I'm interning fresh out of undergrad, and it's my first time I've had a lot of time handling art beyond setting up student shows. I've read about collections management and done tons of informational interviews with folks from the field, so I have heard plenty of stories.

But last week I had to work with some porcelain from the Ming and Qing dynasty, and man, I really found myself tearing up. It was such a strange feeling, interacting with a piece that has passed through so many hands. It had been around through the things I spent so long studying in the classroom.

(It actually was a negative experience; I was told I would have help from an expert who failed to show, so it was all on me and the mixture of oh God, please do not let me mess this up and raw emotion from working with them was a lot!)

I had a similar experience a few weeks earlier working with a Victorian death portrait, just coming home feeling a lot of things.

Anyway, wondering if y'all have stories to share and feel comfortable doing so. I'd like to think I'm getting a thicker skin as we go along, but I have more porcelain to work with (which I WILL have help with) and I'm expecting it to be a similar process, but hopefully with more awe and less terror. What a privilege it is to work with material culture :)