Increasing Equity in Art Museums

This summer the Art Museum was pleased to serve as an externship site for the Newark Museum’s internship program formed through the Diversifying Art Museums Leadership Initiative (DAMLI). The aim of the DAMLI, funded by the Ford Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation, is to increase equity in the museum field by establishing a pipeline of diverse students interested in pursuing museum leadership careers. (A 2018 study by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Ithaka S+R, the Association of Art Museum Directors, and the American Alliance of Museums showed that only 28 percent of museum workers are people of color and only 12 percent hold senior leadership positions.) The Newark Museum is one of the twenty museums chosen as recipients of DAMLI grants. During intensive three-year internships, Newark Museum participants engage in summer externships at three partner organizations—the Princeton University Art Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Brooklyn Historical Society.

Randy Semexant, a rising senior at Montclair State University, served as DAMLI extern in the Art Museum’s department of communication. He came to Princeton after completing his first year of the program at Newark, where he has worked on projects in a range of departments including marketing, registration, curatorial, membership, exhibitions, and education. Randy joined the program with a strong focus on business, and museum marketing remains his primary interest.

After completing the first year, the six students in the Newark cohort chose between potential externships at the partner institutions. Randy was drawn to the Princeton opportunity as it afforded the chance to learn more about the tools and strategies museums use to manage data. He took on multiple projects over the summer, including crucial work on object identifiers across platforms to facilitate access to images. However, his favorite assignment was developing resources to help online visitors access information on works in the collections by African American artists. He especially enjoyed developing thematic groupings for the objects. As Randy explained, “The project I really loved was working on the African American portion of the website. I was able to have creative input in identifying the different access points into the collections.”

Randy added that he “really learned a lot” from the weekly intern lunches in which the group met with different members of the Museum’s staff to learn more about the collections and gain insights into museum careers. Randy will return to the Newark Museum this fall and will spend the next year working in the marketing department, honing his knowledge of that aspect of museum work. In the final year of the internship, the students take part in a work-study program.

Partnering with Newark is just one way that the Princeton University Art Museum seeks to forward its strategic goal to increase diversity in the museum field. Other initiatives include the Museum Voices Internships, which are open to undergraduate and graduate students from groups underrepresented in museum careers. This summer the Museum also hosted the inaugural Curation, Leadership, Artistry, and Practice Program (CLAP), which was created in collaboration with the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Alliance of Museums and Art Galleries. CLAP, supported by the Office of the Provost and the Humanities Council, introduces participants to the inner workings of an art museum and exposes them to a variety of museum careers and opportunities while sharpening practical skills in formal art analysis and academic research.

Caroline Harris
Diane W. and James E. Burke Associate Director for Education