Working with Lulu

By: Chris Rossi, Associate Curator of Exhibitions, Fenimore Art Museum

Chris usually blogs for the Fenimore Art Museum. TFM and FAM share staff and this post is about her experience working on Wild Times!

One of the pleasures of working for Fenimore Art Musuem is the great opportunity it affords my daughter, Nicky. I have taken her along on design and installation jobs throughout the country since she was a very young child. So, what better way for a teen with museum background to spend their summer than volunteering at Fenimore Art Museum and The Farmers’ Museum? This year, in addition to helping with educational programs, Nick has provided us with the illustrations for Wild Times: A New York Animal Road Trip.

Filling in as Lulu, Max’s sister and fellow traveler in Wild Times, Nicky created all the drawings for the Naturalist Notebook – an interactive feature in the exhibition that details the natural habitats & habits of the New York animals we explore in the exhibition. It’s been fun for her to ‘channel’ Lulu and imagine how a fellow teen might illustrate his or her trip across the state. Trips to the Big Duck on Long Island and excursions to New York City, the Adirondacks and Catskills helped to round out the on-site Wild Times travel experience for Nicky. With the help of my computer I was able to take Nicky’s drawings and translate them into the flip panel notebook interactive for our exhibit. It’s been great fun for us to collaborate as a mother daughter team on this part of exhibit.