Organization/Type of internship OR Major/Career Field
I was the Publications intern for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY (a world-renowned, medium-sized modern and contemporary art gallery).
I worked two days a week, five hours a day, from June-August. It was an unpaid internship, but I was able to get a grant from my college to pay for it.
I am an English major with an Art History minor, so this internship combined both of my interests pretty well.
Responsibilities/Duties
I proofread--along with my boss--all the written material that the gallery produced. This means anything from a small sign on the door of the building to enormous documents like The Annual Report. I sometimes helped to write certain text as well.
My primary responsibility was keeping the website up-to-date, making sure new material was added and old material was deleted.
I also edited things like wall text for exhibitions, menus for the gallery cafe, viewbooks for various shows, and ads that would be printed in the paper. Basically anything that was written had to go through the Publications office first.
Lessons Learned
- I realized that I needed human interaction during my day. My office was isolated from the gallery itself and from other offices by many hallways, and I found myself going a little crazy when I had no one else to talk to.
- I figured out that sitting at a desk all day is not my favorite thing to do. I enjoyed it for part of my day, but after a while, I wanted to be up and walking around.
- I also realized that there are two different sides to the art world: one is very pretentious, and the other is wonderfully creative. You have to accept both of these sides in order to really get the most out of the environment.
