Internships & Assistantships
Apply for a Duke Student Internship for Academic Credit
Duke University undergraduate and graduate students can gain important work experience at the Nasher Museum in many ways. Please browse through the different ways to be a part of the museum and fill out the application at the links below to begin the process.
The Women of SuWA #HitTheNash
Women who have recently resettled in Durham and students at Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, members of the group Supporting Women’s Action (SuWA), visited Pop América at the Nasher Museum with Nasher intern and Duke student Elizabeth Roy, Duke Class of 2022, who organized the tour.
Read MoreHiring an Academic Initiatives Graduate Assistantships
The Nasher Museum is hiring a Graduate Teaching Assistant to provide support for the Academic Initiatives department. The Teaching Assistant’s primary responsibility is organizing and leading tours for university classes visiting temporary exhibitions, the permanent collection, and study storage at the Nasher Museum. Applicants should be graduate students with experience teaching undergraduates. Museum experience or experience working with art objects is preferable.
To apply, please email a CV and cover letter with your interest in the position, experience teaching, and/or working in museums to Julia McHugh, Ph.D., Trent A. Carmichael Curator of Academic Initiatives, julia.mchugh@duke.edu
Student Experience: Ashleigh Smith
Ashleigh Smith’s art history career might have started with Empire, the dramatic musical TV series that debuted on Fox in 2015. She was quickly hooked and right away she noticed stunning works of art in Lucious Lyon’s fict...
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Museum Theory and Practice Class
Julia McHugh, Ph.D., Trent A. Carmichael Curator of Academic Initiatives, taught her first Museum Theory and Practice course in Spring 2019 with 20 students, the biggest class since the Concentration began three years earl...
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Undergraduate Internship Course
ARTHIST 310 and ARTHIST 311 are practicums held at the Nasher Museum, designed to provide professional museum experience as well as an opportunity to explore the museum and its operations from a variety of viewpoints. Students must be available for a total commitment of approximately 6 hours/week for a weekly seminar with museum staff, plus 5 hours working in the intern’s assigned department (schedule to be arranged between the student and supervising staff). Students are evaluated on their work in their assigned departments, participation in the weekly seminar, and the completion of short, written assignments such as a blog post, artwork spotlight, and exhibition analysis. Grades are assigned by the supervising staff in consultation with the instructor.
Interns may apply to work with the following departments: academic initiatives, business office, curatorial, communications/marketing, development/external relations, museum education, or registrar/collections management. NOTE: only one student each semester will be assigned to the curatorial department.
Want to learn about museum career paths? Find out more.
Student Experience: Mika Deshmukh
Rising junior Mika Deshmukh, who grew up in in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, was sure she wanted to be a chemist, all through high school. Mika also knew she wanted to attend an East Coast university, and Duke seemed a...
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