Internships & Employment
Interested in a career in the arts? The Mount Holyoke College Art Museum is your on-campus resource. We offer paid student positions as receptionists/guards as well as internships in museum education, curatorial, and collections management during the academic year. The Museum also hosts a limited number of LYNK interns during the summer months through the regular Career Development Center application process. The Almara History in Museums J-Term Internship is an additional opportunity available through the History Department, in which an MHC student spends January conducting original research related to objects or special collections within the Art and/or Skinner Museums.
Receptionist/guard positions as well as internship opportunities are posted through JobX in late March/early April for the following academic year and in November if positions become available for the spring semester. If you are interested in working at the Art Museum, we encourage you to reach out to Museum staff to learn more.
Another great way to be involved with the Museum is the Student Guide Program, which offers students an opportunity to learn about the Museum's collection and give tours to campus, community, and K-12 audiences. These positions are unpaid but students receive academic credit for their participation in the year-long program. Applications are due in early April for the following academic year.
For those interested in pursuing museum careers, Mount Holyoke’s network of alumnae can be an invaluable resource. Every two years, the Museum collaborates with other arts departments on campus and the Career Development Center to organize Crafting a Life in the Arts, a career event featuring guest alumnae panelists working in a variety of arts-related professions.
Events And Links
During the summer of 2019, the Museum was a hub of activity thanks to four Mount Holyoke undergraduate interns whose many contributions ranged from object research to exhibition preparation and installation. This post highlights the summer work experiences of Izzy Chen ’21, Verity O'Connell ’20, Bran Kroc ’20, and Erin Hancock ’20.
During her LYNK internship at MHCAM this summer, Architectural Studies major and Religion minor Priscilla (Qizhen) Zhang '19 studied a group of Tibetan Mani stones in the Museum's collection. Zhang was especially intrigued by the religious stories present in the carved images and inscriptions on these stones, which she describes in this enlightening blog post. The Museum is grateful for her terrific work, and the important contributions of all of our brilliant interns--contributions that have inspired this new blog series, Intern Insights.
In summer 2018, Clarissa Adan FP '19 conducted research on objects from the Joseph Allen Skinner Museum as part of her Lynk internship, which evolved into a culminating project focusing on the history of food. During her study of art and artifacts related to foodways, Clarissa discovered the fascinating history behind many under-researched objects in both the Skinner and Art Museum collections, revealing important insights into how different cultures interacted with this key aspect of human experience.