My name is Taylor Shuck, I am a painting major with a curatorial
concentration going into my senior year at MICA. Over the summer of 2014 I was
a museum management intern at the Dali Museum of St. Petersburg, Florida. I
first visited the museum in high school and loved the collection and what the
museum has done for St. Petersburg, my hometown. I first learned about the
internship on the museums website, which is where I got the application. Family
friends on the board of the museum also recommended me for the internship. I
heard back from the Dali a month later in April that I was accepted for the
position.
The Dali museum
houses the largest collection of Salvador Dali's work in the United States. A
new building was built to better protect the art and have a more appropriate
architecture that reflects Dali's work. The museum and the grounds are
stunning, including large geodesic dome architecture and a labyrinth outside
overlooking the water front marina. I really enjoyed going into work everyday
and learning so much about the collection and the artist. My supervisor and
mentor was Pam Whiteaker, she was the Museum Manager of the Dali. Pam was an
excellent person to work under and learn from. She assigned the other 3 museum
management interns, and myself, projects and often we worked with her to
complete them.
In my first week
I was informed about a new program the museum was working to create. I was
tasked on research and development of a program to bring in Alzheimer patients
and their caregivers into the museum for special tours titled The Persistence
of Memory. I then began research on grant opportunities for this type of
program. I then began the grant application for the top choice. I worked on
this for some weeks until I was tasked with a different program. We worked on
developing a new position called a Gallery Host, which is not quite a docent
but located in the gallery to answer questions and give interesting
information. The other interns and myself researched on Dali's entire life and
were each assigned a 10 year span of his life to cover. We made a powerpoint
and presented this information to volunteers and docents interested in the
gallery host position. After that we went back to working on the Alzheimer's
program, I continued with the grant writing as well as researching other
possible partners and sponsors, as well as create an Advisory Counsel for the
program. At the end of my internship we presented all of our research to the
Education and Curatorial departments.
