Emma Walsch ’17 worked with Contemporary Art in Boston.
I had a wonderful experience as one of five interns within the Contemporary Art Department at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Within the Contemporary Art Department, there are multiple curators preparing collections for certain exhibits and researching potential acquisitions for both permanent and temporary galleries within the museum. During my time at the Museum, I have taken on a slew of projects. I was in charge of putting together and editing the Summer Newsletter for the Contemporary Art Department and the Visiting Committee, I helped prepare for the Museum’s annual audit, responded to information requests by scholars/members on certain objects and exhibits, compiled an archive for an artist’s exhibition once it ended at the museum, created new object files of recently-acquired works, and developed research reports as my long-term summer intern project for three different artists’ pieces that had been recently acquired.
The most memorable aspects of this internship would be seeing the actual art work and handling of the pieces in action. It was fascinating to visit the New Staging room, where the artwork for the upcoming exhibit would be shipped in, and I got to watch the new pieces be unpacked and unveiled for the first time. I also got to experience the conservators talk about how they would handle the piece and the different precautions they needed to take when preparing the work to be put on view. The conservator’s lab was also a fascinating place to visit, as we got an inside look on how certain pieces were preserved from paintings, to photographs, to sculptures. I thought it was exceptionally cool to get inches away from incredibly famous and valuable works in storage as they were getting prepared to be put on view, such as paintings by Monet and Frank Stella.