SU Art Museum -- Next-Generation Humanities Doctoral Summer Intern

Department Description 

The Syracuse University Art Museum is the campus art museum of Syracuse University. It strives to be a place of interdisciplinary research, creative thinking, and mindfulness, as well as an inclusive space that serves as a forum for a broad range of discussions that bring people together, uniting the wider community with students, faculty, and staff. The Museum presents up to fifteen (15) exhibitions annually, scores of public programs, and hosts an active schedule of class visits. It also manages the Palitz Gallery at the Syracuse University Lubin House in New York City, where up to four (4) exhibitions a year are presented. The Museum holds an expansive collection of roughly 45,000 artworks and cultural objects that span the globe from antiquity to the present day. This collection is a deep resource that is used for primary research on artists, cultures, time periods, and various disciplinary subjects. It is also for exhibitions and scholarly talks and tours, and is integrated into curricula at the university. The collection is discoverable on the museum’s website (museum.syr.edu) and through its online database (onlinecollections.syr.edu).  

Job Description 

The Syracuse University Art Museum, in partnership with the Graduate School and Graduate Student Organization, seeks a self-motivated, organized, and disciplined individual to serve as an SU Art Museum Next-Generation Humanities Doctoral Summer Intern. This individual will work closely with the museum’s curator and educator, along with the museum’s two (2) Faculty Fellows, to research the collection and to create teaching guides for artworks in the museum’s collection that relate to the Fellows’ projects. Over the course of summer 2024, each of the two Faculty Fellows will develop a small exhibition, lesson plans, and assignments centered on objects from the museum’s collection. These materials will support a course each Fellow is teaching in Spring 2025.

The teaching guides will be developed with an eye toward integration into the curricula of current courses at SU and will be shared with faculty and graduate students across the university. The teaching guides will be an invaluable resource in promoting further research and curriculum-integrated teaching at the museum. In addition, the teaching guides may be integrated into programming and teaching related to the Fellows’ Spring 2025 exhibitions. 

The development of the teaching guides will entail researching the collection, researching museum- and/or object-based curricula at other cultural and/or higher ed institutions, writing and editing the content of the guides, and identifying potential on- and off-campus partners who may utilize the curricula and/or be interested in the Spring 2025 exhibitions and its related programming.

The doctoral intern will receive an introduction to the collection and methods to search and access the collection, related object and donor files, and other relevant documentation. Work will be conducted primarily on-site at the museum and on campus, utilizing library resources as necessary. The+ doctoral intern will work an average of 30-35 hours/week over the course of eight (8) weeks in summer 2024 (exact dates are flexible and TBD). The internship does not include housing.

Applicants should submit a resume or CV and a cover letter stating their interest in the position, the skills and expertise they will bring to the position, and how they envision the internship aligning with their professional trajectory. Please also include a list of three (3) references.

Preference will be given to applications received by April 26, 2024.

Qualifications 

Matriculated Syracuse University PhD student in a humanities or related discipline, ideally with experience and interests related to history, art history, anthropology, public history, museums, and/or object-based teaching. 

Professional Skills to Be Gained 

·      comprehensive understanding of how an academic museum functions, and how art collections are acquired, used for research, teaching, programming and exhibition 

·      key transferrable skills including undertaking primary research with art and cultural objects, and primary documentation on these materials 

·      visual analytics, critical thinking and analysis, and ability to research, think, and communicate across disciplines 

·      awareness of how cultural institutions preserve and communicate history and knowledge, and how they contribute to research across a wide range of disciplines 

·      training in using TMS, an industry standard collections management software