Author: Vicente Cayuela

As my internship at the Griffin Museum of Photography comes to an end, I am more certain about my future professional prospects and the steps I need to take to work in the museum field.  Throughout the course of the summer, I have learned the importance of organizational skills to succeed in the field of arts administration. Art programming is a fast-paced environment in which the future is planned months in advance. This entails all sorts of communications with artists, organizations, guest curators, gallerists, and all sorts of creative professionals that keep the museum engine running.  This introduction to a fast-paced environment helped me organize and systematize my own work, as well as being more strategic with my own creative production. I learned to systematize my workflow, files, and graphic assets we work with for the sake of time and efficiency.

One thing I have learned about myself is that I am much more of a self-starter than I had previously imagined. For most of the creative multimedia projects I worked on at the museum, I had almost complete independence in choosing what things were going to look like, as well as a say on the technical aspects of video and audio editing, graphic design, and social media strategies. I am glad this internship program allowed me to use my creative vision to contribute to make the art world more accessible one step at a time.

At the Griffin Museum, I have been promoted as a Lead Content Creator for Social Media. Starting this August, I will be leading a team of creative interns to elevate the photographic arts and promote the mission of Arthur Griffin and the Griffin Museum of Photography. In the near future, I expect I can continue utilizing my multimedia skills to promote the museum’s many exhibitions, events, and educational programs. One of my biggest passions is to make art accessible. I hope that in the future the support offered by the Steven M. Bunson ’82 Internship Fund for the Arts and the Griffin Museum will allow me to do this on a bigger scale.

In less than two weeks, I will be starting my curatorial internship at the Rose Art Museum of modern and contemporary art. Having the opportunity to employ my creative skills and work in a museum with a permanent collection of 8,000 objects of art is really exciting. Something that I am much better prepared for thanks to the support of the World of Work program.

My summer internship at the Griffin Museum of Photography has undoubtedly been an amazing learning experience. While I had previous knowledge and professional experience on a variety of design and multimedia endeavors before my internship, having my work featured through a reputable arts organization has had many repercussions on how I see and relate to my own work. Firstly, I definitely put more pressure on myself to improve and learn new skills to deliver multimedia content of professional quality. I often say to myself that even though I create content behind the scenes, my work is ultimately meant to be seen and judged by others. This definitely entails some sort of reaction, feedback, and criticism, as well as the need to meet the expectations of the people I work with at the museum, our audience’s, and my own. This has pushed me to understand that different content needs different approaches, both aesthetically and marketing-wise. I have developed a deeper understanding of user-engagement insights, something that has led me to find ways to maximize user interaction through my creative work. Through my internship, I have learned strategies and new skills that have helped me deliver content that gets the point across yet is dynamic and fun to watch.   

Secondly, I have come upon the challenge of finding that sweet spot between cultivating my own voice as a multimedia creator while working to elevate the work of the artists and art organizations. I like to think of myself as a multimedia mediator with one mission in mind: Employing my creative skills to bridge the gap between cultural enterprises, their work, and the general public. I have learned that by taking advantage of digital media, organizations can expand their influence and communicate with their audiences more dynamically and authentically. At my internship, I have learned the dynamics of working in a fast-paced creative environment in which deadlines are tight and content is produced on a daily basis. As for the future, I want to keep learning more motion graphics so I can take my design practice to the next level. Learning in-depth 3D graphics would be an amazing challenge. All the skills I have learned and improved at my internship are just additions to my creative toolkit that I can employ for different projects, whether in my life as an arts student or as a creative professional.

Probably, the most important thing I have learned during this internship is that when you pursue something you are truly passionate about, you will go that extra mile it takes to get people to notice you and put in the extra effort it takes to get where you want to be. I have learned that working in the creative industry is competitive and hard, yet I do not believe that people should conform or be scared to pursue a creative career just because of the constant discouraging message around the arts. I believe the opposite. Society should encourage creativity and the arts so we can change our perception around what it means to be a creative professional. 

At my internship, I have had the opportunity to network and learn that a creative career can have many forms. There is not one set-in-stone way to be an artist or a creative professional. The photographers and artists I have met during my time at the Griffin have all sorts of businesses, galleries, and personal endeavors that they cultivate with passion and hard work. Probably, my biggest learning experience throughout this process has been to realize that as a creative person, you are the only one in charge of creating the life you want for yourself.