Written by Kiani Ned, Marketing & Curatorial Intern
Art has always been my happy place. I personally consider my creativity to be one of my greatest assets and my mother believes so as well. She has encouraged it my entire life. In fact, she still has little stick figure paintings of mine from prekindergarten, much to my dismay. She has always funded and supported my artistic journey. So much so, that when I decided I would be attending Barnard College of Columbia University in New York City for Art History and Architecture she wholeheartedly supported my decision to do so. As long as I was doing what I loved and getting an excellent education while doing so. After wrapping up my first year of college, I decided it would be nice to have a break from the city and the demands of my education to come home and relax by the beach with family and friends. But I did not want my education to be put on hold when the summer began. So in the Spring, I applied to become an intern at The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens.
I have dreams of curating in a museum and also of creating an Art/Lifestyle magazine in the future, so working with the Curatorial and Marketing departments at The Cummer Museum seemed like an excellent next step in my education about the business of art, art management, marketing, and even journalism. At Columbia, I wrote for several school publications and took pictures for those publications so my internship experience was shaped by my photojournalism skill set. My lovely supervisors, Amy Chamberlin, Amber Sesnick, and Kristen Zimmerman, decided I would be very helpful writing for the blog, and covering all of the fun events that occur at The Cummer during the summer.
I have had the pleasure of attending the Movie Nights, the Sock Hop, the Motown Concert and other great goings-on. While there I snapped away on my camera and chatted with people from all over the greater Jacksonville Area.
On a Monday in the Marketing Department, I would come in to work at 10am and begin uploading photos and writing recaps of the events that I attended throughout the week, then write other posts about the gardens, or the artwork in the galleries. I would also get busy creating blog content about the current exhibit Future Retro: The Great Age of The American Automobile.
My Thursdays in the Curatorial Department were varied in that I could be working in the museum’s Art Database, writing blog posts about art work, copy-editing artist biographies, writing artist biographies, and/or creating labels for the art work for the upcoming exhibits.
I really enjoyed working in both departments because they both taught me how to manage my time in different ways. In the Marketing Department, I had a more regimented schedule–I knew what I was going to be doing before I got in the office and in the Curatorial Department, I couldn’t plan ahead so I had to be smart about getting my assignments finished before I left in the afternoon.
Working at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens as a Marketing and Curatorial Intern this summer was a very rewarding experience for me. I was able to continue learning and writing about art outside of school and also take pictures in the breathtakingly beautiful Gardens of the Museum. Some of my favorite moments include those when I would take my notebook outside into the gardens to write an article and to enjoy the breeze from the St. John’s River and the sun shining through the leaves of the wisteria arbor.
