CCD: Tell us about your experience. What were your responsibilities?
PB: The Guild of Boston Artists is a gallery that is unique in many ways. It is the only contemporary representational art gallery in Boston, it is deeply rooted in its history, and although it is run on a small staff, those who work there truly care about what it stands for. My primary responsibilities were to create social media posts, help with some paperwork sorting, level the gallery, assist with special events, make infographics, and create activities. I also worked in a small team at The Guild that consisted of the director, the assistant to the director, and me. Those are the people that I worked with daily, however, there were also the artists who worked closely with us.
CCD: Why did you take the internship?
PB: It met my expectations for what I wanted when I applied to the internship, to enter the world of art administration while also keeping an element of history.
CCD: What was the best thing about the experience? What was the worst?
PB: I enjoyed making social media posts as it gave me a chance to analyze the art around me and find a way to present it to the public that would cause thought provocation. For this task I found myself getting out of my chair and standing in front of work for a few minutes with a pen and paper, trying to draw out the essence of what was being depicted and implied. The part of the job that I was not fond of was that there is motivation to sell the paintings to people. I was not directly a part of this part of the job but for me, I am a person who gets excited about teaching people about art and history without having the second motive of getting them to buy something.
CCD: What is the biggest takeaway from your internship position?
PB: I feel like I have come to more of an understanding of what aspects of the art world I have a passion for as discussed previously. Interacting with living artists and discussing their art with them was a dream. This made me feel good about the work that I was doing in class as I was able to apply the critical seeing skills that I had learned and apply them to real-life work. This internship solidified in my mind that I do want to go into the art world for my career, however, I rather not work in any retail sense.
CCD: What was the most memorable moment of your experience?
PB: One of the amusing yet obvious things that I didn’t expect was having to routinely level the gallery. It would take about twenty minutes and I would go around with a level and make sure all the paintings were straight.
BU + Beyond 