Internships – American Alliance of Museums

Non-Traditional Internships Provide New Perspectives, New Educational Tools

By Annie Thomas-Bubel

Nemours Estate is not your typical historic site. The two-hundred-acre estate, home to Mr. Alfred I. duPont and his family from 1910 until 1970, is set apart from other stately homes of the period by the legacy Mr. duPont left after his …
Virtual Internships Are Here to Stay—and That’s a Good Thing

By Mattie Schloetzer

Amid the challenges of 2020, one of the most successful learning experiences for me was pivoting to a 100 percent remote internship program at the National Gallery of Art. When I began planning to make the transition last March, I saw …
Hosting Remote Internships: Successes, Challenges, and Thoughts for the Future

By Emily Shield

When I posted our call for internship applications last December, I had a very different idea of what the summer would look like. A typical internship at the Chrysler Museum of Art involves current students or recent graduates gaining …
The Power of a Paid Internship: Creating pathways to careers in museums

By Makeba Clay

In 2015, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation issued a report on diversity in art museums that reinforced what is obvious to anyone working in or affiliated with the industry: non-Hispanic white men dominate leadership positions, and there is a …
Listen to the Interns: The Importance of the “Budding Scholar” for Museum Decolonization

By Ashleigh Smith

As a junior in college, I think I might have found my calling—for now anyway. For the past two and a half years I have been studying Art History, Museum Studies, and African American History at Duke University. I’ve committed myself to the …
Access and Equity in Museum Internships: A Case Study

By Elizabeth Merritt

In the US in 2015, 17.5 percent of persons with a disability were employed–compared to a 65 percent employment rate for people without a disability: a troubling statistic that should influence our discussions of museum labor and …
Talking About Museums and Internships

By Nicole Ivy

Hi, Nicole here! Throughout the course of my work on museums and labor at CFM this past year, I have had the pleasure of talking with—and learning from—colleagues across the US in various stages of their careers. Time and again, I’ve heard …
Monday Musing…

By Elizabeth Merritt

Hi, Nicole here! Last week, AAM brought together over twenty museum professionals from the Washington, DC area for an intimate and in-depth dialogue about museums and internships. This convening gathered interns, museum directors, leaders …
Museum Studies Programs & Tools for Creating More Inclusive Curricula

By Gretchen Sorin

The graduates of museum studies programs are overwhelmingly white and female. If we want museums to be staffed by people who reflect the American public, we can broaden our search beyond museum studies program, and we can encourage …
Museums and Social Justice: Supporting Self-Assessment

By Elizabeth Merritt

In a guest post here on the blog earlier this week, Nina Pelaez and Alyssa Greenberg reported on the self-organized convening of Museum Workers Speak at the AAM annual meeting in Atlanta a few weeks ago, where attendees addressed issues of …