Internships: In Transition

Community organizations reflect the dynamics of their community. They retain their existence through an interlocking growth-relationship with their community, preserving their history and reinventing their creative cultures. Community arts organizations, unlike major institutions, take their spark of life from the tumult, confusion and anguish of an unstable existence suppressed by a racial and cultural majority. Such organizations negotiate a relationship between the mainstream and their community’s subculture. In seeking to institutionalize, they pass on their special outlook and characteristic procedures to the next generation of culture workers. Community arts organizations are a storehouse of racial and cultural knowledge unique to their context. The cultural work of diverse people provides an entry point, both for understanding this “real politic” dynamic, and for understanding the reality of difference. They are a gateway for artists, staff, members, volunteers, and audience, as well as interns, a window to see and grasp the dynamics of a subculture.

The AAAC offers a flexible internship/volunteer program to give students and art lovers the opportunity to help/learn about all aspects of running a non-profit art organization. Please note that all internships are unpaid, although college credit is available. It is the responsibility of applicants to retrieve information from their school concerning academic credits. The schedule for this position is flexible, but candidates who can commit to working at least two/three days per week are preferred. All of the category descriptions below are flexible and can be tailored to an intern’s skill set.

All interested individuals sixteen years of age and older are eligible to apply for an internship. Qualifications vary for each intern, and some positions may require college or graduate training and/or professional experience. International candidates are encouraged to apply, but please note that we do not provide visas. If interested, please fill out the internship application and send it with a cover letter, resume, and writing samples to Archive@Artspiral.org. Applications are considered year round.

Permanent Collection

• Generally focuses more on contemporary art, though aspects of folk art may be involved
• Art handling and curatorial practice – creating meaningful relations between objects and how the public can better understand it
• You should be interested in visual arts as a field, historicizing Asian American contemporary art and understanding the complex motivations that drives artists to produce artwork

Folk Art

• Involves working with the local community and Asian traditions. This position may be interesting for someone who is interested in community organizing as a career
• Seek to engage the local community through events
• Develop material to encourage participation and financial support for folk arts and local traditions
• Conduct research on folk art and traditional practices

Archival

• Performing preservation work on documents, artwork, photographs, and etc.
• Creating descriptions and metadata for cataloging
• Performing research on art and artists and reviewing records for authenticity
• Support digitization initiatives to increase access to our collections, including scanning, entering data into artasiamerica (proficiency with Photoshop, scanning and databases required)
• This position may be of particular interest to those who are pursuing library science or similar fields

Marketing

• Researching and reaching out to arts non-profits, galleries and museums, and other arts and education organizations.
• Writing articles in a weekly blog aimed at communicating a distinct message to/about our community of artists
• Creating innovating brochures, flyers, and promotional materials
• Maintaining social networking sites (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube)
• Updating and maintaining website (familiarity with WordPress or other CMS required)