting thing of the room is we have some movable “walls”. There are some flexible boards which can separate the space in different parts. So, we can have different space for different style artworks. However, we still have too much artwork that can’t be efficient displayed. There is not enough space between each works, especially in traditional Chinese paintings. We have too much works to display; I think some works must be cancelled in this exhibition.  However, they decide to exhibit them all. I can give you an image to show the final result of the exhibition design which is really crowd for artworks. With the help of students, we finish the process in 4 hours. It is a fast process; the final thing is to prepare the opening.

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Design for the exhibition

In this exhibition, we have limit budgets, so we decide to do the design by ourselves. The design includes label, poster, and catalogue. Our courses include Photoshop and Photography. So I just need to connect with some students, let them to do these work. I really have a trouble in this stage. These students, although I call them students, but they are really my mother, even my grandmother age, this gap leads to some problems. We really have different ideas of the design, but how can I say it, we have different background and age; it is hard to decide who is right. And in China, we must give more respects to old people, usually we can’t against them. If you do this, the problem is up to your moral trust. Finally, I leave the decision to our teachers, I just response to print them out. This makes me think about it, how I can deal with people later; I must face this in future. However, this stage is complete in their help. We need to do the design work only; the advertising part belongs to our supervisors. We want to make this exhibition open to the public, so they will communicate with newspapers and local government.

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Prepare for catalogue

The next stage of the exhibition is communication with artists. In this stage, we need talk to all artists and confirm the information of artworks. As we know, we need to write the catalogue and introduce these artworks and artists. This exhibition aims to communicated with other people who interesting in art, so we also want to introduce more information of the art style and skills. I need to talk with artists of traditional Chinese paintings. There are some popular themes of Chinese painting, such as animals, plants, and landscape paintings. Our artists also choose these themes to create paintings. In China, we use some animals and pants to express our emotion that means some kind of objects have special meanings. I know some of them, for example, orchid means honest, fish means wealthy.  However, some objects need artist to explain their purpose. I need to check this information. The different thing of this exhibition is there are so much works. There are more than 60 works that only in traditional Chinese Paintings. I also need to connect with Korean staff, to make sure their works. I saw the gallery before, but I also question in how we can display so many works in one time. However, in this stage I just need to concern and check the information for the catalogue.