Prompted by a flyer she received in her mailbox one spring day in 2002, Caitlin Rathburn RISD '05 applied for a Mellon summer internship at the RISD Museum. The sculpture major knew she loved art and wanted a job that would allow her to develop her passion; apart from that, she had no idea what career path she wanted to follow.
That all changed during the summer of 2002, when Rathburn served as one of four Mellon interns at the museum.
In a bid to promote collaboration between RISD, Brown and the RISD Museum, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation dedicated a fund to the Museum in 1996 intended to strengthen the curatorial and research capacity for students interested in art conservation. Since then, the RISD Museum has awarded the fellowship - a 10-week, paid internship - to four students each summer, two from Brown and two from RISD. During RISD's Wintersession, which runs from January to mid-February, unpaid Mellon internships for credit are available to six Brown and RISD students as well. The internship is open to both undergraduate and graduate students.
The internship experience emphasizes practical knowledge of running a museum, from finance and development to the installation of pieces.
The RISD Museum recently received a challenge fund from the Mellon Foundation to endow the program. At present, the fund stands at $1.5 million, comprising $850,000 contributed by the Mellon Foundation, which is to be matched with $650,000 from the Museum. Guinevere Harrison, account coordinator of RISD's external relations department, said the Museum is raising the matching funds from individual and corporate donations.
Applications for the internship have increased over the years as the program gains prestige and publicity, said Deborah Wilde, academic programs coordinator at the RISD Museum. In recent years, the number of applications for the summer internship has neared 100.
Rathburn, however, drew a distinction between the competitiveness of the internship and the popularity of curating as a career path. "It's not the most popular of career paths at RISD because of its specificity," Rathburn said. "But the competition among those who apply is intense."
The internship attracts applicants across disciplines at both RISD and Brown. Though the highest proportion of Brown applicants come from the visual art and history of art and architecture departments, Wilde said a fair share of Brown student recipients of the Mellon fellowship have been concentrators in other humanities subjects such as religious studies and comparative literature.
Under the supervision of curators, educators and Museum staff, the student interns gain valuable professional experience by working on projects related to collections and exhibitions, Wilde said. "They study the objects in the galleries and in storage, and do research to develop curatorial files and educational material for the pieces while learning about the different departments at the Museum."
Rathburn said her "amazing" experience under the Mellon grant was in large part due to the hands-on nature of the internship. She interned in the contemporary art department, where she researched and documented the entire collection for public display. Rathburn particularly enjoyed the weekly seminars in which important museum issues were discussed, such as cultural property, ethics and archaeological rights. The internship also involved meeting with the curators of every department at the Museum to discuss their experiences.
Quyen Truong '05, a visual art concentrator, was a Mellon intern at the Museum this past summer. She agreed about the educational value of the program, calling her experience a "privilege."
"It's a great way to learn about RISD and a great motivation to leave College Hill," Truong said. "I also gained knowledge of the many processes that working in a museum requires." Truong was the only undergraduate intern over the summer; her fellow interns were all graduate students.
Aja Armey, a second-year graduate student at RISD studying art and education design, also interned at the RISD Museum this past summer. She is currently doing her thesis work at the Yale Art Gallery in New Haven, Conn. Armey said the opportunity was "rare" and "fabulous" because she got to "work directly with objects, like scrutinize them under a microscope." Armey worked in the textiles department, where she examined Italian renaissance textiles.
Wilde said the program under the Mellon grant emphasized the importance of educating the interns in the practical knowledge of running a museum, from finance and development to the installation of pieces. "Our interns become some of the best product handlers around," Wilde said.
Apart from the Mellon internship, Brown also has many opportunities available to students who are interested in museum curating. Maggie Bickford, chair of the Department of History of Art and Architecture, said the department has a longstanding relationship with the RISD Museum spanning 25 years. Both undergraduate and graduate students in the department work with professors and curators to "translate their academic research into access for general audience," Bickford said. The department also offers a proctorship at the RISD Museum for one graduate student each academic year.
Brown's Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology in Bristol offers academic internships for credit through the anthropology department for students interested in ethnographic and archaeological artifacts. These internships are open to students currently enrolled at Brown or other colleges and universities.
The Department of American Civilization will begin to offer a master's degree in public humanities next fall, a revision of the existing Master of Arts program in Museum Studies. According to Steven Lubar, director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization, this new program will "bring the department and the university closer to local and regional museums, historic sites and community cultural programs, and facilitate a new relationship with the Smithsonian Institution and RISD."
The success of Brown and RISD's curating programs are demonstrated by the job placement of students who participated in museum work over the course of their education and expressed interest in a curatorial career. Following her internship at the RISD Museum, Rathburn interned at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, N.Y., and hopes to work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City after graduation. The Mellon internship "made (her) passionate about museums," she said.
Brown graduates have also enjoyed success in the museum job market. Former Mellon intern Jenna Wainwright '02 now works in the installation department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and Ann McMullen M.A. '90, Ph.D. '96 currently serves as a curator of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., a Smithsonian Institute.
