Welcome to the Museum Studies Job roundup! We do our best to collect the latest job openings and welcome submissions from the community. For more opportunities, we recommend the following databases: HireCulture – Jobs in the Humanities in Massachusetts Job HQ – American Association of Museums …
One of my favorite stories to hear my grandfather, the man I called Pop, tell, was the moment he first met me. My father, a first-time parent with mild OCD, was stricken with anxiety about any germs that visitors might bring to the hospital, so …
Nineteen years later, I’ve found it.
A quick backstory, if you haven’t read my previous article: I have a distinct memory of an art piece I saw at the Currier Museum of Art between 2005 and 2007, when I was five or six years old. It was a four-poster bed decorated with various tchotchkes and trinkets, which told the story of a boy mourning the loss of his nanny, using bits of her jewelry to decorate her bed. I could remember the bed vividly and can even picture the gallery in which I saw it but questioned whether this memory was a fabrication. For the full story, I invite you to read my previous piece, but know that I had scoured the internet for hints of this piece with no luck.
After I posted my initial article, Cynthia Robinson, our Museum Studies Program Director kindly reached out to me with a suggestion: I should check the Wayback Machine to see if I could find a previous iteration of the Currier’s website with a listing of the Currier’s works on display at that time. While the Wayback Machine only has captures that go back to about 2011, I was able to access a 2015 version of the webpage which housed an exhibition archive that is now defunct.
Long story short, through browsing, I found “Voces y Visiones: Highlights from El Museo Del Barrio’s Permanent Collection” listed as an exhibition on view at the Currier from March-June 2005, when I was five years old. Something about it felt right, so I went to El Museo del Barrio’s Permanent Collection Explore Page. After some brief clicking and scrolling, there it was.
There it was.
After nineteen years, there it was.
“It” is La Cama by Pepón Osorio. It’s a four-poster bed that a 1991 review describes as covered in an “array of trinkets and devotional images.” (1) The bed tells the story of a “hypothetical introduction of a current lover to a deceased childhood caretaker.” (2)
And with this I knew the bed had been right there in front of me for a long time. It had been sitting quietly as though it had been waiting for me in a familiar place, a museum we have discussed countless times in my museum studies courses.
Upon further exploration, I learned that “La Cama pays tribute to Juana Hernandez, the woman whom Osorio considers his second mother. An orphan who came to live with the Osorio family before his birth, Juana cared for the artist as a child, and served as a housekeeper. After Juana died in 1982, Osorio began to recreate her lonely, difficult life, and offered her the material opulence she never enjoyed through La Cama’s exuberant color and texture.” (3)
My five-year-old self remembered that the “artist’s beloved nanny had passed away” and that “in mourning, he used materials from her jewelry box to decorate her bed as a sort of shrine to her.” A 1992 article by Joan Acocella confirms that “As a boy, Osorio used to sneak into [Juana’s] bedroom and rummage through her drawers, poring over the earrings, necklaces, rouge pots, and religious medals that constituted a poor woman’s treasure (and that probably inspired, in some measure, Osorio’s art).” (4)
My memory was real.
Here is where I must pause and say I am almost speechless at the clarity with which my tiny human brain was able to catalog this memory. While inexact, I had memorized the key details, the story of love and loss and memorialization, a fascination with shiny things and a question about how we move on and cope when the unthinkable happens. Something about La Cama’s story and materiality lodged itself in my mind and refused to let go. For years, I remembered it as a preliminary experience connecting with art, but due to its uniquely folkloric tint in my mind I questioned if it was a falsehood.
It wasn’t, though, and while I won’t get too in the weeds about what this says about art, truth, and the power of art for children, I think this story holds Something with a capital “S.” An artwork in a museum I still frequent brought me this kind of magical, mystical experience that, nineteen years in the future, lingers as my answer to so many “whys” about myself.
And so it feels incredibly poignant that a work centering around how we remember is the one I remember most as the catalyst for my lifelong love of art. Perhaps La Cama has truly achieved its aim, then, creating an immovable memory in the mind of a five-year-old, now twenty-four-year-old, over a thousand miles away from Puerto Rico, who has held onto the story of two people she’s never met.
Nineteen years in the future, I can’t help but feel this work has come to me at the right time. I recently lost someone very close to me, a person who, like Juana to Pepón, was a mentor and caretaker. Maybe La Cama gives me hope that memory exists beyond the bounds of family and time; that someone’s impact can range so far as to be inconceivable.
And still, there is something extraordinary and unplaceable I can’t quite describe about why La Cama ignites me so (and isn’t that art?!). I don’t think this story is over, either—I feel compelled to make a trip to New York to see La Cama in person. Perhaps then I will make another post more focused on its materiality.
In the meantime, thank you, Pepón, and thank you, Juana. I will hold your story close.
Works Cited
(1) Jenifer P. Borum. “Pepon Osorio: El Museo Del Barrio.” ArtForum, November 1991.
(2) Jenifer P. Borum. “Pepon Osorio: El Museo Del Barrio.” ArtForum, November 1991.
(3) Nellie Escalante. “‘La Cama’ by Puerto Rican Artist, Pepon Osorio.” Nelarte (blog). Accessed April 30, 2025. https://nelarte.com/la-cama-by-puerto-rican-artist-pepon-osorio/.
(4) Joan Acocella. “Plastic Heaven.” ArtForum, January 1992.
I have a vivid memory of being five or six years old and visiting the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire. In a brightly lit gallery (I’m almost certain I know exactly which one), surrounded by other works, was something that isn’t uncommon …
Welcome to the weekly roundup! We do our best to collect the latest job openings and welcome submissions from the community. For more opportunities, we recommend the following databases: HireCulture – Jobs in the Humanities in Massachusetts Job HQ – American Association of Museums American …
To me, the Boston Museum of Science is synonymous with childhood. My dad was a member there for years and for a while, we’d visit any time there was a new exhibition opening. It was a fantastic place to visit as a kid and kept my younger brothers and I occupied for hours while my parents, STEM people themselves, could enjoy the subject matter and share things that interested them with us. I loved it there and have many fond memories.
One of those fond memories is, of course, seeing IMAX movies at the Mugar Omni Theater. And a significant part of that was the iconic sound test played at the beginning of every movie. Performed by Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame, it was a multisensory, ritualistic experience in which the IMAX screen became transparent and colored lights showed the mechanics of the theater. Nimoy, in his recognizably deep voice, had a conversation with our narrator before reading a series of whimsical sayings. If you never got to experience the joy of hearing this intro, I’ve transcribed it below.
Leonard Nimoy: This is a test of the Mugar Omni Theater Sound System.
Narrator: Leonard Nimoy! Wow! He’s Spock, from Star Trek.
LN: He grew up three blocks from here.
N: Ahhh, alright.
LN: Who put the bomp, in the bomp, shabomp, shabomp. Who put the ram, in the ram, alam, a ding dong.
N: Very cool! Now, let’s show ‘em what we got!
(At this point, the “bomp” and “ram” phrases were replayed, overlapping over each other. They got faster in speed and higher in pitch, reverberating around the space in a chaotic, warped manner).
N: OH, WOW! Ahem. Thank you, Leonard.
I do feel I need to say that the transcription doesn’t do it justice. For a slightly more authentic experience, you can listen to the intro here, though it can’t ever capture the surreal feeling of watching the domed screen expose its skeleton as an omniscient Nimoy spoke from the ether. So when I roped friends into going to the museum with me recently, I insisted that we buy tickets to see an IMAX show. I needed to hear Leonard Nimoy’s booming voice, a sonorous relic of my childhood.
We bought tickets to see Deep Sky, which chronicles the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope and its quest to explore the furthest reaches of space. This felt like the perfect show to see—space movies feel quintessentially Mugar Omni, primed to be otherworldly and immersive when projected on the domed screen. And, of course, this provided a perfect backdrop against which Spock himself could consecrate this temple of scientific exploration.
As we sat in our seats, leaning back to stare at the dome above, I could barely contain my excitement. When the lights dimmed and the theater rules played on the screen, I was practically bouncing up and down. Then, on the screen, a giant match struck, and the intro sequence began. The screen was filled with a huge, moving colored eye before becoming a canopy of trees. I kept my eyes glued to the screen—any second now, that booming voice would ring out!
But it never came. Or, rather, it did, briefly, and quickly enough that if someone had coughed behind me, I might have missed it. Amidst the overstimulating, colorful images that played across the screen, we heard Leonard Nimoy’s voice say a singular line: “This is a test of the Mugar Omni Theater sound system.” And then the inspirational classical music swelled and all that was left was a sense of confusion and a general feeling of unresolvedness.
It may seem like an exaggeration, but this introduction was not just beloved to myself, but to entire generations of science museumgoers. My close friend remembers attending years of IMAX screenings and excitedly quoted Nimoy’s “ram, alam, a ding dong,” when I brought this up. With some light googling, I also found a Buzzfeed article written in 2015 by Katie Notopolous and Julia Furlan that details the authors’ own personal love and nostalgia for this introduction. Reddit, too, is home to several threads about Nimoy’s voice at the museum, especially in relation to the museum’s 2021 announcement that it would be building a tribute statue to Nimoy at Science Park.
On one thread, in response to the article about the statue, one user asked if Nimoy’s intro was still used. Another user responded that “[the museum] renovated the Omni during COVID to convert from analog to digital. The intro is no more.” Another user responded to say that the museum had made an announcement that the introduction was to return, but despite scouring through years of pandemic-era posts, I could not find the post they referenced. I did find a 2021 post that announced the memorial, and in a corresponding press release, the museum states that Nimoy’s intro film “continues to welcome millions of audience members.”
And yet, despite this, when I visited, all that was left of this beloved intro was a short, jarring reminder of the explosion of light and sound that used to be. It isn’t clear to me if the full intro is played for other movies, and this was just an outlier, which I would love to believe. But I have a sinking suspicion that the original intro is gone. Perhaps when the museum says that Nimoy “continues to welcome” visitors, they simply mean the shortened phrase within the new introduction.
And this is sad. The original Nimoy introduction was a perfect example of all that the Science Museum was and still is—an incredibly immersive, mind-blowing scientific experience for the museum’s largely child audience. Sitting in that theater, though perhaps knowing I was destined to be an historian and not a scientist, I felt like a part of something bigger. I felt like I was getting a behind-the-scenes look at how this theater functioned, that I was getting to be the sound and lighting engineer for that space. I could connect with my electrical engineer father as he excitedly pointed out the speakers and wiring, despite both of us knowing I was more of a reader than a mathematician.
Aside from introducing whichever educational film would be playing, Nimoy’s intro gave visitors a kind of meta-understanding of not only the content of the film, but the mechanics behind it. Simply through his nonsensical “bomp”-ing and “romp”-ing, Nimoy was telling me that I was worthy of exploration and understanding—I was not only allowed to think about how things worked but was encouraged to. This, I would argue, is what the museum does so well—it goes beyond the surface-level interpretation of a topic and gives visitors the nuts and bolts of the how and why.
And because of this, I argue that Nimoy’s introduction is as much a part of the museum’s collection as any of the fossils or models it holds. Nimoy, a Boston community member himself, and someone who sparked the love of science and space exploration through his acting, was a quintessential part of any MoS visit. In its 2015 tribute to Nimoy after his passing, the museum notes that since the Nimoy introduction premiered in 1988, it welcomed over 15 million visitors to IMAX shows. As Katie Notopolous and Julia Furlan note in their Buzzfeed article, it gave New England visitors a sense of importance because someone from Boston who had done meaningful things was talking about growing up nearby—it made our origins feel relevant.
Not only is Nimoy a part of Boston history, but his introduction is a piece of museum history. It shows how focused on intellectual inquiry the museum has been from the beginning. It provides an intersection between science, engineering, history, and popular culture, creating an experience that clearly lives on in the Boston and New England educational canon. It created quasi-spiritual experiences for millions of visitors who felt his voice around them. And, to put it frankly, it’s really flipping cool.
So, Museum of Science, if you’re reading this, please bring back the Leonard Nimoy Mugar Omni Theater sound test. The memorial statue to Nimoy is an excellent idea, and I look forward to seeing it, but please also remember the museum’s original Nimoy connection. Preserve his voice and legacy as a symbol not only of his impact and contribution to the Boston community, but as a reminder of the collective memory of so many Bostonians. Let Nimoy’s voice ring out once again from hidden speakers, returning the theater to its original glory. Please don’t let it die as a sometimes-viewed YouTube video or a one-liner in an overstimulating color storm.
Sources:
Meaghan Agnew and Remy Frisch. “Leonard Nimoy’s Family Team with the Museum of Science to Establish a ‘Live Long and Prosper’ Vulcan Salute Monument.” Museum of Science, March 26, 2021. https://www.mos.org/press-release/leonard-nimoys-family-team-museum-science-establish-live-long-and-prosper-vulcan.
Museum of Science. “Happy #LeonardNimoyDay!” Instagram. Accessed November 24, 2024. https://www.instagram.com/p/CM4gLK9rTpH/?img_index=1.
Katie Notopolous and Julia Furlan. “Listen To Leonard Nimoy’s Introduction to the Museum of Science Boston.” Buzzfeed News, February 27, 2015. https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/he-put-the-bomp.
Photog1981. “The Boston Museum of Science Wants to Build a Leonard Nimoy Memorial.” Reddit: R/Startrek. Accessed November 24, 2024. https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/mdpfy2/the_boston_museum_of_science_wants_to_build_a/.
Thank You Leonard Nimoy, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLP4eX7Yf40.