Graduate Student Internship Summaries
John Aaron Katzeman Summer 2019, curatorial and public engagement intern, worked primarily with Senior Curator and Director of Public Engagement Cassandra Coblentz, Assistant Curator Alyssa Cordova, Public Programming Assistant Nalini Sairsingh, and Assistant to the Director and CEO Shimin Zheng.He conducted research on the six artists whose exhibitions opened September 2019, the results of which will be used for press releases, docent training material, and for OCMA’s docent training website as a permanent reference. Aaron had hands-on experience into some of the tasks curatorial work for Carolina Caycedo’s upcoming exhibition, including obtaining recycled fabric material from a mattress factory to use in a snake-like seating sculpture and measuring a complex part of the museum to provide dimensions for a work that will span a large gallery space.
Aaron organized an audio tour for the upcoming exhibition season. This required personal communication with artists and guest curators, making wall labels for each individual recording, and creating a museum map with highlighted locations for the audio tour. He also created a variety of public engagement materials using Adobe InDesign including labels, museum map, promotional posters, and email blasts for local communities and OCMA’s front desk.
Aaron conducted research and outreach for programming events and produced various spreadsheets for different topics and occasions including Cinema Orange film screenings, a performance and panel with the artist York Chang relating to his current exhibition, and a Crafting and Craft Beer event. He assisted with Season Two’s Exhibition closing weekend August 2019 and the Season Three’s Exhibition opening festivities in September.
About Orange County Museum of Art (“OCMA”): OCMA unveiled the design for the museum’s new home at Segerstrom Center for the Arts by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis to the public in May 2018 and broke ground on a new 53,000-square-foot museum September 20, 2019 with a projected 2021 opening. The new museum will allow OCMA to produce major special exhibitions alongside spacious installations from its world-traveled collection with 10,000 square feet for education programs, performances, and public gatherings and nearly 25,000 square feet of exhibition galleries.