MMF: Publications | Art Museum Internships for the Future
MMF Editorial Note
June 25, 2025
Liz Levine, MMF Head of Programs
The essays in this publication were written at a time of profound and consequential disagreement about the future of museums: who1 and what they are for,2 how they are funded,3 what stories they tell,4 and what stories they don’t.5 As cultural workers, we are attuned to our responsibility to steward that future, but it can be difficult—especially in times of instability—to determine where to invest our ever scarcer capacity and financial resources. The authors of the two essays in this series, Rebecca Miralrio and Sierra Van Ryck deGroot, make the case for focusing our attention on the museum internship.
Both essays emphasize the importance of committing institutionally to an intern’s education, not using them as a means to solve a need for low-cost labor. The authors’ advocacy is rooted in extensive experience: Rebecca has held five internships at art museums across New York City, and Sierra, also a veteran intern, served as co-president of the National Emerging Museum Professionals Network (NEMPN) and is now an internship program manager. They argue that while understanding the experiences of and supporting interns is critical work for its own sake, the impact of internships on the field is much deeper. Internships offer the opportunity to embed new values within our museums and adapt to the many forces of change, both necessary and terrifying, already on their way.
In her essay, “Museum Internships as Sites of Institutional Reform,” Rebecca argues that “museum internships do not exist in isolation; they are foundational sites where museum culture is absorbed, replicated, or, with care, transformed.” The interns of today are the leaders of tomorrow; how they are trained and what they witness during these formative early years have profound impacts on the leaders they become or, as is so often the case, their decision to leave the field. Since internships reflect and perpetuate institutional norms, they can be a powerful tool to maintain the status quo or to disrupt it, introducing new values and ways of working.
Sierra, in her essay, “Caring from the Start: Why We Must Invest in Interns as the Future of Museums,” focuses her attention on the relationship between unpaid or poorly paid internships and field-wide pay equity. As she writes, “it’s clear that the issues we face as a sector around low wages begins with our interns and trainees.” Sierra has been a long-time advocate for paid internships as a means to increase equitable access to museum careers. During her tenure as co-president, NEMPN was a critical voice calling on institutions to phase out unpaid internships and pay their interns fair market compensation. In this article, she frames her argument in the context of building a sustainable future not only for interns, but for all museum workers. Paid internships, she argues, set a crucial precedent for a community-driven model of care that should suffuse all museum operations.
While engaging with Rebecca and Sierra’s work, I thought about the process by which an art museum worker is “made.” Each of us has a unique but overlapping path to how we became the kind of worker that we are, from the values we hold to the management ethos we embody. We likely all have stories of mentors who guided us into our careers, as well as “what not to do” cautionary tales that now inform how we approach both our work and our workplace relations. Many of us got our start as interns, fellows, or entry-level workers in an art museum. As you read these articles, I hope that you feel called to reflect, as I did, about your own early training in the field and what you may have accepted, actively and passively, as “just the way things are.”
The values we model and the care we invest—or withhold—will have ripple effects well beyond this generation of art museum workers. Through my work at MMF, I have talked to art museum workers who arrived in the field through different paths, who learned from their experiences as artists, educators, organizers, or caregivers, and hold values that deviate from the dominant norms within the art museum. What would a future of museums look like if these values informed how interns were trained and supported? As Rebecca and Sierra discuss in our conversation, moments of crisis can offer us an opportunity to shed old ways of working and open up space for something new. Why not start with those just beginning their journeys, who are buoyed by optimism and love for this work6 and ready to learn?
*To read the articles and our moderated conversation, you can click through the right-hand table of contents on web or the drop-down menu on mobile.
Endnotes
[1] Maya Pontone, “National Gallery of Art Ends Diversity Programs,” Hyperallergic, May 7, 2025, https://hyperallergic.com/985640/national-gallery-of-art-ends-diversity-programs/.
[2] Fatoş Üstek, “Curator Fatoş Üstek on How Museums Can Meet the Moment,” Artnet, April 6, 2024, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/fatos-u%CC%88stek-art-institution-of-tomorrow-excerpt-2462295.
[3] Benjamin Sutton, “Trump signs executive order to ‘eliminate’ agency that funds museums and libraries, March 17, 2025, The Art Newspaper, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/03/17/president-trump-executive-order-institute-museum-library-services-wilson-center; Elaine Velie, “Protesters Crash MoMA Gala Over Board Chair’s Fossil Fuel Ties,” Hyperallergic, June 6, 2023, https://hyperallergic.com/826458/protesters-crash-moma-gala-over-board-chairs-fossil-fuel-ties/.
[4] “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” The White House, March 28, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/.
[5] Adam Schrader, “Museums Struggle to Respond as Pressure Mounts to Take a Stand on Gaza,” Artnet, March 27, 2024, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/museums-struggle-to-respond-2456730.
[6] MMF’s 2023 Report on Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture found that “entry-level workers have a more optimistic view of their roles in art museums than other workers, and they experience less burnout. They report high levels of positive emotions, including feeling inspired, connected to others, and content.”