'CuseWorks: SU Art Museum - Humanities Doctoral Summer Intern (PhD Students Only) - Summer 2025

Note to Applicants 

As a part-time student employee, you are an employee at-will, meaning you have the right to end your employment at any time for any reason, and the University may do the same. Your employment is also specifically conditioned on your being and remaining a student in good standing, satisfactory performance of work, availability of work, and legal eligibility to work in the United States. Work may become unavailable due to health or safety concerns, or a change in instructional format.  

** Student employment job opportunities are currently limited to students present in the United States **

SUNY ESF students are not eligible to apply for on-campus student employment through Syracuse University

Department Description 

The Syracuse University Art Museum (SU Art, or the Museum) is a teaching museum that acquires and preserves important works of art and uses its extensive collection to serve as a museum-laboratory for exploration, experimentation, and discussion. The Museum strives to foster diverse and inclusive perspectives by uniting students across the Syracuse University campus with each other and the local and global community, engaging with artwork to bring us together and examining the forces that keep us apart. It welcomes all visitors to experience its exhibitions and public programs that promote original research, creative thinking, and increased mindfulness.  

The Museum presents up to ten (10) 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 has 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 and teaching on artists, cultures, time periods, and various disciplinary subjects. 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, seeks a self-motivated, organized, and disciplined individual to serve as a Syracuse University Art Museum Humanities Doctoral Summer Intern. This individual will work closely with the Museum’s curator and curator of education to research the collection in preparation for the Museum’s 2025-2026 exhibition of its permanent collection. In conjunction with that research, the intern will create a teaching guide or teaching guides for collection artworks related to the exhibition. 

The teaching guide(s) 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 guide(s) will be an invaluable resource in promoting further research and curriculum-integrated teaching at the Museum. In addition, the teaching guide(s) may be integrated into programming and teaching related to the 2025-2026 permanent collection exhibition.

The development of the teaching guide(s) 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 2025-2026 permanent collection exhibition and its related programming.

There may also be an opportunity to write labels for the permanent collection exhibition.

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 2025 (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 March 21, 2025.

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 

University Shared Competencies to be Gained 

- Ethics, Integrity, and Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion 

- Communication Skills