The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives seeks an intern in the spring 2016 semester to gain hands-on processing experience and academic credit working with archival records held by the Museum’s Department of Photographs.
In 2005, The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired the Gilman Paper Company Collection, widely regarded as the world's finest collection of photographs in private hands. With exceptional examples of 19th-century
French, British, and American photographs, as well as masterpieces from the turn-of-the-century and modernist periods, the Gilman Collection has played a central role in establishing photography's historical canon and has long set the standard for connoisseurship
in the field. The collection contains more than 8,500 photographs, dating primarily from the first century of the medium, 1839-1939.
Working under the supervision of staff in the Museum Archives and Department of Photographs the intern will assist with processing and drafting a preliminary finding aid for administrative papers which correspond
to this collection and its curator, Pierre Apraxine. The archive consists of about 20 linear feet of correspondence, research files, financial documents, clippings, object files, artist files, acquisition and sale files dating from the 1970s to the early 2000s.
Duties will include surveying the records and assisting with the creation of processing plan; performing basic preservation; rehousing and physically arranging records; entering collection metadata into Archivists Toolkit. Please
note that processing of the entire archive will not be completed during the course of this spring 2016 internship.
The ideal candidate will be enrolled in a graduate program in library/information science or archives management, and have an interest in the history of photography. Candidates who will receive academic
credit for their internship are strongly preferred.
