Intern News

Over the past year, several of our MA students held exciting internships.

Ellen Layman wrote that her experience working for our own Carol Mattusch, curator of the National Gallery’s “Pompeii and the Roman Villa” exhibition, offered “an extremely useful, very exciting, and transportable real-world experience in the production of an art exhibition.” Layman had the opportunity to monitor the inside workings of the show, “observing the curator, a visiting curator from the Louvre, and museum personnel review and brainstorm a detailed mockup of the exhibition for possible adjustments to the placement of objects in the space and checking for optimum sight lines as well as discussing possible additions or deletions.” She also identified and noted pertinent images from a rare 18^th-century folio from the National Gallery of Art library for possible inclusion in the catalogue. She observed the work of museum personnel on the catalogue in areas such as editing, layout, and proofreading. Layman was present for discussions of text for brochures, as well as the discussion of ideas for book and retail selections to be made available in the museum shops. She also created the database for the exhibition that included detailed information for each object – the images and data will be digitized for scholarly and public use. “This internship was an unforgettable, unusual, and valuable experiential learning opportunity through which I was able to expand my existing knowledge and understanding of exhibition production in an exciting hands-on situation,” Layman says.
Marcella Florence worked as an intern this past summer in the curatorial department at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Her supervisor was Vesela Sretenovic, the curator of contemporary art. Reporting on her activities, Florence writes, “I conducted research on projects designed to bring contemporary artists and exhibits into the unusual spaces within the museum and into contact with artwork from the permanent collection. One of the largest of these projects involved composing a bibliography of works for an exhibit on the small canvases of Robert Ryman planned for summer 2010. I also assisted with an ongoing project to bring contemporary performance artists into the Phillips Café for interactive experiences with café and museums visitors. I learned a lot about the typical duties of a curator and the way that research is conducted within a museum setting, but my favorite part of the experience was walking multiple times of day between the library and the curator’s office through galleries full of works by such artists as Picasso and Braque, or taking a few minutes after lunch to visit the Eakins or Whistler paintings.”
Alexandra Jopp held one of our most unusual internships to date, working as part of a team of interns for the Questroyal Fine Art Gallery in New York City. As she describes it, “Questroyal specializes in important 19^th- and 20^th-century American paintings and rare historical documents. As of early October, I had completed essays on the life and artistic works of more than 20 artists, all of which will be published on the gallery’s web site. I wrote on a wide spectrum of American art from the Hudson River School to modernism and a broad range of artists, including Edward Hopper, Thomas Moran, Childe Hassam, Charles Sheeler, Stuart Davis, and others. Some of the assignments were more challenging than others. For example, I researched and provided biographies for Julie Hart Beers Kempson, Frederick DeBourg Richards, and Alfred Egerton Cooper, artists about whom little has been written. As a result, many of the assignments required primary source research and personal evaluations and interpretations of the artists’ contributions. Interning for a New York-based art gallery has provided me with a great opportunity to gain real-world experience in art history. In addition, it has reminded me of how very lucky I am to be able to study in a field that is my passion.”

Congratulations to all our interns on their exciting experiences and contributions!