Washington, DC—The National Gallery of Art has welcomed an unprecedented 22 summer interns to a robust virtual program running from Monday, June 14, through Friday, August 13. The group of interns—from 13 states, the District of Columbia, and the People's Republic of China—was selected after a competitive application process.

The nine-week, paid summer internship program provides the opportunity for undergraduate, graduate-level, and postgraduate students to work on projects directed by a National Gallery of Art department head or curator. Interns attend a weekly seminar that introduces them to the broad spectrum of museum work at the National Gallery and to its departments, staff, functions, and programs. To learn about the National Gallery's collection and build on their online presentation skills, each intern will develop and present an original talk about an artwork.

To help welcome and engage remote interns, the National Gallery's education division has created a mentorship program that matches incoming interns with staff based on mutual interests and career goals. In addition, interns will participate in staff-wide virtual meetings and other social meetups to increase their remote access to the National Gallery.

The internship program is supported by individual gifts and endowment funds and is administered by the department of gallery and studio learning in the division of education.

2021 National Gallery Virtual Summer Interns
Cristina Beard
Washington, DC
Cristina received a BA (art history, minor in studio art, certificate in Caribbean and Latin American studies) from Florida Atlantic University. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at the George Washington University where she works as a graduate assistant in the 3D woodshop and sculpture department. Previously, she interned at Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida. This summer, Cristina will assist with the National Gallery's division of education with virtual and on-site community programs. She will help manage the Sketching is Seeing program and will design resources for the Wilmerding Community Celebration. She will also research community engagement efforts at other art museums and produce a report summarizing her findings.

Jay Buchanan
Linville Falls, North Carolina
Jay received a BA (theater and politics) from Wake Forest University and an MA (theater and performance studies) from Washington University in St. Louis where he will begin work on his PhD (art history) this fall. In 2017, he held a two-year fellowship at the Wake Forest Art Galleries and Collections unit managing the student gallery. He previously worked at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, the Saint Louis Art Museum, and the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. This summer, Jay will assist the department of photographs by researching and organizing materials related to two separate projects: photographs in the permanent collection by the modern photographer Ilse Bing and the work of contemporary photographers working in post-industrial communities across the United States.

Kevin Cervantes
Huntington Park, California
Kevin received a BA (sociology, minors in art history and American studies) from Hobart and William Smith Colleges where they were a Posse Scholar. This fall, they will begin coursework for an MA (art and art history) at Tufts University. Previously, they were a 2019 Katzenberger Art History Intern at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, an Andrew W. Mellon Summer Academy Fellow at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and a dual Getty Marrow/Multicultural Undergraduate Intern at the Center for the Study of Political Graphics and the Getty Center. This summer, Kevin will work with visitor experience and evaluation to better understand and communicate the audience voice to internal stakeholders.

Victoria Cho
Great Falls, Virginia
Victoria is pursuing a BFA (painting, minors in curatorial studies and printmaking) and MFA (teaching) at Maryland Institute College of Art. Previously, she interned at Smithsonian American Art Museum. For the past three years, she has also worked as an art studio teacher in the DC area. This summer, Victoria will assist the department of gallery and studio learning with a new adult program, Virtual Studio. This program will expand on the experiences created in Drawing and Writing Salon by offering a platform that can host a wider variety of techniques for creative expression.

Emma Cieslik
Crystal Lake, Illinois
Emma received a BA (public history and general biology, minors in anthropology and Spanish) from Ball State University. Emma has had numerous internships, including placements at the Midway Village Museum, Rockford, Illinois, the Field Museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the David Owsley Museum of Art at Ball State University, and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. In the fall, she will begin coursework for an MA (museum studies) at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at the George Washington University and where she will work as a curatorial research assistant at the George Washington University Museum and the Textile Museum. This summer, Emma will assist with the Just Us program in the department of gallery and studio learning.

Ella Comberg
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Ella received a BA (history of art and architecture and urban studies) from Brown University. Most recently, Ella worked as a program assistant at Slought, a gallery at the University of Pennsylvania. She also interned at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art where she worked on the Archives' scholarly journal. This summer, Ella will intern in both the department of modern and contemporary art and the office of content strategy, publishing, and branding. In modern and contemporary art, she will assist the Mark Rothko: Works on Paper online catalogue raisonné project team. In the office of content strategy, publishing, and branding, she will be learning about the creation and development of publications, attending design reviews of forthcoming books, completing editorial projects, assisting with writing selected web texts, and helping to review and implement our new brand.

Kathleen (Katie) DiDomenico
Akron, Ohio
Katie received a BA (Spanish and art history) and an MA (Spanish) from the University of Akron and an MA (art history and museums studies) from Case Western Reserve University. Currently, she is a first-year PhD student (art history) at Washington University in St. Louis. Previously, she was a curatorial intern in the department of American paintings and sculpture at the Cleveland Museum of Art and a research assistant at the Akron Art Museum. This summer, Katie will assist curators with research related to the permanent collection of northern Renaissance and baroque painting with an eye toward developing narratives that incorporate global perspectives.

Marlis Flinn
Atlanta, Georgia
Marlis received a BA (history of art and architecture) from Brown University. Previously, Marlis was the McDermott Intern for Family and Access Programs at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA). She currently teaches at the Paideia School in Atlanta while remotely writing verbal descriptions for DMA as a web accessibility contractor. She will begin coursework for an MA (art history) at Columbia University this fall. This summer, Marlis will intern in the division of education, where she will contribute to a large-scale project to write textual descriptions for each of the approximately 200,000 images on the National Gallery's website.

Nicole Kaff
Bel Air, Maryland
Nicole is a rising senior (computer science and art history) at the University of Maryland, College Park. Previously, she interned at the US Army Research Laboratory DoD Supercomputing Resource Center where she coauthored a paper published in the 2019 IEEE International Conference on Big Data. Last summer, Nicole worked remotely for Jacob's Engineering as a data science intern working on a cybersecurity project. This summer, Nicole will assist the department of analytics and enterprise architecture with a variety of projects focusing on areas such as data visualization to support our strategic priorities.

Jennifer Laffick
Orlando, Florida
Jennifer received a BA (art history) from the University of Central Florida and an MA (history of art) from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD (art history) at Southern Methodist University. Previously Jennifer interned at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, Winter Park, Florida, and the Wallace Collection, London. Most recently, she served as a curatorial assistant at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida. This summer, she will assist the department of sculpture and decorative arts with the preparations for various exhibitions.

Sarah Lieberman
Bethesda, Maryland
Sarah received a BA (American studies with a concentration in cultural studies, minor in art history) from Carleton College. Currently, she is pursuing an EdM (arts in education) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Previously, she was a school and teacher programs intern at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and an academic and public programs intern at the Harvard Art Museums. This summer, she is assisting the department of gallery and studio learning with the Summer Institute for Educators.

Tiffany Miller
Indianapolis, Indiana
Tiffany received a BA (art history, minors in Italian cultural studies and museum studies) from DePauw University, where she was the 2018–2019 Arthur E. Klauser Collections and Community Outreach Fellow. Tiffany is currently pursuing an MA (art history and museum studies) at Syracuse University. Previously, she interned, volunteered, and worked at art, natural history, and academic museums, as well as at libraries and archives in the United States and Italy. This summer, she is working on a variety of community-building activities for the intern cohort. She is also helping the department of curatorial records and files to research and document National Gallery objects and to update records in our records management system.

Grace Muñoz
Los Angeles, California
Grace received a BA (history, minors in Spanish and film, television, and digital media) and an MLIS from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She previously worked on archival projects for UCLA Library Special Collections, Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory Collective, and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. This summer, Grace will be working with media specialists in the department of audio visual operations to research and report on time-based media art in the National Gallery's collection.

Yiyun (Evian) Pan
Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
Evian received a BA (anthropology) from Skidmore College and an MA (history of art and design) and MS (library and information science) from Pratt Institute. Previously, she interned or held part-time positions in New York City–based collections including the Museum of Chinese in America, the Noguchi Museum, Asia Art Archive in America, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. This summer, she will assist in the lifecycle of the National Gallery library's digital assets, from creation to application.

Sarah Poisner
Sacramento, California
Sarah received a BA (art history) from Syracuse University and an MA (art history) from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Sarah has completed education internships at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Denver Art Museum and a curatorial internship at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York. Most recently, she has been working at Christie's New York. This summer, Sarah will research the exhibition history of prints and drawings in the department's foundational Rosenwald Collection. She will also contribute to research for several upcoming departmental exhibitions and help to enhance the cataloging information for prints made before the year 1900, including a large group of lithographs by Honoré Daumier.

Miguel Resendiz
Washington, DC
Miguel will graduate this summer with a BA (art history, studio art, and anthropology) from the University of Maryland, College Park. Previously, he studied electrical engineering at Arizona State University and Montgomery College, Rockville, Maryland. Miguel has worked, interned, or volunteered for several museums and galleries in the DC area, including the Phillips Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. This summer, he will be working with media specialists in the department of audio visual operations to research and report on time-based media art in the National Gallery's collection.

Jordana Rubenstein-Edberg
Washington, DC
Jordana received a BA (human rights and theater and performance) from Bard College. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA (social practice) from the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at the George Washington University where she works as a communications, research, and project manager at the Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service. Previously, Jordana was a community educator at Steps to End Family Violence in New York City. This summer, Jordana will assist the equal employment opportunity office with a special emphasis on program planning. She will also update equal employment opportunity outreach materials and be a thought partner in various equity, access, and inclusion initiatives.

Nzinga Simmons
Cary, North Carolina
Nzinga received a BA (art history) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Currently, she is pursuing a doctoral degree (art history and visual culture) at Duke University. Prior to her graduate studies, Nzinga served as the inaugural Tina Dunkley Curatorial Fellow in American Art at the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum. This summer, she will assist curators in the department of photographs by performing research on mid-20th-century photography by Black artists.

Olivia Spiers
Austin, Texas
received a BA (art history and classics) from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Currently, she is pursuing an MA (art education with a museum focus) at the University of Texas at Austin. During the 2020–2021 academic year, Olivia was the education fellow at Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, she interned at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, Tennessee. This summer she is assisting the department of gallery and studio learning with the Summer Institute for Educators.

Yuki Shimano  
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Yuki received a BS (computer science and studio art) from Union College. She is currently pursuing an MS (Information Experience Design program) at Pratt Institute. She works part-time as an assistant digital illustrator at Ernie Kwiat Studios creating illustrations for Sesame Street children's books. Yuki has completed internships in digital experience departments at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Prior to graduate school, she served in the Peace Corps in Senegal, West Africa. This summer she will work with members of the web team on self-directed projects to learn about developing and delivering digital products for a large-scale, nonprofit organization.

Summer Sloane-Britt 
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Summer received a BA (art history and sociology and anthropology) from Swarthmore College. Currently, she is a third-year doctoral student (art history) at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Prior to her graduate studies, Summer served as the inaugural Emily K. Rafferty Intern in Museum Administration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Free Library of Philadelphia's Community Cluster Fellow. This summer, she will assist curators in the department of photographs by performing research on mid-20th-century photography by Black artists.

Leslie Wooden
Washington, DC
Leslie received a BA (art history) from the University of Colorado, Denver, and two MA degrees (arts politics and humanities and social thought) from New York University. Currently, she is pursuing a doctoral degree (art history, with concentrations in museum studies, and gender and women's studies) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Previously, she was the NEH/Mellon Intern at the Newberry Library and a curatorial intern at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. This summer, Leslie will assist curators in the department of modern and contemporary art with the research for an upcoming exhibition on contemporary Native American art.