Author: Jon Krippe
Jon Krippe, Museum Studies intern at the University Art Gallery, Fall 2023
What do an influential Caribbean novel, a Renaissance sketch torn from a massive book, and a landscape of Pittsburgh industry have in common? I encountered this question during my time as an intern at the Pitt University Art Gallery, where I worked on three different projects that utilized the Gallery’s space and resources in their own unique ways.
One of the exhibitions occupying the main space of the Gallery, The Kingdom of This World, Reimagined, brought together artists from throughout the Caribbean to respond to the titular novel by Alejo Carpentier. The novel, a retelling of the Haitian Revolution, pioneered the fiction genre of lo real maravilloso: contemplative musings on colonialism and identity mix with fantastical portrayals of Caribbean folk religion to form a tale celebrated in Caribbean literature. As a gallery attendant, I helped educate guests on the history and culture that informs the artworks. Interacting every week with the intricate pieces in the gallery, I learned a lot about a historical period that I knew almost nothing about, from a unique perspective that is completely unlike anything I would experience in a classroom.
Behind the scenes, I worked with a part of the Gallery’s collection that had been previously exhibited in 2019. These “Curious” drawings, donated to the University Art Gallery by industry pioneer George Hubbard Clapp, date from as early as the fifteenth century and required a fresh catalog within the Gallery collection. Along with my fellow interns and my graduate mentor, Vuk Vukovic, I sorted the sketches and assessed their physical conditions: given their age and storage history, the pages ranged from untouched to faded and almost unintelligible. Working with such historical (and fragile) objects gave me a very intimate sense of the other side of the work museums and galleries do: not only are they valuable resources that present history in engaging ways, but they also take special care to safeguard pieces for future generations.
As well as improving the collection’s database of its stored artworks, I also worked to make the works on the Gallery’s website more illuminating and accessible to visitors. To do this, I worked with Vuk to group several works under a common theme: in my case, I found various works that highlighted the infrastructure and manpower of Pittsburgh industry. I then researched the subjects and styles of the paintings, with the goal of creating a link on the website where visitors could explore and learn more about the theme by interacting with the artworks. This process of research and formal description showed me the deep potential of art to teach about shared history, and how art galleries work to highlight that ability in their websites and other resources.
After such a varied and all-encompassing experience at the University Art Gallery, I’m left with a much more in-depth understanding of the huge educational value of galleries and other art collections. In just four months working at a single gallery, I was exposed to a wide range of perspectives and histories, as well as the opportunity to expand the gallery’s resources. From discussing art pieces with visitors to handling centuries-old sketches, my time at the Gallery was enlightening and one-of-a-kind.