This past spring semester (2019), APH student Theresa DeCicco interned at the Museum of the City of New York in New York City. Below you’ll find Theresa ’s blog post about his experience.
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My internship experience occurred at the Museum of the City of New York in their curatorial department. The museum’s primary focus is the teaching of New York City’s diverse history through immersive exhibitions and programming. My time with the curatorial department highlighted the museum’s mission, as my experience was divided between the ongoing show Activist New York and the upcoming New York’s Got Game. Activist New York showcases the metropolitan area’s social activist history with case studies ranging from Dutch New Amsterdam to more contemporary movements, such as Black Lives Matters. In working with the exhibition, I gained insight into the work involved in keeping up an existing show. My tasks involved updating the show’s object list, a master list which holds information on past and present objects included in the show, and finding future objects that could be rotated through the exhibit. In addition, I helped to research new case studies like the Trans Activist Movement of the 1970s. I drafted online content for the Activist New York website portal, as well as selected relevant magazines articles to be displayed on an iPad in the gallery.
Working with New York’s Got Game, I was able to explore the components that go into creating a new exhibition. Set to open in early 2020, New York’s Got Game focuses on the history and development of basketball culture in New York City. I researched and annotated the show’s historical timeline, fact-checking dates that were gathered through different sources. Furthermore, I worked with online archives such as the 92nd Street Y’s collection to gather articles and photographs on the Jewish community and their influence on basketball in the city. As part of my internship, I was invited sit in on museum meetings. An important take away from my internship, the meetings offered a glimpse of how cultural institutions function within the professional realm of public history. My time with the curatorial department and MCNY as a whole has been instrumental in my professional growth as a graduate student and an experience I have truly enjoyed.
Article on the Queens Liberation Front from Drag Magazine displayed in Activist New York (Photo by Theresa DeCicco)