Our Friends of Art History have been providing awards for our undergraduate and graduate students to undertake internships at the
UCI Institute and Museum for California Art (UCI IMCA), envisioned to be one of the premier modern art centers in the United States focusing on California art, beginning summer 2017 with Scott Volz, who joined Jamie Nisbet as driver and TA for the Spiral Jetty student field trip Thanksgiving weekend 18.
FOAH has provided numerous internships with awards based on $15 an hour, with more planned, including with Bridget R. Cooks for her Winter 2019 exhibition as well as continuing support for registrar Amy Lim and Assistant Museum Registrar Chanelle Mandell.
Undergraduates Brooke Denny and Taryn Lee are working with Museum Registrar Amy Lim as interns during the 2018-2019 school year, with the goal of completing the art inventory by the end of the year 2018.
Zoe Portnoff is working with Jaime DeJong (Director of Marketing and Communications, Claire Trevor School of the Arts), researching the social media presence of top art museums and university art museums across the country and designing and implementing a program of social media activities for the UCI IMCA. Risa and Jaime researched virtual tours and virtual exhibitions presented by top art museums and university art museums across the country and conceptualized a virtual tour for UCI IMCA’s exhibitions. They are researching and writing descriptions of each exhibition artwork and, in consultation with Diana Lofflin (Academic Affairs Communications Director), presenting the material as a virtual tour on the UCI IMCA website.
IMCA interns also began to inventory the Gerald Buck collection of approximately 3,200 paintings, works on paper, and sculpture early 2018. All data - including dimensions, packing materials, artist signatures and marks, condition assessments, and image documentation - are collected and entered into the museum’s database to form a complete inventory of the collection.
Read on to learn more about FOAH’s IMCA Interns.
Li Yi spent winter 18 diligently entering inventory information into the database and renaming hundreds of images of Gerald E. Buck’s art collection in the Embark system for ease of future reference. Though the assignment was repetitive in nature, She took great pride in her part on the project and understood the role and significance the inventory played in the ongoing process of building a museum. Hundreds of museum database records, which are accessed daily, are up-to-date with the most current information thanks to Li’s efforts. She also visited the gallery in Laguna Beach and the storage facility in Los Angeles, where the collection is located, and learned how to write condition reports and developed art inspection, handling, and conservation skills during her internship.
Li interned during the summer at
The Art Newspaper China in Beijing where she was a curatorial assistant in the Modern Art department, focused on curating art exhibitions. She was responsible for communicating with artists, assisting the curator with exhibitions, and various administrative duties. She worked on the “Art of Takumi” exhibition in Chengdu, China which consisted of traditional Chinese art including Suzhou embroidery, glass installation, sculptures, and new media art. Li writes her “study at UCI and past work experience helped me a lot in this internship in Beijing.”
Eric Colbert, 4+1 graduate, and Visual Studies graduate student Scott Volz spent their summer of 2018 in art storage near downtown Los Angeles inventorying the art, focusing specifically on 2D framed and unframed works. They registered and documented artworks, completed an assessment of each piece’s condition, assessed and evaluated packing, and learned how to properly handle artwork. Eric and Scott entered the information they gathered into object records and created reports, worksheets, and labels in preparation for storage.
Scott Volz completed a collections internship with IMCA’s Registrar’s Office this past summer 2018. He worked closely with professional art handlers at Cooke’s Crating in Los Angeles to inventory and register the Buck Collection art, inspecting paintings and filing detailed reports about their condition and conservation needs, and learned the proper methods of storing and caring for art objects. Scott has been leading weekly tours of the “First Glimpse: Introducing the Buck Collection” exhibit since September 2018.
Eric Colbert is continuing his work with Registrar Amy Lim cataloging Gerald E. Buck’s art collection and helping prepare its eventual display at IMCA and Assistant Registrar Chanelle Mandell until late December 18, Eric gained practical experience in analyzing, handling, and organizing art objects and intends to pursue a career in art registration.
Eric wrote his M.A. thesis on the suspect provenance of
Umberto Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space and the ethics of displaying its copies. He would like to express his gratitude to the Friends of Art History for giving him the support he needed for a career in the art world.
