By Greta Oelrich, Summer 2026
The Witte Museum in San Antonio, Texas seeks to shape the future of Texas by looking at its past through every lens possible– culture, archaeology, art, nature and natural history. Although most of the Witte’s old art collection now makes up the San Antonio Museum of Art, they retain collections and exhibits in all of the aforementioned categories. The Witte is also specifically geared towards Texas history, all the way from the dinosaurs who roamed the area we now call Texas to the modern day cities that speckle the state. Not every artifact in the Witte is from Texas, but every artifact relates to our history in some way.
During my internship, I was an assistant cataloger in the off-site repository for the collections of the Witte. This role included cataloguing (by hand with pencil and paper) hundreds of artifacts that were either uncatalogued or not updated into the current online catalogue system. I encountered everything from perfectly labeled and recorded data to artifacts which completely and totally lacked any identification. I also built ‘housing,’ or permanent storage, for artifacts. This involved taking slabs of ethafoam (styrofoam specifically formulated for structural integrity and cleanliness), finding artifacts and categorizing them to the best of my ability, then arranging the artifacts on the slab and cutting with a scalpel custom indentations in which they could lay. It was rather strenuous. Finally, and by no action of my own, I worked as a curator of the natural science department’s taxidermy collection after they discovered a moth infestation. This process had me assessing animals for damage, storing them in a container to be frozen, then removing, vacuuming, and re-photographing them. It was sweaty, outdoor work, and I saw many more desiccated birds than I thought I would be seeing this summer. As a team we treated over 800 infected artifacts.
This internship taught me a really incredible amount about working in archives and collections. It was completely hands-on from the first week, and because we had a lot of freedom in most of our work, just our supervisor sitting a room away; we were expected to be excellent. I made very few mistakes, which was ideal. The only real one I remember is breaking a very fragile piece of paper into two pieces, at which my supervisor said, “Well, that’s two artifacts now.” This internship certainly had me writing more by hand than I ever have in my life. I relearned some penmanship skills and some limits to how messily I can write and it still be legible. I relearned how to use a digital camera, as well. Although the moth infestation was not a positive for the tens of artifacts we lost completely and the hundreds that were damaged, it was an incredible experience to learn how museums deal with pests and, generally, big problems.
You can find a few hundred objects that I catalogued and photographed at the Texas History Collection website
