$10 million for internship program at Crystal Bridges from Alice Walton Foundation

The Bentonville-based Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art announced this morning that its internship program would be expanded with a $10 million gift from the Alice L. Walton Foundation. The move, the museum says, is sharply focused on inclusivity and representation, and will include partnerships with Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, geared toward recruiting interns from populations that have been underrepresented in the arts leadership sphere. “Five years ago, we strengthened an already successful internship program to focus on hiring and nurturing leaders from diverse backgrounds. Today we recognize there is still work to do,” founder Alice Walton said. “I believe it’s essential for museums to build an inclusive culture, and in order to do so it’s imperative to educate and develop future arts leaders.”

courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

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Part of the gift will go toward hiring an intern coordinator, who will, a press release states, “install a rigorous evaluation system to continually measure the overall impact of the program — to monitor the quality of the individual experience, to discover new aspects of museum practices, and to prepare interns for additional coursework and employment opportunities in the field. Further, the intern coordinator will track students’ cultural careers for a minimum of five years following their time at Crystal Bridges.”

The release quotes Destinee Filmore, a Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Williams College Museum of Art, who was a student at Spelman when she participated in the museum’s internship program in 2018. “My time at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art empowered me with the knowledge that my art historical interests were deeply important to other scholars and to the field at large,” Filmore said. “Seeing women of color excelling in their careers showed me what the many pathways to becoming a successful curator looked like and inspired me to chart a path all my own.”

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