I found out about the Conservation Internship for Broadening Access (CIBA), through the Smithsonian’s internship opportunities website. I was looking for conservation experience as I plan on pursuing it in graduate school, so I looked up several museums online until I found this one.
The Smithsonian is one of the largest national research and museum networks, they provide research and educational opportunities, as well as maintain a vast public museum network. I was specifically placed at the National Museum of American History (NMAH), which specializes in objects and stories pertaining to American History. Specifically in the Paper Conservation Lab, we worked to maintain, repair, and store paper objects of American History.
I am most proud of the work we did with the USS Maine ribbons, as they came to us tangled and crumpled in a small tray and we created thirteen custom padded boards and trays to neatly and safely store each of them. This was a huge improvement in appearance and safety for them and really stressed to me how important this preventative conservation work is and how the presentation of an item affects how others working in the collections treat and respect the objects.
I feel that I have acquired general skills in conservation through this internship which will be important for graduate school, but also my future career. Most of these skills are very basic yet the most relevant and heavily used ones in the day-to-day work as a conservator. This internship greatly helped me to clarify my career goals as I thought I was interested in conservation, and now I know for sure that this is definitely the career path for me, as I thoroughly enjoyed learning throughout the summer and putting to use all the skills I was taught.
