I first saw this portrait of Stephen Schafer by Alice Neel at the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art when my class Portraiture as a Medium was choosing pieces from the collection for a gallery talk in Winter Semester 2024. I immediately recognized it was an Alice Neel from the loose brush strokes, the expressive and somewhat unnatural color palette, and the flat background emphasizing the figure. I had just come back to �ֲ���ý from my Junior semester abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark. While studying there, I took a trip to Oslo, Norway where I visited the Munch Museum which happened to have an Alice Neel exhibition on view. I had never heard about her or seen her work before, but became absolutely fascinated with her ability to capture the colorful integrity and diversity of everyday people in New York City. As someone from New York myself, I felt an immediate connection to her work. Through depicting New Yorkers from all walks of life, races, and professions, Neel is able to bring out the raw energy and individuality that makes the city so special. Although I ultimately chose a different work from the collection, I am thrilled to now have another chance to explore this portrait of Stephen Schaefer. It is so exciting to be able to work first hand with a painting by such a renowned woman artist–especially one that I resonated with so strongly while working at the �ֲ���ý Museum.  

Neel is known for her colorful and naturalistic portraits that ooze with the sitter’s personality. This portrait of Stephen Schaefer embodies her signature mark-making defined by a slight distortion, bold outlines, and creative color choice. She lived and worked for twenty years at her apartment in Spanish Harlem, New York.¹ In working from home, Neel was able to create a calm, casual, and trusting atmosphere where her sitters could feel comfortable. The sense of comfort is evident in the way her subjects pose. She would talk to her models so that they would ease into a natural positioning. We can see this here through Schaefer’s relaxed body language with his legs crossed and hands resting on his knees. His body is devoid of tension or stiffness; in fact, he is almost slouching over his crossed legs. Although Neel paints his eyes with a piercing blue, his gaze into the distance off the left side of the canvas is calm.  

Through capturing Schaefer in a moment of genuine ease rather than a staged performance, this portrait feels refreshingly unposed. Schaefer wears worn-in, classic blue jeans and a loose cotton t-shirt. His unshaven face and bare feet further emphasize the laid-back environment when posing for Neel. He appears to have sat down for the portrait as he was, wearing the clothing he would on any other day. This element of Neel’s work sets her apart from traditional themes in portrait painting. Historically, portraiture was reserved for wealthy or royal patrons. In these works, sitters would wear their finest garb as a means of communicating their financial, social, or political status. Neel, on the other hand, employs portraiture to celebrate ordinary individuals, depicting them in their most authentic state. 

Her choice to sometimes distort elements of her subjects, such as Schaefer’s uneven eyes and disproportionately long fingers and toes, reject idealization and highlight humanity and honesty. Her approach pushes the traditional boundaries of portraiture that focus on exhibiting wealth and power by capturing diverse and candid lived experiences of human beings. She also may be referencing early twentieth-century modernist and expressionist styles from Europe through the emotional intensity, abstracted and exaggerated forms, and bold colors.² 

By incorporating these influences and references, Neel’s work is unmistakably unique. Even before she rose to fame in the 1960s and 1970s, she made conscious efforts to forge her own identity. Although she was born in Philadelphia, in the 1930s Neel moved to the Greenwich Village Neighborhood in New York City where she painted portraits of artists, left wing writers, and trade unionists.³ However, in 1938, she intentionally distanced herself from the dominant art world centered in Greenwich Village, feeling that it was too insular and trendy among artists, and moved uptown to Spanish Harlem.⁴ During her time living in Spanish Harlem, and then later the Upper West Side, Neel immersed herself into the everyday lives of working class New Yorkers. Even as she rose to fame during the 1970s and extended her sitters to prominent figures of the time such as Andy Warhol, Robert Smithson, and Frank O’Hara, Neel remained steadfast in her commitment to portraying the complex, real, and dynamic people around her–those often overlooked by traditional portraiture–whether they be her neighbors, notable figures, or strangers.⁵����

1. Jason Farago, “Alice Neel’s Love of Harlem and the Neighbors She Painted There ,” New York Times, February 23, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/arts/design/alice-neel-harlem.html. ↩︎
2. “Biography,” Alice Neel, September 7, 2023, https://www.aliceneel.com/biography/. ↩︎
3. Ibid. ↩︎
4. Ibid. ↩︎
5. Ibid. ↩︎

Bibliography

Als, Hilton. “The Inclusive Humanity of Alice Neel’s Paintings.” The New Yorker, February 4, 2017. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-inclusive-humanity-of-alice-neels-paintings. 
“Biography.” Alice Neel, September 7, 2023. https://www.aliceneel.com/biography/. 
Farago, Jason. “Alice Neel’s Love of Harlem and the Neighbors She Painted There .” New York Times, February 23, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/arts/design/alice-neel-harlem.html. 
Silver-Cohen, Romy. “Alice Neel (American, 1900-1984).” MoMA, 2021. https://www.moma.org/artists/4253.

When I first looked at Back by Isabella Kirkland, I was intrigued by the busyness in the painting. Contrasted with the black background, the work displays an explosion of plants and animals out of the void. The animals and plants are full of life; the colors are vivacious, but abruptly stop at the black background. A key to each animal with both its common and scientific name on the artist’s website showed her interest in depicting specific animals that viewers can identify. The animals themselves vary; an owl is surrounded by lemurs, a kakapo or taonga picks at a whooping crane egg, and snakes and a frog linger at the bottom, barely noticeable amidst all the other larger animals and white flowers. The species coexist in the same timeless space, as if they would share the same habitat in real life. Her other similar works also follow this chaotic interweaving of flora and fauna–animals and plants appearing out of (and disappearing into) a black background. 

I was interested in why all the plants and animals were chosen, and it led me to more of Kirland’s work, where she has made several pieces about taxidermy and animal anatomy. In particular, she uses techniques from seventeenth-century Dutch masters, including their methods of identifying plants and animals, to discuss how human activity may lead to the extinction of much of the life she paints. The animals and plants in this painting were on the brink of extinction, but then were brought “back”–hence the title–underscoring the impact of human practices on numerous species. 

Her paintings balance themes of time, nature, and human interference. She believes in the importance of using her practice to communicate threats about human destruction to nature, stating, “I choose to apply accuracy in a different service: my analog and intentionally durable works in oil reflect selected flora and fauna of earth that may well outlast the species depicted in them.” In painting each animal and plant as its own character in the story she is telling, sometimes interacting with their prey or predator, she reiterates nature’s liveliness, interdependence, and precariousness.  

Although this piece is alluring, aesthetic, and detailed, I felt slightly unsettled while looking at it. The Madagascar Red Owl near the top of the piece stares at the viewer as if confronting us with the damage we are doing to its home. At the bottom of the piece, eggs from several species of birds suggest the possibility of new life teeming in the future. The fact that the eggs have not started to hatch, however, suggests this also hangs in the balance. On her website, Kirkland draws specific attention to the Owens Pupfish. It was listed as federally endangered in 1967 and almost went extinct in 1969 if not for a biologist and his colleagues. It is notably the only animal in a glass fishbowl, as if Kirkland has deemed it unsafe for the fish to exist without protection, even in a fictional world. 

The animals in this work will continue to fascinate me in the diverse species they represent and the way they are physically placed in the painting. They immerse us humans in their world. However, the ominous black background also reminds us all that the world we live in is fragile and temporary, and if we don’t protect it, the natural world will fade into nothingness.

Sources:

I was thinking about the way people use bigoted language. It’s almost a physical act. It’s like you are throwing something at someone. I began doing these experiments where I would just write something and think about the delivery of it. According to how you wrote it, it could be a slogan, or perhaps something even more indifferent, a statement. Is this being said as an accusation? A description? ¹

Throughout his work, Pope.L explores race, labor, capitalism, and materiality while foregrounding the bodily experience to render ideas more visceral. Though most notably celebrated for his performance art, multidisciplinary artist Pope.L was equally invested in writing. In fact, poetry was Pope.L’s first introduction to creative expression. In a 1989 BOMB Magazine interview with Martha Wilson, the artist ruminates on his early memories caught in the rapture of spoken poetry in his kitchen. He recounts his mother and aunt quoting Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Langston Hughes, “laughing and bubbling it up. It was neat. Then my Aunt or my Uncle would respond, making up their own lines. And it would fly like that. Like freestyling rap it would take on a life of its own.”² From a young age, Pope.L sensed the power, joy, and creativity that stemmed from the written word. As a burgeoning artist freshly graduated from Montclair State University in the 1970s, Pope. L continued to dedicate himself to poetry, more so out of necessity; “I knew I was going to be as poor out of school as I was while in school. Writing was a very portable thing I could do.”³ 

Most potent in these anecdotes for me are the connections that reveal themselves between writing and physicality. The poems introduced to Pope.L early in his life were not stagnant, two-dimensional texts tied down to a sheet of paper. Rather, they were charged with life and given shape, form, and breath; The vibrating tremor of his aunt’s voice and her oscillating breath mediated by the acoustics of his kitchen created a notion of language for Pope. L that was palpable, bodily, and site-specific. Furthermore, his proclivity for writing’s portable quality highlights his negation of object or artifice for a preference for what is always available–the body, our surroundings, a pen, some paper. Writing’s stripped down nature and its relationship to movement as something that you can carry with you anywhere correlates directly to its own physical practice of drawing ink across paper. Even when not explicitly enacted through the body, much of Pope.L’s work is charged with a sizzling physicality, including his text-paintings, like this one in the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art’s collection.

At first glance, Contest appears as a text more than anything else. Stark black words seep up from their murky-white backdrop as if wet and soggy. The letters are oddly shaped, slightly smeared by white paint, and they bob up and down in wavering bands. From a distance, this work transmits light-heartedness and joy. Its white backdrop is laced and dotted with bright pastel colors, and a photograph in the center depicts a man and a woman laughing on a rowboat in the sunshine. Not long into looking at this work, however, the words crystallize and quickly complicate the collage’s seemingly joyful temperament. The text is an incongruous assemblage of words spliced with racial slurs, made-up words, and stunted with question marks. It is hard to discern, and incites uncomfortability and curiosity. 

Searching for more information, I look closer to find pen illustrations of body parts: ears, hands, and many lips, large and pillowy. Small cut-out faces of white boys smile at me, in a frozen and creepy sort of way. In miniscule writing, addendums hide: such as, under the rowboat image, “Many Contests Come by Boat.” Scanning over the black words again, I respond viscerally; the fragmented statements are chucked at me in short spurts. As a whole, the work’s layered haziness, and its jumbled, mixed-up pot of words and images elicit a feeling of troubled frenzy. It is alive in movement and cluttered with sound. The frayed left edge of the work tells us the paper was once torn. Pink paint ceaselessly drips. Lips pucker. Mouths pry open. Hard T’s cut the air. Suddenly the whole work feels like it’s going to suck me into its cloudy, cacophonous mess. 

“It’s not that I have the arrogance to believe that I know what should be done,” Pope.L  told Martha Wilson in the BOMB Magazine interview. “In fact, I’m afraid of the responsibility, but something should be done. And if I can construct works that allow people to enter themselves, thus, enter the mess – then it’s a collaboration and maybe, possibly, who knows, why not – I’ve nudged something.” In this work, Pope.L pulls the viewer–their entire sensing and bodily self–into the complexity of racism, consumerism, and capitalism. He explores the sonority and movement of bigoted language and magnifies racial stereotypes. The large puckering lips, for example, seem to depict the stereotype that Black people have big lips. “Everybody’s A Winner! Take Home A Dozen.” seems to be a nod to consumerist-oriented American game shows. The small addendum “Many Contests Come by Boat” might reference the arrival of Europeans by boat, the stealing of Indigenous peoples’ land, and the ensuing and ongoing cycle of violence and exploitation. Playing with both poeticism and abstraction, Pope.L seeks to describe the feeling and the effect of hateful language over its literal meaning or direct references. 

As a dance-artist interested in durational and experimental modes of performance, I first came across Pope.L’s work through personal research. As he also happened to have been a Professor of Theater and Rhetoric at �ֲ���ý College from 1990 to 2006, his presence echoes in the very spaces I occupy everyday. As an early museum intern, I remember filling up with intrigue upon hearing about how Pope.L’s use of everyday objects can pose a challenge for museum preservation. When deciding on a work to write about that spoke to me in the collection, a Pope.L work seemed obvious to return to three semesters later, as this artist has continuously captured my curiosity. 

While this work is in our collection, Pope.L is most well-known for his . In these provocative disruptions of public space, the artist drags himself against hot summer asphalt, moving in a contradictory way to the monotonous churning of a great corporate machine. Through these crawls, the artist practiced obtaining a new perspective and prompted passersby to also shift their awareness downwards. Embodying a kind of horizontality that referenced the growing houseless population of the time–to which Pope.L was closely related with his father and aunt living on the streets– Pope.L attempted to bring awareness to a rising and personal issue.⁴ In realizing this work, he wondered, “Is there a way to align myself with a people who have less than I do (materially) without making fun of them? I decided to literally put myself in the place of someone who might be homeless and on the street. I wanted to get inside that body. Like, what does it feel like?”⁵ 

Pope.L takes an extreme approach to kinesthetic empathy and invites his audience to experience his art in similarly visceral ways. He is intent on shaking viewers up, probing bodily reactions and writing in bold those taboo issues that are sometimes easier to ignore. Pope.L reminds us that these issues exist whether we decide to look at them or not, and shows us that their effects are often stored and left to fester in the body. As a dance-artist, it was Pope.L’s commitment to embodying these complex issues that first drew me into his work. As an audience member, now having spent time with this piece in the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art’s collection, I am left contemplating my role in perceiving it. Are people interacting with this work just as integral to its meaning as its own physical components–its text, illustrations, and magazine cut-outs? Through its leaking and disruptive nature, Contest incites dialogue, interaction, and builds an interconnected relationship between audience and art–ultimately crafting an experience of viewing that latches on to us, and one that is, afterwards, hard to shed.

1. Basciano, Oliver, “I’m not Jeff Koons!’ – the endurance crawls, weird texts and guerrilla brilliance of Pope.L,” The Guardian, 2021. ↩︎
2. Wilson, Martha, “William Pope.L,” BOMB Magazine, 1989. ↩︎
3. Basciano, “I’m not Jeff Koons!” The Guardian, 2021. ↩︎
4.  “Pope.L. Is Making a Commitment to Art.” Louisiana Channel on YouTube, May 18, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTs5QkK20M4. ↩︎
5. Wilson, Martha, “William Pope.L,” BOMB Magazine, 1989. ↩︎

For the past month and a half, I have been working as Exhibitions Intern for the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art. My work has consisted of researching the artists that the museum will feature in upcoming shows. Right now, we are in the process of writing bios of said artists to be featured in the exhibit catalog. Every week, I look forward to coming to the museum and learning more about the process of creating and writing for an art show. Our guides in this internship have been Dan Mills, the museum’s Director, and Anthony Shostak, the museum’s Curator of Education. It has been an honor to learn from them and I am excited to continue to work with them as the semester progresses. Much like most of my fellow interns, I have aspirations of pursuing a career in the Museum world, so hearing their wisdom about art, artists, and business involving museums in general has been extremely enlightening. Equally inspiring is hearing about �ֲ���ý graduates who have completed this internship and their careers and endeavors in the art world. 

It has been delightful to spend time with my fellow interns, talking about history, art, and the work we are doing for the museum. Although we have shared interests, we do not necessarily all share the same major, which has been interesting to talk about in terms of our call to work in museums. Just as we interns are all different, the artists that we are researching have an incredible range of differences. It is fascinating that the works of all these artists from different times, places, and lives can culminate in this small but mighty college museum in Lewiston, Maine. The artists I have been researching include Sigmund Abeles, Man Ray, Alice Neel, and Brad Kahlhamer. All have such different life experiences which inevitably inform their art. In her life, Neel suffered through the loss of a child. Thus, her work is largely informed by themes of mother and womanhood. Brad Kahlhamer was born on a Native American reservation in Arizona, but adopted by German-American parents and raised in Wisconsin, without any connection to his native roots. Because of this lived experience his art grapples with ideas of identity, specifically his journey to understand his own.

As interns, we are considered museum staff. We have a say in which pieces will be included in the show and really get to use our voices and creativity as students. As Anthony frequently reminds us, the farther you move up in the world of museums the less you get to handle art and see it up close. In this internship, we are encouraged to get close to the art and form our own opinions and observations about the works. We get to see the pieces we have studied on the internet in their true physical form. Thus, I am extremely grateful for this experience and the ability to touch and see the art up close. It has been a great semester so far and I look forward to completing this internship and continuing my involvement with the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art. 

Maura Ferrigno

Class of 2025

My internship at the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art has been educational and informative and has opened my eyes to the ways in which museums operate. It has exceeded my expectations in regard to museum work, and the collection that the museum houses includes over 10,000 objects.

On my first day of the internship, I was able to enter the archives of the museum and learn how to handle artworks. I learned about the system of organization used at the museum, and each student including myself had the opportunity to handle a piece of ancient Mesomerican pottery. Handling such an ancient work of art dating back to 500 BCE was incredible. As an art history major, I have had the opportunity to learn about objects like these in the classroom while looking at them on a PowerPoint presentation, but being able to handle and touch the objects is a different experience.

While interning at the museum, I researched artists and wrote their descriptions, which will be used in a museum exhibition catalogue. The artists that I have had the pleasure of researching include Peggy Bacon, Mardsen Hartley, Xu Bing, Walker Evans, Robert Farber, and Beth Van Hoesen. Marsden Hartley, native to Lewiston, Maine as well as Peggy Bacon who resided in southern Maine, are among the local artists I have researched. Yet, international artists such as Xu Bing and Beth Van Hoesen have been fascinating to research.

I look forward to continuing my work at the internship and learning more about how a museum functions. I have had the opportunity to visit and experience their exhibition Pedagogy while working as an intern and as a part of two of my Art & Visual Culture classes. As a part of a research project in my Global History of Photography class with Professor Erin Nolan, we were given an array of photographs from the �ֲ���ý Museum collection to write a visual analysis essay. In my other seminar class, Methods of Art & Visual Culture, I chose a work entitled Grand Odalisque by Lalla Essaydi. With references to Moroccan culture through a mysterious composition, this work is the basis of a research project I will be pursuing this semester.

I have only recently become involved with the �ֲ���ý Museum of Art, but I am looking forward to continuing my work there this semester and in semesters to come.

Isabelle Job

Class of 2025

For me personally, the most interesting piece, both symbolically and visually, is the Dred Scott banner. It also just so happens to be the first piece in the exhibition that I worked with. Dred Scott (1799-1858) and his wife Harriet are known for the series of lawsuits with the St. Louis Court. As shown on the banner, they filed for the first time in 1846 and lost in 1847. They filed again in 1854, but lost this second time. Won in 1850, lost in 1852, and then faced the Supreme Court in 1857 which resulted in the infamous Dred Scott decision which denied them their freedom. However, as shown on the bottom of the banner, the Scott family ultimately gained their freedom in 1857 after years of fighting when they were bought and then freed by the Blow family. Something I find interesting about this piece is how the date of each lawsuit is placed next to a curve or twist in the legs. A metaphor for each lawsuit being a twist in their lives and a divergence from gaining their freedom. However, by the end of this twisting and turning, Dred Scott lands on his feet and becomes freed as represented by the date of their freedom under the grounded and stable feet. As Lesley Dill states about this piece, “the banner reflects the twists and turns of their lives, like a river finding its true course,” and I could not say this better myself. 

Clara Kennedy 

Class of 2025

When cataloging these works, it is important to be meticulous and take one’s time. In the database I record the date, title, dimensions, medium, and support. I also write a description of the piece using specific depictive vocabulary. One of the most important aspects of this task is to fill out a conservation report, which is an updated description of the piece’s condition. This is where I must look intensely for any damages to the piece such as discoloration, foxing, creasing of the paper, paint cracking, smudges, or fingerprints. A valuable aspect of this task to me personally is my new knowledge of the vocabulary used in the real art world that I will be able to use and understand when I begin my career after college. 

I came into this internship with the certainty that I want to have a career in the art world, whether it be an art curator or an art dealer. This internship has given me the opportunity to immerse myself in museum life. Every day, I have hands-on experience with curators and exquisite pieces of art. That is why I appreciate my cataloging work so much. While the task may seem tedious, when cataloging I am able to really see the work up close and personal. I have learned so much about different mediums and how they work on paper and how to analyze the condition of a piece. One aspect of cataloging dozens of pieces from the same artist that I find fascinating is that I am able to put myself into Bernard Langlais’ mind. I am flipping through his sketchbook, so I can track what topics and mediums he becomes interested in and when the fascination begins and ends for him. After working exclusively with his art, I am able to recognize his tendencies and patterns with forms, colors, and content. 

Of the numerous works on paper by Bernard Langlais that I have worked with since January, there were many that caught my attention. However, in this blog post I decided to focus on three head portraits made from oil paint and crayon on orange construction paper. Officially, these paintings are untitled, but I call them “the big heads” and chose them because they are a great example of Langlais’ true range and talent as an artist in depicting such different emotions and figures using the same support, medium, and color palette.

These three “big heads” are so similar, yet so different. They can be presented together, yet can stand on their own. All of them are painted on this orange construction paper which must have been a fleeting fad for Langlais as there are only a handful of these paintings on orange construction paper before he switches back to regular sketch paper. He uses the same color palette of light blue, white, and a brick red/orange oil paint and black crayon outlines. The same ingredients are used for all three heads, but each one has distinct features and depicts different emotions. 

The head on the left (2013.19.64) is simpler than the other heads, but despite the fact that this head was made only with two colors of paint and a black crayon, I believe it is the most expressive face. The prominent worry lines on his forehead, furrowed brow, crumpled eyes, and stiff bottom lip depict that the figure is worried, concerned, confused, or contemplating something very important. 

The center head (2013.19.62) projects the angriest emotion. This is due to the fact that the figure’s eyebrow is arched very sharply, his lips are pursed, and Langlais uses the most burnt orange paint in this image, contributing to a more fiery mood. In this portrait, Langlais focused on the eyes. The very large eyes sit almost diagonally, which emphasizes the arch of the brow even more. The combination of the intense eyes and brows mixed with the brick red paint creates a sense of intensity burning from within this figure. This image also continues past the neck down to the chest unlike the other two portraits and this figure seems to be wearing a collared shirt. 

The head on the right (2013.19.63) has the most accentuated and distorted features. His eyes stand out to me the most because they are so large and perfectly circular. There is no presence of an eye socket, so this feature is very two dimensional. The shape of the figure’s head is almost completely rectangular, leaving little to no distinction between the head and neck. The little smirk on the subject’s face delights me. Langlais makes the figure’s lips curl at the ends creating

smile lines and even paints the lips with that same red brick color bringing more warmth into his smile. 

I appreciate that Langlais focused on different features for each head. In the left painting, it is clear that he spent much more attention to detail on the ear and eyes. However, in the right piece he paid almost no attention to the ear and focused more on the chin/mouth area. Each head has incredibly different features and depicts such different emotions despite such similarities in subject matter, support, and color scheme. I find the use of unconventional color and facial features so fascinating because the character’s emotions are so human. Such clear moods and emotions are depicted through minimal color and naturalistic detail. 

Clara Kennedy 

Class of 2025

One aspect of the internship that I really want to focus on is the amazing element of working directly in the museum featuring such incredible exhibitions. I find it extremely inspiring to be able to do work in such close proximity to the exhibitions showing right now. Being able to take the time to walk through Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me by Lesley Dill and An Adventurous Spirit: The Jane Costello Wellehan Collection keeps me inspired in the work I do for the museum and maintain a connection to the current art on display now.

Considering my internship so far I’m incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to intern at the �ֲ���ý College Museum of Art and I’m excited to see where the rest of the semester takes me. As this is my first experience in the art and museum field I owe a lot of thanks to both Dan Mills and Anthony Shostak for their great introduction to this new field of study and constant support in all aspects of my internship. Remember, we have amazing exhibitions showing right now in the museum don’t miss out and come check them out!

Over the past few weeks I (along with three other interns) have been working on the upcoming Barbara Morris Goodbody Collection which features photography. My main task is to research and write exhibition catalog entries about each of the artists which has been a challenging yet rewarding process. Challenging due to the difficulty I have been faced with in finding information about some underground artists, yet rewarding as I have learned so much about photography by studying artists and analyzing their work.

After I complete my research on an artist and their upcoming exhibited piece of art, I then compose two short paragraphs in order to illuminate readers about the context of the artwork they are looking at. Depending on the artist and their work, the information I decide to write about varies. The main things I take into consideration when writing my exhibition catalog entries include artist/object information, visual descriptions, art history, current art issues, artist/viewer perception, and interpretation. By writing about these different disciples I am able to cater my entries to the artist/artwork’s strengths as well as ensure that my writing has variety in regards to what I talk about.

Aside from the work I have done discussed above, I have also had the opportunity to intimately interact with the current exhibition featuring Lesley Dill and the works of art in storage. In fact on my first day interning at the museum, when we were learning how to carefully handle artwork, I was lucky enough to hold a Mary Cassatt and Albrecht Durer print! However, the most valuable aspect of the internship so far has been working under the tutelage of Anthony Shostak and Dan Mills. Both are extremely knowledgeable and passionate about what they do which inspires me to keep doing what I love (in terms of my passion for the arts) in hopes that I too can one day work in a museum setting.

Readings like Sontag’s prepared me with the necessary context for the research I conducted on the list of artists I was assigned. Researching many of the incredible artists I have been focused on has felt like a form of creative detective work. Some of the artists are world-renowned with extensive resumes and others require exciting, creative deep dives into research and historical archives. Each artist and their photography has left me awe-struck and truly grateful for the opportunity to learn about the photographers’ and their photographs. Through this research, I am crafting entries about the artists, grounded in the artistic and historical contexts of the work.

I have learned so much from in-person meetings with the museum staff, including Anthony Shostak, Dan Mills, and Caitlin Patton, as well as my fellow interns. I have truly appreciated the opportunity to learn directly from these leaders in the museum field, mainly improving my ability to write cohesively and effectively about artwork. Being in the museum and a part of major installations, like Lesley Dill, Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me, has been so rewarding and has deepened my interest in museum studies. Interns attend incredible events with major artists, like Lesley Dill, and are involved in the discussions within these events as well as getting unique insight into their production.

This internship has fostered so much growth for me as a writer, a student of art history, and as a person with deep interest in museum studies. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this program and am hopeful to continue this work in following semesters.