By Miguel Medina
My name is Miguel Medina, and I study at LaGuardia Community College, where my major is Fine Art and Design. I’m doing my internship in the American Folk Art Museum. This museum is the “premier institution devoted to the creative expressions of self-taught artists, past and present.”
The American Folk Art Museum New York offers a paid internship, which is a great opportunity for students of LaGuardia Community College to have work experience in the art world and learn about different areas of the museum such as Education, Public Programs, Curatorial, Collections, Library/Archives, Publications/Website, Development and Marketing/Communications. Also, I have been able to meet and make new friends in the art world.The current group of interns started on September 12, 2018. For the first three months, the interns had meetings every Monday and Wednesday for three and a half hours to learn about different folk artists of the world and their artworks such as Henry Darger who is from Chicago and Martin Ramirez, who is from Mexico, among other artists. Also, interns learn about different categories of the museum collection such as Art Brut, Antique Art, and Contemporary Art. In each meeting, most of the employees of the museum from different areas were introduced to the interns. They talked to us about where they are from, where they graduated from college, their backgrounds and experiences and what they do in the museum. The program is really interesting because we learned a lot about different folk art styles and practiced analyzing artworks. Also, we had some workshops where we made artwork, such as a piece of a quilt with colored paper and a silhouette on black paper. The final project, was to create an exhibition using the museum collection. Interns had one month to prepare their project, which had to have a title and ten to fifteen images, and involve three public programs. In December, the interns presented their projects in front of the other interns and some employees of the museum. After the final project the instructor decided which areas the students would continue the internship. Since January the interns have been working in the different areas that were designated and working on different projects.
This is my first post in this blog, I will keep posting more articles about how my coworkers and I are doing during the internship in our different areas.
Museum Career Internship Program 