Brett Nystrom- Public History

  • Week 15 Blog- Fall 2023

    This was my last week working as an intern at the Museum of Military History in Osceola. I am very grateful for the opportunity to work with the artifacts and learn how museums operate regarding exhibits, grants, and much of the behind-the-scenes work that ensures the museum can stay afloat. During my time as an intern, I gained experience working in multiple positions around the museum. I learned what it means to work in archives, as a curator, and speaking with the museum guests who come from around the World.

    Interning at the museum also helped me understand better what I would want to do regarding any future career. Precisely how I would like to work as a curator or in the archives of museums. Learning how to use PastPerfect and strategies for organization will better prepare me for when I hopefully work in a museum setting one day.

    Overall, I hope to continue working with the Museum of Military history moving into the future in some capacity to continue to foster relationships and continue to construct my network of public history professionals.

  • Week 13 Blog- Fall 2023

    The museum director is attempting to renovate the most popular and prominent WWII exhibit to include new walking space and artifacts. Similar to the Vietnam War and WWI exhibits, we see this as an opportunity to build the museum section with a specific narrative, selecting artifacts that will allow us to tell stories through macro and micro-histories. We will hopefully be starting with the establishment of Nazi Germany and ending with the time just before the Korean War.

    Due to the increased need to create new narratives based on artifacts, we needed to go to the storage to find valuable items potentially. We have already found sand from the Normandy Beaches, WWII medals, and ammunition casings, so it will be interesting to see what other artifacts we can find upstairs. We are looking for things that may help us talk about different aspects of American involvement in WWII, such as documents belonging to African-American soldiers and items that can help people understand difficult histories such as the Holocaust.

    My other job this week was to input numerous artifacts into the PastPerfect. I added the information for a WWII-era jacket, mine detector bag, and a book published by the Standard Oil Company detailing their fleets during the Second World War. It is very interesting working with these items just because of how different they are from each other. It demonstrates very well the various items you can run across when working at an institution such as the Museum of Military History.

  • Week 12 Blog- Fall 2023

    The museum is preparing for Veterans Day, in which the Museum of Military History staff will go downtown to participate in the parade while riding in a WWII-era military jeep. I saw the jeep in the parking lot as I pulled in, and within 30 minutes, the museum director, Chris, allowed me to ride shotgun around the parking lots while we tested how well it ran for long periods. It was one of the highlights of the internship so far. Ultimately, it ran great and should be ready for the Veterans Day parade in Downtown Orlando.

    The museum received a donation from a man who had previously donated naval supplies in the past that are currently on display in the Merchant Guard Exhibit. He brought some interesting artifacts from the destroyer escort USS Vance, including two gunship shells, photographs, hats, and a folder containing congressional documents from the House of Representatives charging the ship’s former commanding officer of crimes during his time in the military. I love archiving pieces like this because I get to read this document that may not have seen the light of day in decades and learn more about how we can construct labels and narratives based on newly arrived documents.

    Since the Welcome Home Vietnam Dinner last week required us to rearrange the interior, this week, we moved all the walls back to their previous positions. Most of the items previously on the walls before the dinner were in storage at the back of the museum, so we needed to put them back up on display throughout the Vietnam War exhibit and the Iraq War exhibit. This presented an exciting opportunity; we could now rearrange the exhibit more fluidly. Unfortunately, Harrison needed to attend an event, so putting the artifacts and frames back up around the exhibit was up to me, which I successfully did just before the museum closed. We have visitors visiting the museum on Tuesday, so the exhibits must be in tip-top shape.

  • Week 11 Blog- Fall 2023

    This week has been very intense as the museum gets ready to host its “Welcome Home Vietnam” dinner. This event is to honor veterans of the Vietnam War and to set up the standard for how the museum will continue working on these events in the future. To prepare for the event, we moved around all the walls around the Vietnam War exhibit to not only highlight the artifacts that we have of the war but also to open up the room for the dining tables.

    We also needed to get more supplies for the dinner in the form of tables, chairs, silverware, and food. A few of us from the museum hopped into a van and attached a trailer to travel to various warehouses and stores to collect everything. All my hours that day were spent going from location to location to gather everything we needed from the shopping list. When I joined the museum as a UCF intern, I did not expect that I would be going on a shopping spree, but I have also learned that there is more to working in a museum than I initially thought. Once we got back to the museum, I hauled chairs and rolled the stables into the dining area that we had created. Unfortunately, I needed to head home for the day, so I could not finish setting up the final layout.

    The dinner was on Saturday, and I was in charge of running the raffle for the event. The “Welcome Home Vietnam” dinner went very well and featured multiple speakers who served in Vietnam, including a South Vietnamese prisoner of war who recounted his life experiences. The museum enlisted Boy Scouts to run the food for the event, who did a great job ensuring that everything went smoothly throughout. In the end, I sold the raffle tickets, gave out prizes, and the dinner concluded.

    Next week, we will be working on what we have been doing over the last few weeks, updating the WWI exhibit, so I hope we can get more done before my internship concludes in December.

  • Week 10 Blog- Fall 2023

    This week was slower than other weeks at the Museum of Military History. Most of the staff at the museum were at the St. Cloud Fall Festival setting up a table representing the museum and some promotional events they would like to advertise. This left me at the museum to do whatever I feel like I needed to get done around the exhibits. I took the initiative to research World War I artifacts to better prepare for when Harrison and I work on rearranging the exhibit and creating new labels for the items. I mainly focused on the artifacts I knew almost nothing about to get something educational out of it. Specifically, I examined the historical role of horses, specifically how Americans took care of and treated the horses that were crucial to logistics during the war. I also read the history behind many of the firearms that the museum possesses from the World War I era, which was interesting since I did not know much, if anything at all, about the weaponry American soldiers in the expeditionary forces, would have used. Hopefully, we will be able to use the information I gathered in the next few weeks.

    Since nobody else was at the museum, I answered questions from people visiting the museum, even though I was not knowledgeable in military history. I did use information that I learned during my time at the museum to construct responses to the visitors, and it demonstrated to me that I have not only learned how to apply myself in museum work but also the military history that I never knew I learned. Otherwise, it was a quiet week, but there are more events and work to do next week, which will take up much of my time.

  • Week 9 Blog- Fall 2023

    This week, Harrison and I continued to work on making the labels for the museum. Before we got to work on the WWI section of the museum, we set up a display case for a pair of Japanese Kimonos that the museum acquired around a month and half earlier from a donation. We went ahead and research all we could on the Kimonos including what the length of the sleeves meant, the color, and the meaning behind the floral designs. Interestingly, there was a lot more to a kimono than I thought so it was fun to go down the rabbit hole of learning about who may have owned these pieces. A marine had brought it back home with him either as a purchase he made while in Japan at the end of the Second World War or as a war trophie so not much is known about them other than that. The labels that we made came out very nice, and looked very professional! Now we will use what we learned working on the kimonos to better make the labels for the WWI exhibit.

    We also helped out with some rearranging at the museum, specifically extending the Vietnam/Cold War exhibits and altering the post-Cold War exhibit. Our job was to move around the barriers separating the exhibits to make room for the most crucial part of the project, moving the humvee which had been in the Cold War section to the theatre room. Since the vehicle had not gas or any form of power, we came together and slowly pushed it across the floor of the museum. While we were pushing, another graduate student at UCF, Michelle Finnegan, sat at the wheel, steering to help bring the humvee to its new home.

  • Week 8 Blog- Fall 2023

    Like the previous weeks, the primary focus of my time at the museum has been spent in the WWI exhibit and on planning out labels. I worked extremely closely with the museum’s curator, Harrison Smith, to better understand the plan for the rest of the semester and the future of the exhibits. The WWI exhibit will be altered first and will become the template for the remainder of the museum to follow.

    The WWI exhibit has been put together very nicely over the years, with barbed wire, mannequins, and a recreation of a trench. While it is very cool to see how Harrison had put this together, the items and labels throughout the exhibit, and to an extent the entire museum, have been lacking for some time. This is why Harrison and I are working to rework to the exhibits to include a better placing of artifacts and labels to better tell a narrative of the history visitors are exposed to. We plan on introducing the war without the U.S. involvement to better educate people as to why the war began, then move into the reasons the Americans joined the war effort. From there we will go in depth into role of the common soldier, weaponry, and women played throughout the war using artifacts attained over the last few years through donations.

    The labeling is going to be the difficult part because in order to tell the story that we need to tell, the labels need to be informative, but not too long for the reader to get bored or develop museum fatigue. While writing the labels can be difficult to ensure we keep up with consistency, actually gaining the labels may be another issue all together because of the need to get the actual materials needed to physically have labels. The good labels are way too expensive for our museum to justify buying them, so we may need to get creative with how we create the labels themselves before putting words on them. However, that will be our job next week.

  • Week 7- Fall 2023

    Compared to other weeks at the museum, this week was very slow. I accessed some items from the Vietnam War, but it was the same types of uniforms that I had handled a few weeks earlier. The only difference between the uniforms is the patches depicting which branch, division, or regiment the veteran belonged to. The soldier in this case was a member of an Air Force special operations unit during the Vietnam War so it was interesting to at least learn about the history behind the uniform.

    The next day, things became much more enjoyable. The Museum of Military History is setting up a table at the St. Cloud Fall Festival’s corn maze. I assisted in creating a poster that could be framed and set up at the table to advertise the Vietnam War tabling event happening at the museum at the beginning of November. It required me to travel with museum staff to various stores to collect everything necessary for the table. We also are looking to redo much of the World War I exhibit in the museum to better match the goals that the museum wishes to meet regarding the quality of the labels and set up a narrative for visitors to immerse themselves in. Once we finish reworking WWI, it will set the template for how each museum should look, and hopefully, We will be able to complete all of this before the semester ends.

    Besides the labeling work that needs to be planned out and done, the only thing I know we need to do at the museum next week is finish constructing the stage by installing carpet at the top. The wooden stage without the carpet is already finished and looks great.

  • Week 6 Blog- Fall 2023

    This week at the Museum of Military History, I accessioned some Army dress jackets from the 1980s and a U.S. Army officer’s sword from the Civil War. The next day, I helped to build a stage for the museum’s theater room.

    The uniform was very interesting because it belonged to someone who was a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, 1st Airborne Division. The jackets were in very nice condition, due to the fact that he had been assigned to a non-combat role within the division. It is always interesting to find writing on the tags, in this case a doodle, because it gives the piece of clothing some uniqueness even though the man who wore it probably did it out of boredom and did not think anything of it.

    The officer’s sword is by far the most interesting thing I have seen and handled this last week. After doing some research on the sword, the aging of the brass, and an through comparing it to other swords in the storage, I and the others at the museum have determined that it is a real sword and not a forgery. It is a Model 1850 Staff and Field Officer’s Sword, likely equipped by an officer in the Civil War. The hilt of the blade is very ordinate, as opposed to the simple Model 1860 which the Army mass produced during the American Civil War. The manufacturer of the blade inscribed designs into the steel, such as the Great Seal of the United States and Latin quotes.

    The last thing we did this week at the museum was cataloging the artifacts and constructing a stage. Since the museum is a non-profit, the staff bought wood tax-free to utilize it in conventions and events held at the museum. One of the volunteers at the museum used to work as a woodworker, so the board entrusted him with directing the construction of the stage and cutting the wood. As far as I have seen, the frame is complete; all left is to install carpet on the planks and the screen above the stage.

    The project that I will begin working on, which will be my main project regarding the internship, is labeling artifacts in all exhibits around the museum. I will hopefully start the process of next week.

  • Week 5 Blog- Fall 2023

    This week I assisted in dressing up mannequins in the WWI attire which we had received a week prior. Unfortunately, the museum did not have any full mannequins available for the WWI uniform. We instead were able to utilize makeshift mannequins made a year earlier which sat in the back of storage. I was unable to use all the pieces of the WWI collection as there are no legs for the boots to effectively become anchored into, but I am still happy with being able to showcase a WWI uniform in such great condition. Hopefully, in the near future, the museum can acquire more mannequins so we can take advantage of the new donations the museum had received.

    While taking part in curatorial work is an enjoyable experience, I have been exposed to some of its downsides. We received mail from the grandson of a soldier who had served during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The dress jackets and garrison caps were interesting; however, the grandson did not leave me with any information to work with. All I had was a piece of scrap paper which only gave me the veteran’s name. I needed to do research on the pieces, but had trouble as military history is not my primary focus and I still have a lot to learn regarding the meaning behind the various ribbons and patches. My saving grace was Google Lens, which can help identify the objects with similar looking pieces across the internet.

    I still have a long way to go, but overall feel much more confident regarding my ability to catalogue collections by myself and take charge of my own projects within the museum. Seeing that I have been at the Museum of Military History for a month, I am excited to see just how much more experience I can gain from the remainder of the semester.

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