Oral History of Museum Computing: Tina Shah

This Oral History of Museum Computing is provided by Tina Shah, and was recorded on the 24th of May, 2021, by Paul Marty and Kathy Jones. It is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY), which allows for unrestricted reuse provided that appropriate credit is given to the original source. For the recording of this oral history, please see https://youtu.be/OqAW2-Eb-yI.

I started working with museums back in 2008. I had moved to LA around 2006. I had just gotten married. And my husband at the time had already had a job and was working in LA. So I joined him out there after we got married. And my first job out there was, I was teaching, I was teaching at a private school, full-time. I think the department was Interactive Media or something. So, kind of doing a huge range of things. You know, learning, teaching about database design to website design, development, video projects, photography, you name it. And then I left that job about a year later.

And I was new to LA. And I just, you know, wasn’t really sure where to look for a job. I didn’t know LA very well—didn’t really know too many people. But I had visited the Getty at a certain point. And, you know, thinking about where I wanted to look for a job, I was like, well, you know, that was a really beautiful museum. I think it would be really interesting to work in a museum. So, looked on their job board and applied for a job. I got an interview. And I remember—this was 2008, and I was driving on the 405. I passed the Goodyear blimp, and I thought, Okay, this is good luck. You know, this is going to be a good year. And, yeah. And, you know, after that interview, I found that I got the job and felt very lucky. And also found that I was pregnant. [laughing] So that was that was a surprise. But, yeah, and you know being away from home, being away from Chicago, away from my family—working at the Getty was just an amazing experience. The, the people that I worked with there in the Web Department, I think, is what it was called—now I don’t even know what it was called at the time. And it’s changed titles many, many times.

But, you know, they were like a family there to me. And we worked together on many web projects. And just felt very, you know—just a great, a great group to work with. A home—my home away from home. And I guess one of the projects that I worked on that sticks out the most is working on our very first multi-touch table at the museum. Multi-touch tables were pretty new at the time. We had a gigantic table made from a company called Ideum. Which, you know, works with museums a lot on—then and now. And we were one of the first museums to acquire this multi-touch table. And my boss at the time was really rallying for it. Really— I guess she had seen the table at a, at a different conference—maybe at AAM. And she was just like, we need to get one of these tables here. Let’s do something really cool on it. And so, yeah, we got the table and we started developing in it. And the code to program applications on the table was written in AS3. So, I had been working a little bit with AS3 and—but it was, you know, nonetheless challenging to program for, for something like a touch interface. And me and one of my colleagues worked weekends, evenings, etc. [laughing] So basically, we had an application that we were creating for an event that was part of the AAM conference.

That year the AAM conference was happening in LA, and there was going to be an event at the Getty in the evening. So we decided to create an application that showed a map of cultural institutions in the area. And you can touch points on the map and get more information about those cultural institutions and view images of those, you know, institutions. And basically get your grounding. You know, a lot of the people attending the conference weren’t from LA. So we thought this would be a nice way to introduce the technology. And, yeah, worked many late evenings and weekends. Got very close to my colleague and my boss at the time. And she even came with her kids during the weekends. You know, to show us support, while her kids roamed the museum. And we finally unveiled—launched at this event. And it went great until someone—very high up in the museum— [laughing] put down their empty drink glass down on this table, thinking that it was just a regular table. [laughing] Basically, putting their trash on the table. And the look on my face—I don’t think my colleagues will ever forget. But it was just, you know, kind of a [laughing]—I don’t know if you can call it ironic, but it’s just like, Oh my God, all this time and energy and, you know, some people don’t even realize that it was an interactive table. So. [laughing]

And basically, I worked at the Getty for about a few years. Was missing home. Was missing Chicago. So, came back to Chicago to work at the Field Museum—Natural History Museum here in Chicago. And, interestingly enough, the experience of working on the multi-touch table brought me my first project at the Field Museum. So, at the time, there was an exhibition about a beautiful mosaic floor dating back to about 300 AD that was found accidentally in Lod, Israel in 1996 during construction of a new highway. So they, you know, found this floor. They dug it up and, you know, kept it fairly, like, beautifully intact. And, and so this floor was being exhibited at different museums around the country. And when it came to the Field Museum, they had had a programmer lined up to work on some sort of application on the Ideum multi-touch table. But something happened and that programmer backed out. And through the grapevine they heard about my experience working on the multi-touch table back at the Getty. So, you know, my first project became working on this create your own mosaic application for the Field Museum. And the mosaic contained drawings of animals and other icons of life from those times. And visitors were able to take different elements from the mosaic and basically scale, rotate, move them around, and create their own beautiful mosaic that was shared on a projection in the space. And then also they were able to send an image of their creation to themselves—a copy of that. So, I loved this project and it was such a joy to work on. And it was just beautiful all around. And I tested and tested it relentlessly. But, of course, once we launched and we were in the gallery space, the interactive just kept dying. And we couldn’t quite figure out what the difference was between the space where I was testing versus the space where it was in—in the gallery space.

Maybe it was running out of memory, all of a sudden. Wasn’t sure. But it was just really frustrating [laughing] and I kept finding my way back to that machine to restart it on a daily basis. And, you know, I guess one good side effect was that I saw a lot of the museum that way. But, but it was, it was, you know—nonetheless, even though there were a lot of restarts that needed to happen, it was a really fun project. And I think, you know, the public got a lot out of it. And I believe that project traveled on to other museum exhibits. So that was great.

I worked at the Field Museum for about a year. And then after that I had a brief stint at the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust where, you know, a very, very different institution. Much smaller. And my title was Designer and Developer, so that entailed quite a bit. I was designing print member magazines. And then also involved in managing and developing and designing the new website. And so, you know, I don’t have too much to say about that job. But, you know, being a designer, developer, project manager, etc, and creating a website from scratch was quite a challenge. But we did it. And that website is still up and running, so I must have done something right. [laughing]

And, yeah, so that was great. And then shortly after working there, I started looking for other opportunities in the Chicago area. And I had heard about a position at the Art Institute of Chicago. And, you know, growing up the Art Institute of Chicago was my favorite museum. Even when I moved back to Chicago I’d go there. And, you know, would think to myself, like, Okay, I’m working with museums. Like, wouldn’t it be great to work at the Art Institute? Like, this museum that I visited when I was young. And, you know, even in college, I used to go there on free days and it would just be a dream come true to work there. And, you know, I saw a position that was open and was able to apply. And actually, you know, knew someone that was working there as well. So it was, you know—felt very lucky to be able to get an interview. And then, and then started there. Got the job and started there New Year’s Eve 2013. I purposely started there on New Year’s Eve 2013, thinking it would bring me some luck. And boy did I need it [laughing] because my first project there was, was just very chaotic.

I was hired to work on these digital scholarly catalogs. It was part of the OSCI [Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative] Initiative that came out of the Getty through a grant. And I know, you know, people from the IMA Labs—they worked on the platform. They developed the initial platform. Yes. That that I was basically hired to continue to keep on adding features to the catalogs and to support this platform that they were using to create these interactive online scholarly catalogs.

But one of my first projects was to actually create—to take that platform and create an in-gallery interactive. So instead of this application—or this instance of the application being available online—they had—they created some content in the catalog that was meant to accompany an exhibit on—about a painting and the conservation behind it. And the painting was titled Madame Clapisson. [clapping] I have to laugh every time I say it. But basically had, you know—it was a challenge. First of all, first job. First, you know, first project working there. Trying to even understand what the OSCI platform was. You know, trying to understand the code. And trying to understand it enough to be able to make the change to make it run on its own in kiosk mode on a multi-touch screen. How to respond to touch events, detect if there’s inactivity, add a screensaver, etc. And all of this had to happen on a machine—the machine, the touchscreen machine that I was working on that was going to be used for the exhibit was in another office, in another building, across the street. So every day, I’d make my way over there. And, and, and also, the computer was in a space with a bunch of people that I just didn’t know. I was new.

So just a very chaotic, chaotic experience. I was going there every day to work on the machine. The people there were really nice but I definitely got to know a lot [laughing] about the people that were working there. And, and that office, in particular, also had a bunch of different people from different departments kind of packed in there. So, you know, to my left, I would hear this woman talking to potential members or members about events and fundraisers. And she had a very loud voice. So I just heard all of her conversations [laughing]. And then across the room I—there was another colleague who had just had a baby. And, you know, she had to curtain off her office to pump milk for her newborn. And so I’d hear the pump, you know, going. [laughing] A loud pumping noise. You know, I’d been through that so I was just like, Oh, man. Like, so just a very chaotic environment full of different kinds of people going through different things in their lives. And, you know, here I was full of anxiety and stressed out about, you know, getting this this interactive to work in time, you know, for the exhibit to open. But through working on this interactive I, you know, even though I had worked in an art museum before, I didn’t realize until that point how much science went into the conservation of paintings or artworks in general. And, you know, the interactive was designed to sort of—and the exhibit itself—was designed to sort of explain the research that went into finding out what this painting was about.

So, you know, I learned about—they were, they were basically trying to recreate the original background color that had been—that had faded over time. And I, you know, found out about what—how they how they look into, you know, original—how—where pigments were made. What sort of lake or, you know, materials within the environments that they used to create pigments to establish different colors. And, you know, what they had to do was sort of recreate the original color. And how they found out what the original color was. So that was really interesting. And this painting was by Renoir and, you know, through x-ray and infrared photography—which we were able to also show off in the interactive through, you know, sliders and being able to compare the original, the conserved painting, or the final, yeah, conserved painting. And then being able to compare between x-ray and infrared images, they were able to understand Renoir’s painting methods. Which revealed that, you know, the original sketch underneath the painting, Madame was a bit heavier. And through his painting, you know, from sketch and sort of painting her, that she actually she was a bit heavier, but then the painting sort of made her look skinnier. So it just reminded me of Photoshop and what people do in magazines these days. But it was just really fascinating and it really hit me then that, Wow, scientists are in the building. [laughing] You know. And just, you know, having been now at the Art Institute for almost eight years, the learning hasn’t stopped. And I’ve really enjoyed working on these different projects that take me all over the museum. I just wish I could spend more time in the galleries looking at the art.

You know, that’s one thing is— It’s just, you know, when I tell people when I tell people that I worked at the Art Institute they’re like, Oh my God, that’s amazing. And I have an MFA—like, I love art. You know I was—I practice art from time to time. But the amount of time that I actually spend in the galleries to actually look at the art is not much. [laughing] But, you know, when I’m running around the museum checking to see, you know, if the machines are working, or if I need to restart something, I try to catch a glimpse here and there, here or there. And and yeah, there’s been—during my eight years of working there—there’s been so many times, you know, where security calls and tells me, an iPad is down. Or, you know, there was one—one iPad in particular that I could not figure out what was going on. It was showing a bunch of content and there was supposed to be a video that was playing, but instead you’d see a blank screen. And we can’t have that in a major exhibition and the iPad’s showing a blank screen. And you know, of course, this iPad was located in Regenstein, which is the main exhibit area at the Art Institute. But it’s also the furthest away from where my office is. So I think I ran, you know, the amount that I walked probably totaled marathons. [laughing] And, I mean, I would be so tired at the end of the day. Just trying to troubleshoot, trying to figure out what was going on. Going back and forth. And at the end of the day, I kind of had to make sort of an educated guess that, okay, it must be the wi-fi because everything else is appearing. All the other content is appearing. It must be that this video just relies on the wi-fi so heavily that it’s just blanking out and not, you know, getting the proper connection to display and appear. So the way that I solved that problem was taking that video and creating an animated gif of the video. And replacing the video with the animated gif. And, thank goodness, it worked. [laughing]

It made the difference, right. And I was just very happy about that. But things like that, where we just sort of had to, you know, figure out—okay, you know, here’s the tech, here’s what we want, if this isn’t working and we’ve tried days, hours, whatever—we feel like we’ve tried enough—like what’s the next, you know, what’s the next best thing? And luckily, at least in that situation, we were able to come up with a solution that really only we would know the behind the scenes about. [laughing] But, like, to a regular visitor they wouldn’t notice a difference.

And then, let’s see, I feel like a lot of the things that we’ve been working on lately is about open access. And, you know, trying to make our images available for the public to view and to, to make all of our collection data to be able to view it. To be able to work with it. To create new applications with it. And, and one of the initiatives that I’m part of and just really, you know, excited about is the IIIF Initiative. It’s basically a software and hardware framework that enables institutions to share their media. You know, a majority, I think a majority of institutions use it to share their images. But, you know—I know that there’s a lot of work going on with trying to create a protocol that is used by all the institutions. So the same protocol to be able to share their media, whether it’s images, 3D models, videos, etc. But to share them in a way where someone from another institution could just grab that true Renoir image and not have to search all over the internet for it. And to be able to use it to bring into another application where they can study it, annotate it, and share their research with other institutions. And I feel like that—the initiative is just—can be so useful for art historians, but also for educators. If I was an art history teacher, I could, you know, go to these different institutions and be able to access the media and, and, you know, teach a curriculum about French Impressionism. And, you know, point out different details of artworks that I get to share with the students.

And then, yeah. And then another thing that’s been really great about working at the Art Institute, in particular, is the amount of equity work that’s been going on right now. And that’s just one thing I wanted to mention is that, you know, over the last couple of years there’s been quite an increase on—an attention on equity of all types. You know, financial equity. You know, positional, social, political. And it’s just opened my eyes to a lot of the things that are happening around me within the museum, but also to, you know, who I am.

I was at an MCN conference one time and I was invited to a POC dinner. And you know I got a text like, Hey, do you want to come to a POC dinner tonight? And in my head, I was just like, What is POC? Like is that point of contact? Like, what is that? And, and I asked, I was like, “What is POC?” He’s like, “People of color.” I was like, Oh, okay. Like, I’m a person of color. Okay, like, you know, I never really thought of myself that way. But so just—you know, a little detail there, but I feel like I’ve really looked—started to look at myself differently within the context of what’s happening in the world today and what’s been happening. And you know, as a person of color, you know, how, you know, different interactions and the work that I’m doing and, you know, things like that are being—are sort of, you know—I have a different perspective on things. And I feel like, you know, a lot of the work that’s happening in museums is helping me understand that aspect of my identity. And also, you know, how —and and also bringing attention to other people’s stories. And how, you know, I traverse the landscape of work and life. So, but yeah. So, I don’t know. I could go on a bit more, but am I giving you guys any good content there? [laughing]

[Marty]: Those are—yeah, those are great stories. I don’t want to derail you if you have more you want tokeep going. But I could ask a very quick question. I just wanted to jump all the way back to the multi-touch table at the Getty because that idea of somebody putting their glass on the table is such a wonderful example of not anticipating how visitors are going to use technology in the galleries.

Right. Yeah.

[Marty]: And how do you, how do you deal with that now, like it at the Art Institute? How do you figure out visitors’ assumptions about technology? How you study that?

Yeah, well, you know, we, we have—our interpretation department does a lot of studies within the galleries. Kind of sitting there and watching visitors to see how they react—see if they’re even using this technology. I guess, one of the most common pieces of hardware that we have in the galleries is our iPads. So iPads that are telling stories about our collection. And so, you know, they’ve, they’ve done a lot of user studies too—watching people, talking to them, asking them, you know, if these—if things are working correctly or if they’re getting anything out of these stories. And, you know, how long are they spending. And then I myself have, you know, have a special interest in that as well. You know, as a programmer and as a, as someone that’s very interested in UX. And, and just, you know, interested in creating applications that actually make a difference, that matter, that that that people can get something out of.

But I’ve watched people as well, just sitting in those galleries. And, you know, one thing with the iPad—we have an application—we call them interactive features—and one thing that we did differently with them—and I can’t tell you why we did it this way—but we have—the way you scroll through the stories is go—is like swiping up. And the one thing that we noticed when we were sitting in the galleries watching users is, like, the first thing they want to do is swipe sideways, you know. Because that’s just how they’re used to going through applications like this. So, you know, and so then what we had to do was basically create a little inner—you know, little animated sort of, you know, graphic that’s, that showed you. Like, okay, you have to, you know, you have to swipe up, and that’s how you get through the story.

And I think that it helped, but one thing that I sort of think about a lot is, you know, let’s not—you know, when developing new applications is, you know, let’s use what people have learned from, from, you know, people— now especially, you know, there’s more online shopping happening. There’s more there’s more use of the Internet happening in general. And people have learned and have sort of now, like, by nature have ways of how they’re interacting with elements on the screen. Or, you know, how they read content. And, you know, left to right and down. And, you know, so there’s like different, different actions that—but but the same actions performed by many people. By the majority of people.

And so one thing that I try not to do is is change that, you know, when I’m developing a new application. Like, we’re working on virtual tours right now at the Art Institute. And we were talking about a lot of the UI elements. And, you know, there’s—for example: should we have full screen? And should we have, like, a full screen button? And things like that. And, you know, a lot of things that we talked about was like, Well, what do people do when they’re watching a Netflix video? What do people do when they’re watching YouTube? You know, let’s look at those, those things that have sort of trained us now on how we interact with these sorts of media elements and use that to inform how we design and develop our UI elements. So, yeah, I mean it’s, it’s, it’s a lot—there’s still like so much, you know, you can still be very unique and creative but, but I feel developing based on what people already know and have already have already started—that’s become their innate, you know, way of interacting with things—is, is maybe something to go on, you know. And then to take with you. So did that answer your question?

[Marty]: Oh, yeah. And what a fantastic example for any UX designers out there about the importance ofyou know, instead of forcing people to learn your application, let’s have our application work the way the users work, right.

Yeah.

[Marty]: Shifting philosophies, right, I mean that’s a hard thing for a lot of designers to come to terms with…

Yeah.

[Marty]: We’ve certainly seen this theme of shifting philosophies a lot in these in these oral histories. You know, you mentioned open access. I know the Art Institute has a fantastic open APIpublic API, right?

Yes.

[Marty]: What—can you imagine, twenty years ago nobody would have been willing to do that. What do you think are some of the things that happened to shift that perspective? Where so many museums are doing this now?

Well, I think that there’s a lot of makers in the world and just a lot of self-teaching. I mean, I think, with the with the popularity of YouTube, DIY videos—my daughter, she’s twelve. I mean, she’s YouTubing and DIYing all day long. [laughing] And, and so I feel like there’s just so many ways—Khan Academy—there’s just so many ways of, you know, to learn things on your own. You don’t necessarily need to take a class or to go to school for a particular thing. You know, depending on what it is. But you could learn a lot of it on your own. And I think that also transparency, and, and, you know, thinking about open access and just being transparent about data and collections. I think, you know, sort of mixing all of that together enables people to have access to things. And it—you know, gives them opportunities to do things on their own. And to be creative and to think about the possibilities.

Like now, I think, through our API, there’s been a lot of Twitter bots that I’ve seen come along. We created a really cool Chrome plugin with our API that basically, you know, you—on every new tab that you open in your browser, you get a brand new work of art. And that’s just been amazing. Especially for our staff because we get to view our collection and items in our collection that we’ve never even seen at all. You know, and, and, and there’s just been so many times—because once you open a new tab you see an artwork and I, you know, a lot of times I’m like, What is that? So you can click on the artwork, and go to our object page and learn more about that artwork. And even download it, you know and make, make a—maybe print something out and frame it. [laughing]

So. But I—yeah, I think I think open—having the open access initiative, you know, making our code transparent on GitHub—. And, you know, not always with the intention that, hey, somebody is actually going to, like, use it to make their own project based on what we did. Because that’s kind of hard to do because every institution is different. But, you know, getting some ideas and, and sort of highlighting how we work and making that more transparent. And, and I think that the open access initiatives around being able to download works of art and being able to create things through our API—it takes, it takes work, of course, to spread the word and to help people learn how to use the API. And I feel like we need to do a little bit of work there and and, you know, maybe providing more opportunities for, for the public to do, to do—to work with things like our API. But I think that the world is in a very different place now. And there’s people that want to learn, and want to be challenged. That want to, you know, do things in their own time, and create some beautiful things.

[Marty]: You know, it’s just a wonderful example. And it’sthis idea of people discovering new art to love through a Chrome plugin connects to the open API, right.

Yeah.

[Marty]: Wonderful. And, for some reason, it just reminded me, we chatted a few weeks ago with Deborah Howes and she worked as an educator at the Art Institute in the 1980s. And she told a great story about how the board game Masterpiecewhich of course featured a lot of paintings from the Art Institutedrove visitation to the Art Institute in the late 70s and early 80s.

Oh.

[Marty]: So, you never know where your visitors are going to come from. [laughing]

Yes, that’s very true. Yeah. And yeah, I wonder, you know, now that we’re working on virtual tours of our galleries—you know, we’re a little bit late to the, the train just because virtual tours were really popular this last year during the pandemic when people couldn’t physically be at the museum. But I still feel like they have a place now, because there’s still a lot of people that just can’t physically make it to the museum. And, and perhaps seeing an artwork on our website, but seeing it within the context of the other artworks in the space, in the context of an exhibition, it can be really interesting for someone that’s, you know, wanting to understand that. So we’ll see we’ll see. We’re going to going to launch soon and we’ll see. [laughing] But one of the things that we’re highlighting actually within our virtual tours—one of the first things we’re highlighting is the conservation spaces, which nobody can go into. And those are just really interesting spaces where you can, you know, find out about what the scientists are doing in the museum through exploring the space.

[Marty]: It’s not a question, but I just want to say, I love those “behind the scenes” views of conservators that so many museums put out. They’re wonderful to look at.

Yeah. yeah. So yeah. I mean—. I’m trying to think. I have—yeah, I mean during the eight years that—or not eight years. How long have I been? So, yeah, thirteen years. I definitely have a lot of stories of restarts and things like that, but I feel like those—these are probably the highlights. You know, definitely a lot of moments where I thought I was just going to break down and cry and have a nervous breakdown [laughing] because things just weren’t working. I mean even on Friday—this last Friday—I was working on a particular thing for just, you know, one too many days. I was like, Why is this not working? All I was trying to do was get some text to display on the screen. And I sort of knew why it wasn’t but I couldn’t quite figure out how to get it to work. And, you know, I tried many different things. And I probably tried the same thing several different times. It was just, you know, it was Friday. Five o’clock was coming and I was like, you know, How can I get this to work? And I’m so tired of working on this. Like, this is just driving me insane.

But you know, I put a question up on the software forum and I was like, Look, this is what I’m trying to do. And for me, like, when I ask questions about things, I need to make sure that I’ve done everything possible, you know. And made sure that, like, I’ve tried everything myself before I ask these questions. And maybe sometimes that’s not always the right approach because that can take a long time. [laughing] But, you know, I put a question up on the forum. And, and and then kind of switched gears and worked on something else. And I was just like, All right, let’s see what happens. Let’s see if I can get an answer to this by Monday. And, and I checked on Saturday and found an answer. Tried it and thankfully it worked. But, you know—but again, I’m just reminded like, Okay, maybe, maybe, you should have just asked this question a little earlier before you started feeling like you were going to have a nervous breakdown. [laughing] So.

And that’s one thing I tried to I try to practice. Like, I am lucky enough to, to you know—because at several museums in the past, sometimes I’d be like the only developer. Or you know, only—the only person working on a certain type of project or whatever that—where I would only know the answer. I didn’t really have too many other people that I could ask. But luckily, right now, you know I work with a few other developers and—who are really great. And I’m able—you know, I give myself, like, an appropriate amount of time and if I’m not able to find the answer, I will ask for help. And I think that that’s, you know, something that is really important because you could sort of overwork yourself into a nervous breakdown. [laughing] But yeah, especially when it comes to coding and all that. So.

[Marty]: Well, I was just going to say, that that that’s another theme that we’ve heard a lot through these oral histories. This, the anxiety, the stress of the behind the scenes work. Especially when you’re working toward last minute projects.

Yes, yes, definitely. There’s—yeah, exhibitions have to open. There’s a date, it’s public. You know, so there’s definitely a lot of anxiety around that. And yeah. And I think it’s, it’s really important to know that, like, okay you’re not, you’re not alone. There are ways of asking others for help. Or just, you know, or just taking a break from it and being—you know, that’s been another thing that’s helped me a lot is: Alright, let me go take a shower. I haven’t taken a shower in two days. Like, let’s go take a shower, or like take a walk. And that’s also just like reducing that stress and reducing the anxiety and being able to come at—come back to the problem with a clearer head just has worked so many times.

[Marty]: And I wonder if this is why so many conferences, including MCN, right, are having entire sessions now focused on empathy and self-care.

Yes.

[Jones]: Oh yes, for sure. I’m sure that’s true.

Yeah, I know self-care— I didn’t—I thought it was just a fad. I didn’t really even know what it was, until probably last year or two years ago when I was like, Oh, yeah. Okay. I should take a shower. [laughing] Or, you know, yeah. Or just take a break. And, and yeah. I think, you know, maybe people that are sort of new in the job or new, you know, just post-graduates may not realize that because they’re probably feeling the pressure. But, you know, after all these years of working on projects that need to be ready for exhibits, it’s just — I just haven’t found working, working, working under stress, like, very helpful at all.

So yeah, I have to constantly remind myself, like, okay, take a break and I bet, you know, that answer will come to you in a bit. So, and it’s proven true.