Docents enrich experience at Maridon Museum
There are 800 unique pieces in the Maridon Museum’s collection, and the museum’s docents have to know a little about every one of them.
Carole Fruehstorfer, a docent at the museum since the mid-2000s, said that even though she has been giving tours of the museum for more than 20 years, she continues to new learn things about the numerous artifacts.
And if Fruehstorfer gets a question she doesn’t know the answer to, she said she never tries to “fudge it.”
“It's a learning experience for me too,” Frueshstorfer said. “I never get tired of it, because even after 20 years — to find things out and learn things I haven't noticed before.”
The Maridon Museum in Butler has about eight active docents, according to Executive Director Roxann Booser. The docents help give tours and provide information about the museum itself, which opened in 2004, as well as the Asian art and artifacts collected by founder Mary Phillips.
According to Booser, anyone can volunteer to be a docent at the museum, to help enhance the experience of people taking a look at Phillips’ collection through insight into each object.
“It's not a requirement that you have to travel to Asia or anything like that,” Booser said. “We have a training manual and it was created by Mary when the doors opened in 2004. Whenever someone applies or shows interest, we sit down with them, have a conversation, see what their ability is.”
To begin the tour, Fruehstorfer speaks about Phillips, whose portrait is framed near the entrance to the exhibit area of the Maridon Museum.
Fruehstorfer started at the Maridon while Phillips was still alive — she died in 2009 at the age of 88. Having known Phillips, Fruehstorfer said she was not only an avid collector, but a person who gave a lot of herself to the community. Fruehstorfer explains this to people during the tour, because Phillips’ attitude on community engagement is the reason the Maridon Museum exists.
“She was very active and she knew what she liked; she knew what she wanted,” Fruehstorfer said about Phillips. “Mary was the kind of person who gave a lot of herself to the community. When she was asked to serve on something, it was jump in there and do the work.”
Fruehstorfer also points out the first Chinese art piece Phillips bought, which is on display in its own case in the hallway of the museum. The Fuji Musume or Wisteria Maiden was crafted in Japan circa 1867, and depicts a woman performing a classic Kabuki theater dance.
Fruehstorfer added that through knowing Phillips and being involved in the museum since near its inception, she even got to hold some of the pieces now in display cases.
“I got to see a lot of things before they were placed in the cases and even handled some of it, as scary as that was,” Fruehstorfer said. “We had a notebook that listed all the items in there.”
While the pieces in the museum each have a display card that describes each artifact and the date it entered the museum, docents can provide additional information on each, thanks to a sort of handbook that was compiled over the years, starting when Phillips was still living.
Booser commented that even though the museum guides docents through training when they first start, each one brings a little bit of their own personal flair to a tour, including their own knowledge of Asian cultures.
“Many have traveled to Asia and bring in extra information to bring in their personal experience related to art and folklore,” Booser said. “So they all have different things to enrich their tour with.”
Fruehstorfer has not only learned more about the museum pieces in her nearly 20 years as a docent, she said she has also updated her tour guide stylings, adapting her explanations to different groups.
“Starting out, I was pretty robotic about it. I had the information and I was imparting it, and I tried to do it with enthusiasm and not sound boring,” Fruehstorfer said. “Some people didn't take to it, so I stopped worrying about that. I like to engage with people around. I like to make people laugh and tell them stories so they remember certain things.”
Booser said that although the museum has a lot of historical information conveyed through its pieces, the administrators and current docents at the Maridon help prospective docents get a feel for the displays in preparation for them to give tours. She said several docents have backgrounds in teaching, which is not a requirement to become a docent, but offers a good foundation for sharing information in front of tour groups.
“We sit down with them, have a conversation, see what their ability is,” Booser said. “Then we have the potential docent go through a tour while another one follows.”
According to Booser, groups or even individuals who want a docent tour of the Maridon Museum have to schedule them ahead of time, so people can work with their schedule to become docents at the museum. Most commonly, schools schedule tours of the museum during school hours, and some community groups and senior centers also tours the museum periodically.
The docents or administrators will also give some groups hands-on experiences, if time allows.
“When we have larger groups we bring in more than one docent and split them up. We've had as many as 40 people go through,” Booser said. “Particularly school groups, we'll even try to accommodate a craft for them. We let the students learn how to tie an obi.”
Fruehstorfer said she crafts tours to the interest of each individual group, so they can take anywhere from an hour to several. When people at the museum demonstrate particular interest, she gets the chance to elaborate more. Fruehstorfer said she likes pointing out some of the intricacies of the pieces, and how the objects would have been crafted in centuries past.
“I like to point out what it takes to make these objects,” Fruehstorfer said. “There's a lot that maybe when you just look at it, you don't know. Like how hard jade is and how hard it is to make something from jade.”
Fruehstorfer said getting involved with the Maridon Museum, even if it seems intimidating at first, is “just a matter of jumping in and doing it.”
“It does seem intimidating at first — there are 800 objects in there you have to know something about,” Fruehstorfer said. “If people go away picking up a little knowledge, and people know that we have this resource in Butler, then I did my job.”
