Curatorial Internship

Job Type

Internship

Description

Department: Exhibitions and Collections

Mentor/Supervisor: Haley Kane/ Sara Ickow

Internship Summary:

Curatorial interns at ICP will work closely with the collections and exhibitions teams at ICP to help research, develop and implement all phases of exhibition making. They will get an overview of how exhibitions happen and learn valuable research skills. With the collections team they will assist with developing materials related to ICP's institutional history and collection.

Internship Project Description:

This will largely be determined around an individual intern's interests and skills. There are a wide variety of exhibitions and collections projects which would be options depending on the skills of individuals interests and career priorities. Projects might include: research on upcoming exhibitions, assisting with collections management projects including cataloguing, writing artist bios, etc., developing materials for museum education related to specific exhibitions and more.

Daily Duties:

• Research for upcoming projects, acquisitions and exhibitions.
• Development of exhibitions materials like checklists and press lists
• Helping to research and fill in missing information in institutional materials like exhibition and publication histories and develop and write resources like artist bios missing from our database
• Assist in creating a rights database of copyright holders for photographers in the collection
• Research current exhibitions on photography to assist the curatorial team with developing our exhibitions program
• Depending on interest and skills, work on cataloguing collections objects and doing research in the institutional archive

Learning objectives and skills to be learned:

The intern will get an overview of how exhibitions are put together from initial idea to the research phase, to production and installation through assisting with multiple exhibitions currently in development. Through hands on experience working on these various phases of exhibition development, the intern will gain valuable museum experience that will transfer to any roles they take on after their time with ICP. In assisting with research for exhibitions the interns will learn skills which will support them also in their studies. The intern will likely spend significant time assisting with research and other tasks related to collections exhibitions in order to learn more about collections work.

Additional Training and Development:

The intern will be trained in exhibitions development, especially in-depth research skills. They will also learn how to manage exhibitions materials such as checklists and press materials. They will hopefully attend meetings with marketing and communications related to exhibitions promotion and with public programs about programming for specific exhibitions. They will be able to shadow most members of our department at some point in their internship.

Orientation plan:

The intern will work most closely with the curatorial assistant and associate director of exhibitions but will also have a chance to learn from and work with the senior curator and director of exhibitions and collections, exhibitions project manager and exhibitions production manager in order to get a well-rounded overview of all phases of exhibition making. Depending on interest, they may also spend some time working with the registrar to learn about collections management work. In the course of working with the exhibitions and collections team, they will also gain valuable insight into how this team works with public programs, marketing and education on how exhibitions overlap with those teams' work as well.

Requirements

Intern Qualifications:

• The intern will have completed some coursework in art history, museum studies, photography or a related field -Excellent writing and communications skills
• Prior museum experience a plus but not required
• Ability to work independently when required, but takes direction and communicates well when working with a team
• Experience with TMS/TMS Collections or other collections database software a plus but not required

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