Internship at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
In July of 2022, I started as the Polly Thayer Starr Studio Intern at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which is a position exclusively reserved for SMFA students. I found out about the internship from a recent SMFA alumna, Gabriella Melchiorri, who I met when I was a freshman and she was a senior. She’s now the Public Programing Coordinator at the Museum and was looking for a current SMFA student to fill the position. I spent a good chunk of my time creating a unique resume to apply for the role by drawing and typing it up in Procreate. I made it very colorful but also informative so that it would stand out, and it worked!
My position is a part of the education team at the museum. I work with the team as a whole but spend the majority of my time working alongside the Public Programs Coordinator, Gabriella. Together we run the “Saturday Open Studio” in the museum’s educational studio each weekend. During Open Studio, visitors are welcome to take part in a variety of different
art-making activities that are related to the museum’s current contemporary exhibitions. On weekends, we set up the materials for the event in the Education Studio, welcome visitors, explain the project, and help them with any questions they have. In addition to working weekends, I also work one day during the week in the Education Office to help with all of the planning and behind the scenes stuff that goes into the public programs at the museum. What I’m asked to help with changes from week to week, but it sometimes includes researching art materials for the next studio project or researching local artists to work with us in the studio.
Our most recent project was making dioramas in conjunction with the Maurice Sendak exhibition, which included many of his hand painted dioramas. For this project we partnered with an artist from Providence, Julia Gualtieri, who came up with the studio project idea for visitors and made BOXES of screen-printed patterned paper for visitors to cut and use in their
dioramas! For one of the Saturday Open Studio days, Julia came to join us in the studio! It was a wonderful opportunity to get to talk to a working artist one-on-one and learn from a lot of her past experiences. She shared a lot of advice with me about being a working artist after graduation and what it looks like to make art in community studio spaces. This was a memorable day for me and I'm thankful for any opportunity to learn and talk with working artists in the area!
The internship was initially going to end in early September, but it was such a good fit that I was asked to continue my internship through the school year. Through my internship experience, I learned just how important it is to make connections with your peers. After graduation, the friends you make here can fill you in on opportunities they think you would be a great fit for!