High Times at the Art Museum

By Caroline Pollard

After a long trip to the Carter Center and a quick run-through of the King Center, the class split up into two groups to continue the second-to-last day, May 29, of our Atlanta experience. Because of a schedule mix-up, half of the class went to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the other half went to the High Museum of Art. I went with the group that got to go the museum.

We met with Manager of Public Relations Cassandra Streich and Public Relations Coordinator Jennifer Maley. We were taken to an auditorium where we were able to pick both ladies’ brains about their jobs and what goes on in the museum before walking around to look at the artwork. Cassandra did most of the talking and told us about what she does as manager of public relations of the museum. She talked about what she does on a day-to-day basis, like staying in contact with reporters, writing press releases about anything she can think of for publicity, working with other departments to organize and manage the image of the museum and researching people in other cities up to four hours away in order to reach out to visitors who drive from out of town for a tour.

We also found out that Cassandra had a personal hand in bringing “The Louvre Atlanta” to the High. She speaks French, so three months into her job she was asked to go to Paris, France to help communication and organization between the High Museum of Art and the Musee de Louvre. She spent a month helping coordinate what was going to happen when “The Louvre Atlanta” came to the United States and how the two museums were going to promote this innovative partnership. The drawings, sculptures, paintings and other antiquities were flown over from Paris to Atlanta. In Georgia, the art was taken out of its packaging and checked by curators for damages, then re-packed and transported by trucks to the museum.

To end the discussion, she gave us advice about getting internships, being interested in the job you are doing, reading several companies’ press releases to pull from their style and make your own, knowing a foreign language and how it helps public relations practitioners and being organized and able to multi-task.

Near the end of our time at the museum we were free to roam about and look at the artwork that the museum had on display. We saw American and European art from centuries ago through the present. It was a great way to end the day and our amazing experience.