Curating a Future

From Kenyon News - July 28, 2014

 The Smithsonian. MOMA. The Whitney.

That list includes just a few of the many museums and institutions where Kenyon students are working as interns this summer after working as Gund Gallery associates.

“Without the experience at the Gund Gallery, there’s no way I would have gained some of the skills I needed to work at a larger institution,” said Emily Sussman ’15 of London, England, who is now an intern at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Sussman’s work in the curatorial department includes helping the curator acquire film and video, a medium that Sussman, an art history major, said is “overlooked by the art world frequently.”

Sussman is just one of a number of Kenyon students and recent alumni who have landed internships or post-baccalaureate programs at major museums and organizations.

“It looks like we’ve doubled the number of students who are doing summer internships this year compared to last year,” said Natalie Marsh, the director of the Gund Gallery.

“I really believe that working at the (gallery) could lead you to any number of museum choices,” Marsh said, “and you’ll benefit by having worked at the (gallery), so it’s really an extension of the philosophy of a liberal arts education.”

Hanna Washburn ’14 has taken advantage of the gallery’s K-12 education program — in which interns form curricula at local elementary schools and for young visitors to the gallery — to become a family-programs intern at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

“I really loved art when I was growing up, so allowing someone else to have that experience is really important to me,” said Washburn, who was an English and studio-art double major.

That fusion of art and education was what attracted Emily Torrey ’14 to the gallery’s associate program. The previous summer, she interned at the Harlem Children’s Zone, an educational nonprofit, as an assistant art teacher. “I was already interested in education, and art was something I was interested in as well,” Torrey said, “so they become sort of melded through the Gund Gallery.”

Torrey, a studio art major, is now in a post-baccalaureate program in sculpture and extended media at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. While both Washburn and Torrey have taken their Gund Gallery skills off the Hill, Sussman is looking forward to returning to the associates program.

“I think my senior year would be very incomplete if I didn’t have the Gund Gallery in my life,” she said. 

Other students and alumni who worked at the Gund Gallery as associates and have landed strong internships include:

Harrison Curley ’15 of Orlando, Fla., a double major in art history and English, is an intern at the Elizabeth Dee Gallery in New York City. 

Molly Donovan ’16 of New York City, an English major, is at the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York City.

Schuyler Krogh '15 of Bethesda, Md., an art history major, is an intern at the Arthur M. Sackler and Freer Gallery of Art: the National Museums of Asian Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., as well as at the Adah Rose Art Gallery in Kensington, Md.

Emma Lewis ’14, a sociology major, is spending the summer at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in Washington, D.C.

Virginia McBride '15 of Austin, Texas, an art history major, is a Peter Krueger Curatorial Intern in the Department of Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City. 

Han Zaw ’16, an international studies major, has taken his gallery experience to an internship at Berger Hirschberg Strategies, a political strategies and fundraising firm dedicated to progressive and democratic ideals, in Washington, D.C.

By Henri Gendreau ’16