Alicia is a student at UNM. She worked as an intern in SITE’s External Affairs Department from January 18 – May 24, 2013. These are her final reflections on her experience at SITE upon completing her internship^.

During my Spring 2013 internship at SITE Santa Fe I was given the wonderful and educational opportunity of working under Anne Wrinkle in SITE Santa Fe’s External Affairs department. Coming from an internship at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum into SITE’s internship program, my eyes became completely opened to the contemporary side of Santa Fe’s art world.The majority of projects that I assisted with this semester involved helping Anne with SITE’s online presence in terms of upcoming exhibition press releases. When I first arrived at SITE I began working on three separate exhibitions including State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970, Linda Mary Montano: Always Creative, and Mungo Thomson: Time, People, Money, Crickets. I was in charge of making sure all of the exhibition information, photographs, and openings were being publicized online in local and national online exhibition calendars such as the Santa Fean, Santafe.com, Visual Art Source, and Art in America, just to name a few. Most recently I worked on the Young Curator’s Phantasmagoria exhibition, SITElab 1: Marco Brambilla’s Creation (Megaplex), the Innovative Thinker Series Lecture featuring Philip Yenawine, as well as Enrique Martinez Celaya: The Pearl. In terms of these events, I would upload information including the exhibitions themselves, artist talks and lectures, and SITE events.

A few times I was also given the opportunity to work with Joanne Lefrak in the Education department helping her with projects ranging from making paper mache hearts for one of the local school SITE programs to assisting with artist research. At times throughout the semester some of the SITE Guides or employees became particularly interested in a specific piece or artist and inquired more about them. Interns in the Education department therefore set out to research either the piece or the artists, usually both, in order to provide not only SITE employees but also visitors with more information should it be requested.

Due to the fact that I was a fulltime student at UNM this past semester, most of my intern work consisted of keeping up-to-date with Google alerts of our current artists and shows and continuously updating events listing online. Although I did the majority of this work from home I did come to SITE Santa Fe every Friday afternoon after my morning class and assisted Anne with other projects such as the archiving of in print press materials.

As an art history major I cannot begin to describe the deep impact that this internship has had on my prospective career in the arts. One of the most interesting experiences, in my opinion, were the departmental meet and greets that occurred a few Fridays throughout the semester. All of the interns were given the opportunity to sit down and talk to different staff members from all departments. They explained their educational and career pursuits up to the point of being hired at SITE Santa Fe. It was very interesting and, more importantly, extremely inspiring to learn about all of the different experiences and paths that employees such as Irene Hofman took in order to end up at SITE. I think that these meetings provided the interns with inspiration and a more intimate relationship with the members of SITE’s staff. The entire SITE Santa Fe staff could not have been more friendly or encouraging. The work environment was very inspirational, and I will undoubtedly remember this positive experience as I continue to explore jobs and internships within the museum world. SITE being one of the leading contemporary art museums in the southwest, I am completely overjoyed to have participated in its amazing internship program, and I will use the knowledge and experiences that I built here in my future endeavors.  I could not be more grateful for the experience and the guidance I received working under Anne, and I hope to keep in contact with all of the amazing people I met during this internship.