I decided to major in Art History when I began at GMU in 2020, already knowing I wanted to work in museums and galleries following graduation. I took every modern and contemporary art history course that Mason offered and at the start of sophomore year, I decided to pursue a double minor in Arts Management and Design Thinking. This decision opened my mind to community-based programming and exhibition design.
In my final year at GMU, I took a Curating an Exhibition course with Dr. Heather McGuire, where I gained hands-on experience curating, designing, and even installing exhibitions. The course assured me further that exhibition-based museum work was my calling. The following summer, I interned at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, researching artists like Deborah Roberts and Genesis Tremaine. Being introduced to a collection that highlighted people of color and queer voices solidified my passion for contemporary art.
After graduating a semester early, I moved to Baltimore, MD, to begin my current role as Exhibition Program Associate at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA). My primary responsibilities in this position include managing exhibition budgets for all exhibitions and departments across the museum. I never imagined I’d be working so closely with numbers, but my role is teaching me some incredibly useful transferable skills for exhibition budget oversight and reconciliation. Additionally, I project manage exhibitions in the BMAs Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Gallery (PDP) and the Matisse Center, among other responsibilities. My first two project-managed exhibitions, Watershed: Transforming the Landscape in Early Modern Dutch Art and Air Quality: The Influence of Smog on European Modernism, opened in February! The BMA has proven to be an institution where I can engage with community-based, socially relevant, and diverse contemporary art and artists. One of my favorite, and especially poignant, works currently on view is a painting by Mark Thomas Gibson titled Biden’s Entry into Washington, 2021. Come by the BMA and see it in our Contemporary Wing!
Ten months into my first full-time job post-graduation and I’m beyond grateful for where my GMU experiences have taken me. I try to visit the galleries at the BMA weekly to remind myself how fortunate I am to work in a museum where I feel safe, welcomed, and important. I’m deeply thankful for the professors, classmates, and administrators who helped turn my academic aspirations into the beginning of a fulfilling career.
May 28, 2025