Paid Summer Internships in Boston

The Boston Furniture Archive, a project of the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, seeks interns for its third annual summer field cataloging project, scheduled for June 1-August 23, 2016. Up to four interns will receive training and work as a team to document furniture at a number of museums and heritage sites in the Boston area. The internship is an exciting opportunity to build knowledge of material culture and decorative arts, museum and non-profit collections management, and database creation.

The Boston Furniture Archive is free, online database that provides catalog information and photographs of furniture produced in Boston between 1630 and 1930. Visit https://bostonfurniture.winterthur.org/ to access the database and learn more about the project.

Interns will receive a stipend of $5,000 plus $1,000 for travel over the twelve weeks. Housing is not provided.

Please visit https://www.winterthur.org/pdfs/boston_furniture_internship.pdf for more information and application instructions. Applications are due February 1, 2016.

Good News! Positive Signs in the Public History Job Market

An informal survey of recent job postings finds positive trends for the public history job market in the Mid-Atlantic and northeastern United States. Graduate students in our Issues in Public History seminar during Fall 2015 analyzed recent postings on online jobs boards including listings maintained by the National Council on Public History, the American Association of State and Local History, and the Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. An encouraging number of employers are seeking to hire public historians with master’s degrees to work in history-related organizations as educators, interpreters, communicators, managers, and development specialists. The study located 115 positions advertised between March and November 2015.

 

What do employers seek? Above all, they seek communications skills of all kinds – written, oral, and interpersonal. New opportunities are opening for public historians with skills in social media and the ability to create and maintain websites. Employers are looking for people who can multi-task, work well in teams, and creatively solve problems. History organizations place a high value on specialized knowledge of histories related to the organization’s mission, for example maritime history for maritime museums or community history for local historical societies. In public history seminars at Rutgers-Camden we emphasize transferable skills to meet these requirements of a changing job market.

NJ Historical Commission Internships

The NJ Historical Commission will be conducting needs assessments of organizations they serve and will be hiring paid interns for this in the spring.  For more information please contact Niquole Primiani, a program officer at the Commission at niquole.primiani@sas.nj.gov.