Each year for the past twenty
years the Catalina Island Museum has received a grant from the Getty Foundation
to fund an internship in the museum’s curatorial department. This year is no
exception.
Aiming to increase diversity in
and provide support for Los Angeles area museums and visual arts organizations,
the Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program has funded substantive,
full-time summer work opportunities for students at Los Angeles area museums
and visual arts organizations. Since the program’s founding in 1993, 150 local
arts institutions, as well as the Getty Center and the Getty Villa, have hosted
over 2,700 undergraduates, exposing these students to career possibilities in
the arts.
The Catalina Island Museum
proudly welcomes this year’s Getty Foundation intern, Brooke Garcia. Garcia grew up in Long Beach and is a recent graduate of Brown
University. She received a bachelor of arts in archaeology with a concentration in Egyptian
and Western Asian Archaeology. As part of the Multicultural Undergraduate
Internship program, Garcia previously interned in the Long Beach Museum of
Art’s education department.
After graduation, Garcia knew she
wanted to return to Southern California and was drawn to the Catalina Island
Museum internship for a variety of reasons. She is really interested in the
curatorial side of museums and viewed this opportunity as a way to explore the
island’s unique subject matter, especially the museum’s extensive
archaeological archive.
“Since arriving, Garcia has been
a crucial part of the curatorial staff. She helped install the museum’s most
recent exhibition “Gimme Some Lovin’: The Spencer Davis Group,” helps maintain
the galleries each day and is conducting research for our next exhibition about
William Wrigley, Jr.,” said Curator John Boraggina.
“Walking through the galleries, I sometimes see people
reading portions of the exhibition that I helped install and it’s like our work
in curatorial is touching them. That’s why I want to go into the museum field.
I want to take knowledge I’ve found and researched and share it with the
world,” said Garcia.
Over the years, interns funded by
the Getty Foundation have completed a variety of important projects for the
museum including the documentation of artifacts, research for exhibitions and
publications, transcribing oral history interviews, and assisting with
education programs. The museum appreciates the efforts of the Getty Foundation
to expose interns to a breadth of visual arts-related jobs opportunities,
leading many students into careers at museums and visual arts nonprofits.
The Catalina Island Museum is
Avalon’s sole institution devoted to art, culture and history.
The museum, its digital theater and
store are located on the ground floor of Avalon’s historic Casino and are open
7 days a week, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
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