Cheyenne Caraway, left, Kiera Hammond and Michelle Tenggara are the inaugural recipients of Getty Post-Baccalaureate Internships in Art Conservation. (photos courtesy of The Getty)

The Getty has announced a pilot internship program that offers financial support and hands-on experience to students preparing to apply to graduate programs in art conservation. It is the first program nationwide providing support to post-baccalaureate young professionals from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds seeking careers in art conservation.

“This new program seeks to reduce the very real barriers to professional careers in conservation faced by many students of color,” said Tim Whalen, the John E. and Louise Bryson Director of the Getty Conservation Institute.

The lack of diversity in art conservation is a concern for museums nationwide, Whalen said. An advanced degree is essential for the work, and applicants to the few graduate degree programs that exist typically must have completed prerequisite courses in science, art history and studio art, along with nearly 1,000 hours of internship training, usually unpaid. It has led to a conservation field that is inequitable and not culturally diverse, an assessment that is confirmed by data such as the Mellon Foundation’s Art Museum Staff Demographic Surveys of 2015 and 2018 showing conservation as one of the least diverse areas in the museum field.

“Increased diversity in conservation serves to not only address the statistical lack of representation, but it strengthens our field by bringing in additional viewpoints and currently excluded interpretative lenses. Culturally diverse conservators will use their expertise and passion to privilege underserved collections,” said Ellen Pearlstein, director of the Andrew W. Mellon Opportunity for Diversity in Conservation and a professor with UCLA Information Studies and UCLA/Getty Conservation. “While we recognize that work must continue to remove barriers to entry in our field, this program will offer immediate resources to these selected emerging professionals.”

Three interns are participating in the 2020-21 inaugural year program and have started with residencies in the antiquities and paintings departments of the Getty Museum, as well as the conservation department of the Getty Research Institute. The interns are Cheyenne Caraway, of Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado; Kiera Hammond, of Howard University in Washington, D.C.; and Michelle Tenggara, of the University of California, Los Angeles. Each has received a $30,000 grant for the 12-month program, plus additional support for tuition reimbursement and attendance at professional conferences.

Additional experiences for the interns are planned in partnership with a consortium of other museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures; the Fowler Museum at UCLA; the Autry Museum of the American West; and the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens.

“Through the Getty’s internship, I hope to gain an opportunity to connect to something much more significant than myself for the enrichment and enhancement of the Black community,” Hammond said. “Through this funded internship, it will allow me the opportunity to be exposed to the different specialties within conservation. I am looking forward to learning from the researchers and conservators at the Getty about preservation management while expanding my conservation skills for paper treatment.”

Given the continued closure of Getty and the other partner museums due to COVID-19, the interns have started their residencies remotely. They are receiving supervision and mentoring from Pearlstein and Getty conservators and taking online prerequisite courses at Santa Monica College. Rotating residencies will take place later in the academic year, pending the safe reopening of museums.

The pilot year of the Getty Post-Baccalaureate Conservation Internships was made possible with funding from the Getty Patron Program. The internship program is administered by the Getty Foundation, which also funds the Getty Marrow Undergraduate Internships and Getty Graduate Internships.

For information, visit getty.edu.