Throughout the academic year of 2021-2022, I interned at the Museum of the Bible. The positions I interned for were Museum Education and Communications. These two positions were very interconnected and vital to successfully running a museum.
As a person of faith, I have always heard of the Museum of the Bible. During my search for internships last summer, I learned that many of the Smithsonian museums had already ended their fall internship applications. Therefore, I began to search for volunteer opportunities instead. Eager to step into the museum world, I applied for several docent positions at museums of various scales in Washington D.C. The Museum of the Bible was one of them. Perhaps a week after sending my docent applications, the Museum of the Bible followed up with me. It wasn’t until meeting their manager of volunteers and interns did I realize that they were also looking for a Museum Education Intern. Not quick sure about what Museum Education stands for, I decided to give it a try and learn about it. So I turned in all the paperwork that the manager asked for, got interviewed, and began my internship at the Museum of the Bible.
My second internship with the Museum of the Bible was an extension of my first one. At the end of my Museum Education internship, the same manager reached out to me to see if I wanted to stay. I decided that I would be interested in interning in the marketing and communications department. I turned in the paperwork for the second internship and began my next intern position in the marketing and communications department.
The scope of work for these two internships was widely different, but they share many similarities in terms of the content of work. As an Education intern, I helped with educational efforts that directly reached the audience. To simply put, I ran the “education station” at the museum, developed content for educational activities, and shadowed museum educators during school tours. As a Communications intern, I helped mainly with curating social media content by selecting artifacts to post about and did informal competitor analyses to figure out some best practices done by other museums.
Throughout the six and a half months interning at the Museum of the Bible, I grew a lot professionally and understood museum practices so much better. This experience is eye-opening to learn how private museums position themselves in the museum world and reach their audience.
