Curatorial 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