I`m Mengyang Wang from Illustration Practice. I am an
international student. Since I want to gain some working experience and improve
my language skills during the summer, I checked the MICANetwork website to look
for some internship positions. I found an internship as a gallery guide at the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. I prepared all the documents I would
need and, after a phone interview, I was informed I got the internship.
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture
Garden, named after the founding donor Joseph H. Hirshhorn, belongs
to the Smithsonian Institution and is located in Washington D.C. It houses more
than 12,000 pieces in its collection and aims to exhibit both modern and
contemporary art works. A gallery guide`s job is to help audiences have a
better understanding of the artworks through conversation. There are two ways
of guiding: one is daily guiding which means approaching viewers randomly and
speaking with them while the other way is to lead a scheduled tour. Each tour
lasts between 30 and 45 minutes covering four to five selected pieces of work. The gallery guide may
decide the theme for each tour which works like a lecture.
I still remember my first time of
leading a tour; I picked the exhibition of Robert Irwin as my theme. Although I
was trying to remember all the wall texts and my notes I was too nervous to
even make introduce each work—let alone to engage the viewers. Fortunately,
after several times, I was getting more and more confident with the language as
well as the touring pace. It`s worth mentioning that, after each tour, each
intern would upload their notes onto a shared Goggle Drive folder so everyone
could learn from other`s experience which I found very helpful.
This summer internship was a very
important experience for me because it helped to build up my confidence and
gradually improve my language skills a lot. It even gave me the confidence and
interest to become a teacher. Before, I was afraid of communicating with people
and was too shy to share my opinion. But after this internship, I enjoy talking
with people and can look them in the eye while doing so. There is so much
potential to be found through communication so I am thinking about teaching as
one of my dream jobs.
