Charlee Ferguson’s internship at the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) this summer sent her on one scholarly quest after another.
Ferguson, an undergraduate at the University of Bridgeport, worked in the YCBA’s reference library, where she performed background research on artworks in museum’s collection. For each assigned object, she would identify books and journal articles that mentioned it. Any sources she discovered were added to an online bibliography that the museum maintains to assist scholars in their research.
“I enjoy the research process. It’s like going on a scavenger hunt,” said Ferguson, whose internship was arranged through New Haven Promise, a program that provides college scholarships and career development support to graduates of the city’s public schools. “Searching for clues is a lot of fun.”
Each year the YCBA, the Yale University Art Gallery, and Yale Peabody Museum provide paid internships to young people from the greater New Haven area and Yale College students to introduce them to the many complementary facets of the museum profession.
After college, I want to do something research based, maybe related to art, so working in the YCBA’s reference library has been a great experience.
This summer, Ferguson was one of seven YCBA interns. Joining her were fellow New Haven Promise interns Paul Chum and George Cole; Mia Coppola and Neil Grasty; and Yale College students Kemper Rodi and Jiayang Jin.
All had productive summers, says James Vanderberg, the YCBA’s educator for high school, college, and community engagement, who directs the internship program.
“They’ve done meaningful work,” Vanderberg said. “One of the strengths of our internship program is that it’s not a just a fun summer experience to put on your resume. It features real learning, and the interns add genuine value to the institution.”
Their contributions span the museum. The interns drafted wall labels for paintings on view, researched the provenance of collection objects, assisted staff in developing a new collections website, digitally imaged collection materials, and helped with preparations for future public exhibitions, among other projects.
I like the people here and I love the welcoming and collaborative atmosphere. I feel like I can approach my supervisors about my project, get their input, and bounce ideas off them.
A summer of accomplishment
Chum, a rising senior at the University of Connecticut, wrote and edited label text for paintings — an experience that introduced him to the struggle of writing concisely.
“You’re juggling a lot of responsibilities within 125 words,” said Chum, an English major who also interned at the museum last summer through New Haven Promise. “You need to educate an audience using fairly simple terms while drawing on abstract concepts and pulling information from many different sources. It’s challenging but rewarding.”
This internship has demonstrated to me how computer science is relevant to the museum profession. It connects my interest in computer science to the real world in a really compelling way.
Cole, a fellow New Haven Promise intern and rising junior at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., lent his technological skills as a computer science major to an overhaul of a website related to the YCBA’s collection, which is the largest and most comprehensive assemblage of British Art outside the United Kingdom. As part of the project, he created an automated script to crop images of the more than 5,000 artists represented in the collection, for use in website banners and thumbnails.
“It would take a lot of time to crop that many images manually,” Cole said. “The internship connects my interest in computer science to the museum profession in an interesting way.”
I would love to pursue a career in photography. I didn’t know that I would be so interested in that until I got a glimpse of it by working here.
Coppola, a rising junior at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, became acquainted with the YCBA as a high school student while participating in The View From Here, the museum’s photography program for teens.
This summer, she worked in the YCBA’s imaging and education departments. She digitized more than 200 prints and contact sheets from exhibitions the museum staged between 1979 and 1997 and took photos as needed, including shoots for the museum’s website and social media channels. She also is preparing to teach three sessions of The View From Here this fall.
“This summer, I’ve gotten to dive deeper into learning how to teach effectively and how you get a point across in a way that your students will really grasp,” said Coppola, who is from Milford. “I fell in love with photography through my experience with The View from Here, so I’m excited to bring what I’m learning to the program this fall.”
I was surprised by how many people the director meets with each day. There’s always somebody coming to speak with her. There’s always another meeting to attend.
Grasty, who is from Hamden, gained insight into the effort required to lead a world-class museum while assisting in the office of Martina Droth, the Paul Mellon Director of the Yale Center for British Art.
“I was surprised by how many people the director meets with each day,” said Grasty, a 2024 graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta. “There’s always somebody coming to speak with her. There’s always another meeting to attend.”
As part of his duties, Grasty helped develop a highlights tour of the galleries, which gave him an opportunity to explore the collection. His favorite painting on the tour, “Benjamin Dorrell,” is a 1942 portrait by Albert Huie on view in the YCBA’s 4th floor gallery (“I love the colors,” said Grasty). The sitter, Dorrell, was an orphan. He is depicted in the Jamaican home of his adoptive guardian, a white Anglican minister.
I’m here to get a little taste of everything. One of the best aspects of this program is that we get to experience a variety of aspects of the museum profession.
Rodi and Jin, rising juniors in Yale College, worked at YCBA through the Bartels Art Museum Scholar Summer Internships, which are offered to Yale undergraduates each year through the generosity of Nancy Horton Bartels and her late husband, Henry E. Bartels.
Rodi, an American studies major with an interest in the public humanities, conducted research to correct outmoded language used in titles of portraits of women, which often identify their subjects by their husbands or married surnames, such as “Mrs. John Smith” or “Mrs. Smith.” The idea, Rodi said, is to restore the sitters’ autonomy and learn more about their lives. The work required taking a deep dive into a portrait’s provenance for clues and tracing a sitter’s family tree.
“I feel like an art detective,” said Rodi, who is from Newport Beach, California and has long been passionate about museums. “It can be highly frustrating, but when you find that missing link that leads you to this person’s identity or discover a detail of their story, it’s very rewarding.”
I haven’t had any genuine curatorial experience in a museum before, so this is my first glance at that, and it’s been very rewarding.
Jin, a history of art major from New York City, has compiled a catalogue of all works in the university’s collections created with pastels, performed preliminary research for a potential future exhibition on unfinished portraits, and proofread the catalog for “Painters, Ports, and Profits,” a forthcoming exhibition.
These projects introduced him to the nitty gritty of curatorial work.
“I’ve thought about curation as affording a very high-level perspective of a collection and requiring critical and creative thinking,” said Jin, who plans to pursue a career in the museum profession. “Over the course of this summer, I’ve learned that this is true, but also that the job requires so many smaller tasks and a close attention to detail.”
Inspiration everywhere
Aside from working on their individual projects, the interns were exposed to the full spectrum of expertise required to operate a world-class museum. They regularly visited departments outside the ones to which they were assigned. They learned what the museum registrar does and how installations come together, about ongoing art conservation projects, and how to use the reference library. Every Thursday, they met with peers interning at the Art Gallery for enrichment sessions.
“One of the greatest things about this program is that we get to experience a little bit of everything here, through enrichment sessions or through meeting with different people,” Rodi said.
For their part, the interns offer a welcome energy to the museum, Vanderberg said.
“The interns bring a fresh perspective into the building,” he said. “Engaging with a group of interesting young people eager to learn about our profession gives us an opportunity to reflect on our own roles. Why were we excited to come to work today? Why should we be excited to come here in the future?”
Reflecting on her summer experience, Coppola recalled feeling invigorated as she entered the museum each morning.
“Everywhere I look here, I feel inspired,” she said. “It’s not just the paintings, but the amazing building and its spaces, and the people who work here. I feel just very privileged to be here and have that creativity surrounding me.”
