Meet Our 2023 Summer Interns

Our 2023 Summer Interns share what they worked on this summer. We are grateful for their hard work!

Clare McElhaney, Smith College

Clare McElhaney: Library & Archives Intern
Supervisors: Juli Folk & Amanda Acosta

Clare McElhaney recently graduated from Smith College, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in History with double minors in Italian Studies and Archives. Passionate about uncovering and preserving history through archives, she worked as the Library and Archives Intern with the Manager of Archives and Library Resources Juli Folk and Digital Archivist Amanda Acosta. Working with both physical and digital material, she completed a number of projects involving the Exhibition History Files, Member Publications, the Juley Photograph Collection, and various Artist Vertical Files. Her largest project combined previously processed and unprocessed boxes, vertical files, and binders in order to collect and select Exhibition Pamphlets from the 1920s to the present for digitization so that they will be available for future research.

Grace McCormick, American University

Grace McCormick: Curatorial Intern
Supervisor: Elsa Smithgall

Grace McCormick is in her second year at American University’s Masters in Art History Program specializing in American art. Previously she received her BA from Syracuse University in Art History and Newspaper and Online Journalism with a minor in Museum Studies. With her degrees, she has merged her passion for visual art and storytelling. As a museum professional, she works to create meaningful exhibitions that engage with inequality while centering neglected or overlooked voices in this work. To this end at the Phillips, she has been working as a Curatorial Intern with Chief Curator Elsa Smithgall on an exhibition of artwork by William Gropper. She has put together a comprehensive bibliography on Gropper and his work, drafted loan requests, and assisted in developing the curatorial rationale for the show. Grace will be finishing her degree this year upon her completion of her thesis exploring the installation Mickalene Thomas: A Moment’s Pleasure (2019-2021) as a new form of institutional critique that does not focus on what a museum has not done in the past, but rather re-conceptualizes what it can be moving forward. Grace will be starting a new position at The Phillips Collection as a Visitor Services Associate.

June Nam, University of North Carolina

June Nam: DEAI Intern
Supervisors: Yuma Tomes & Shelby Bergstresser

June Nam majored in nursing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her parents are artists, and naturally, she was surrounded by Korean moon jars and stacks of ceramic bowls in her home. Her interest in the arts never stopped, even while in nursing school. She ran across campus to attend any creative art classes she could fit in between her shifts at the hospital. After working as a nurse through the pandemic, she wanted to explore other avenues of interest. Bringing her to the internship program at the Phillips in the DEAI department, working with Shelby and Yuma. She has a great interest in Korean art, specifically creating a better process for entry of Korean art in museums, broadly making the proposal processes of artists and exhibits more inclusive and accessible, and bringing Korean American narratives into more spaces.

Kiara Bennett, Towson University

Kiara Bennett: Community Engagement Intern
Supervisors: Donna Jonte & Laylaa Randera

My name is Kiara Bennett. I am working as the Community Engagement Intern this summer. I am from Prince George’s County, Maryland. I am completing my last semester at Towson University as an Art Education and Fine Arts double major. I love to paint, travel, and visit various museums in my free time. Museums have always been a safe space for me since I was a child, so having this experience to further my career in museum education was a dream come true. This summer I helped with weekend Family Programs, assisted with art activity programs for Iona Senior Services, and shadowed multiple educational tours. I also worked at The Phillips Collection Summer Camp program for children at THEARC. During the program, I assisted the children with completing a mural for THEARC and taught my own art lesson about how to create stained glass window designs, inspired by Nekisha Durrett’s Airshaft (2021) located on the bridges of the Phillips.

Lucy Phillips, American University

Lucy Phillips: Development Intern
Supervisor: Miranda Burr

Lucy Phillips is a rising junior at American University, majoring in Art History and Statistics. This summer she worked as a Development Intern with Corporate Relations Officer Miranda Burr, gaining a meaningful understanding of The Phillips Collection’s fundraising and donor relations activities. More broadly, her internship exposed her to trends and strategies for arts philanthropy. During her time at the Phillips, Lucy researched prospective donors, personalized proposals, and distributed corporate sponsorship solicitations for a future exhibition. Lucy also created a comprehensive stewardship report for Frank Stewart’s Nexus–a lynchpin for driving enhanced donor engagement, relationship management, and appreciation that will be used as a template for future exhibitions.

Cecilia Moore, University of Virginia

Cecilia Moore: University of Virginia Curatorial Intern
Supervisor: Vesela Sretenovic

Cecilia Moore is a rising senior at the University of Virginia, where she studies Art History and Spanish Literature & Culture. At the Phillips Collection, she interned under Director of Contemporary Art Initiatives and Academic Affairs Vesela Sretenović. Over the course of the summer, she worked on several projects across departments and gained first-hand experience in museum practices and arts administration. These projects included streamlining the website of the Center for Art and Knowledge, conducting research on potential loans for upcoming exhibitions, and assembling an archive of past contemporary art projects at The Phillips. After she completes her undergraduate degree, she hopes to attend graduate school and pursue a career in museum curation.

Nikki Ghaemi, George Washington University

Nikki Ghaemi: Public Programs Intern
Supervisor: Ashley Whitfield

Nikki Ghaemi is a junior at George Washington University where she is majoring in art history and journalism. This summer, she worked as a Public Programs Intern under Head of Public Programs Ashley Whitfield. Nikki worked at numerous programs this summer, designed an activity for Phillips after 5 in August, and participated in a meeting brainstorming ideas for future Phillips after 5 activities. She advocated for greater engagement of Native American contemporary artists and proposed a program to celebrate Native American Heritage Month later this year.

Phillips@THEARC Summer Camp: Making Murals

Manager of Community Projects Laylaa Randera on the Phillips@THEARC Summer Camp.

Over the past few weeks, Phillips@THEARC offered a fun and educational mural-making summer camp. Campers learned how their own art for the public—whether for their immediate community or the broader DC population—can be appreciated. For four weeks, the camp was bustling every day with campers ages 8-13 years. We explored the functions of murals and public art installations, including how art can reshape, uplift, and call attention to a community’s built environment and interpersonal culture.

Campers with the mural behind them and a live painting board in front of them.

Mural artist Tenbeete Solomon, better known as Trap Bob, led the making of the mural. Trap Bob’s brightly colored murals, which are frequently inspired by activism and community issues, can be seen around the city. (Check out her great Phillips100 logo!) Trap Bob guided the campers through designing and painting a mural. Campers sketched out ideas and discussed what they’ve seen in murals around their community. The three themes that the campers chose were: hands, outer space, and abstract.

On Fridays, we went on field trips. On the first Friday we visited The Phillips Collection and spent the day exploring the galleries and doing art activities. Donna Jonte, Head of Experiential Learning, led a tour and developed fun stuff for us to do.

Emma Dreyfuss teaching campers about Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series at The Phillips Collection.

On the second and third Friday, we went on mural tours in DC. Despite the blistering heat, we put our walking shoes on and got to know some of the prolific artists making murals in the city. Cory Stowers, a muralist and graffiti artist, led the tours. We visited the Graffiti Museum in NW DC, and from there went down to U street and Shaw. We also looked at murals East of the River, some of which date back to the 80s.

Cory Stowers leading mural tour East of the River.

The camp counselors led many activities too, including the creation of a model-magic monument park and live painting exercises where we let our creative juices flow and free painted on plywood boards to music.

Campers working on marbled memory books.

Campers working on the mural.

Campers working on the mural.

One of the highlights of the camp was going to the splash park on Wednesdays. With the summer heat, it was a much-needed activity.

A huge thanks must be given to our camp counselors Juliana Walsh, Emma Dreyfuss, Community Engagement Intern Kiara Bennett, Community Engagement Detail Karlisima Rodas-Israel, Building Bridges, and DC Central Kitchen.

The final mural made by the campers will be installed and displayed at THEARC this fall—please come check it out!

The Phillips Mural Summer Camp on a field trip to the museum.

Acknowledging the Land and its Histories

Community Engagement Assistant Alani Nelson reflects on the land, its lost histories, and the journey toward recovery, using Let Them Enter Dancing and Showing Their Faces, Thief by Nicholas Galanin as a starting point.

Nicolas Galanin is an artist of Tlingit and Unangax̂ heritage living in Sitka, Alaska. His practice honors “the land.” Sitka is right outside of the state capital, Juneau, a pivotal site for gold mining during the last decades of the 19th century. After the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, the discovery of gold irrecoverably altered the relationship between the Tlingit Nation and the land. While the Tlingit and the Haida are indigenous to the land that we now call Southeast Alaska, the United States government did not permit them to file land claims during a time of unprecedented economic change. This land has been the stage for a series of historic events marred by the exclusion of those Indigenous people who have been its steward since time immemorial.

Galanin’s Let Them Enter Dancing and Showing Their Faces, Thief, with its almost frenzied expression, greeted me on my first day as an employee at The Phillips Collection. Adorned with a halo gilded in gold, it cut into my view and soon became the reason I would walk roundabout ways to my office or hover for a second too long in the Music Room where it was displayed.

Nicholas Galanin, Let Them Enter Dancing and Showing Their Faces: Thief, 2018, Monotype and gold leaf on paper, 30 x 21 in., The Phillips Collection, Director’s Discretionary Fund, 2021

Shortly after viewing Thief, I asked to lead a spotlight talk on Galanin’s work for one of our weekly virtual meditations. I knew that acknowledging the Indigenous people whose land we now reside on was necessary. While going over my presentation for a friend, they stopped me mid-introduction to let me know that the land acknowledgment, which referenced the Piscataway people, did not include all the communities that are indigenous to the region. I instinctively defended the information laid out before me, but it is good to have friends like mine who do not let much slide. We did the research together on Facetime and learned that this land was once the home of both the Piscataway and Nacotchtank (Anacostan) people. After making the alterations to my land acknowledgment in the presentation, I found myself swiftly adapting to the routine of my new role.

Later in the year, the Phillips’s Center for Art & Knowledge hosted scholars from the University of Virginia for the W. Wanambi Distinguished Lecture at The Phillips Collection. In preparation for the lecture, they informed the Phillips team that our land acknowledgment differed slightly from theirs. Our DEAI team embraced the UVA scholarship and began the necessary work to update our land acknowledgment. As part of their journey toward amending the land acknowledgment, the DEAI team sought out leaders from local Indigenous groups and received guidance on which groups should be included in the museum’s land acknowledgment. This brought me back to my early days here. I reflected on my role and the responsibility that comes with being a museum worker. Leveraging the privilege that comes with being a part of museums that hold histories also entails recognizing the responsibility to share these cultural narratives with the world.

In the spring, Thief moved from the Music Room up to the third floor into a new context and conversation with the works in the exhibition Pour, Tear, Carve: Material Possibilities in the Collection. The corner of the gallery glowed as light danced on the gold leaf of Galanin’s work. And shortly after, the digital wall at the museum’s entrance would glow with a new land acknowledgment front and center:

The Phillips Collection is a community of artistic expressions of diverse people, situated on the ancestral and unceded homelands of Piscataway and Nacotchtank (Anacostan) peoples. The area we know as Washington, DC, was rich in natural resources and supported local native people living there. We pay respect to their Elders, past and present. It is within The Phillips Collection’s responsibility as a cultural institution to disseminate knowledge about Indigenous peoples and this acknowledgment reminds us of the significance of place and the museum’s commitment to building respectful relationships with those who call these lands home today.

Let Them Enter Dancing and Showing Their Faces, Thief is part of a larger series of monotypes. Other titles include Knowledge, Sister, Shaman, Mouse, Fortitude, Xóots, Birth of a Song, Soothsayer, Keet, In Trance, Guwakaan, Descendant, Dance, and Central. Of this series, Galanin says, “Some of the faces being revealed in dialogue with my works are not just dancers, but faces within the society we dance in.”[1] The title of the series recalls an ancestral dance, where dancers enter unmasked with their faces revealed.[2] By representing the characters of this dance   Galanin creates a space for remembering and creating community. He states:

“The goal of colonization is often consumption and extraction, and then it just continues on. But it’s through memory and connection to places—and sharing that memory and connection—that we can demonstrate, share, and educate about ways of being in a world that are healthy for not just us but our future generations.”[3]

The gold leaf that forms a nimbus around the head of Thief recalls the artist’s reliance on the land as a part of his practice and the history that the land preserves. Let Them Enter Dancing and Showing Their Faces, Thief is a work that considers the nature of history-making and the power of expression to illuminate histories.

As we honor the Piscataway and Nacotchtank (Anacostan) land on which The Phillips Collection resides, let us remember the privilege of arts institutions to bring obscured histories to audiences.

 

Notes

[1] Nicholas Galanin – monotypes. Peter Blum Gallery. (n.d.). https://www.peterblumgallery.com/viewing-room/nicholas-galanin/summary-of-artworks?view=slider#:~:text=I%20would%20like%20to%20think,the%20society%20we%20dance%20in.%E2%80%9D

[2] Ibid.

[3] Battaglia, A. (2020, March 10). Ancient to the future: Nicholas Galanin aims to change how indigenous art is understood. ARTnews.com. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/artists/nicholas-galanin-peter-blum-gallery-1202677789/