Author: Michaela Boothby Major: Art History, French

I am Michaela Boothby, an Art History and French major with a minor in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. I had the amazing opportunity to intern with the Heritage and Culture team at St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland this summer through a Museum Studies Internship Program. Working with the Heritage and Culture team at St. Giles’ Cathedral has been a life-changing experience for me. Maintaining a cultural site as large as St. Giles’ is a daunting task, and is managed by a team of six passionate people, so every task is an all hands on deck situation. St. Giles’ Cathedral is different than other historical sites in that it is run completely independent from any heritage or historical organization. The building is entirely owned by the church congregation and is managed by the Kirk Session. Although this does mean that there are fewer bureaucratic hoops to jump through when making decisions, such as creating an interpretive museum space within the cathedral, it also means that there is no large sourced funding or corporatized management infrastructure to carry out new projects. This makes it especially difficult to keep up with the booming tourism in Edinburgh. St. Giles’ has become the 4th most visited destination in the city, with 30% of its visitors coming due to its inclusion on Edinburgh’s ‘must-see’ itinerary. With the visitor season lengthening from four months to ten in the past five years, sites like St. Giles’ are confronted with the task of rebranding themselves to accommodate an industry that is growing faster than can be managed. Six very passionate people make up the Heritage and Culture team. The team is very collaborative and they work together on projects, combining their knowledge from backgrounds in Art History, Tourism, Museum Studies, and Economics. I was also partaking in this collaborative team structure and was helping the team in any way that I could. My main task was to research the architectural history of the building. I was helping to create a panel for a portion of the new interpretive museum space that the team is currently designing. I was given access to archives and documents chronicling the history of the building dating back several hundreds of years. When I was not in the office doing research, I would cover shifts at the welcome desk, as well as answer guests’ questions in the famed Thistle Chapel and around the cathedral. My favorite task was leading scheduled tours of the building. Preparing a proper forty five minute tour was a far more difficult task than I anticipated. I had to spend a lot of time writing out a reference script that adequately covered the 900 years of history surrounding the building, as well as planning out a route around the cathedral that flowed well with the material I was going to cover. I based all of my tours off of the information that I personally researched and compiled. I loved getting to directly share my research with the public and I felt this solidified the possibility of me pursuing academia. I have also become interested in pursuing Art History from the perspective of museums and how art and history should be accurately and respectfully displayed for the public. My overarching program was focused on this task and I grew to be very passionate about finding the balance between worship space and museum space within the historical cathedral setting. I have always had a passion for medieval cathedrals, and now I feel that I may have found my place to share them with the world. I fell in love with my work at St. Giles’ as well as Scotland, and I hope that pursuing my PhD will allow me to return to Edinburgh again.