The Decorative Arts Trust and Young Professionals

While educational programs, such as symposia and study trips abroad, are the Trust’s trademark, the Emerging Scholars Program, the other arm of our mission, is just as active and engaging. Directed donations to the Trust, as well as funds raised through symposia, help support the program, which in turn assists graduate students and young professionals. Scholarships, grants, and paid internships also provide a vital source of support to small and mid-sized cultural institutions, and allow them to hire highly trained young professionals at the start of their careers.

The Emerging Scholars Program’s most significant development in recent years has been the creation and rapid expansion of the Trust-funded Curatorial Internship Program. Since the beginning of this effort in 2010, the five (soon to be six!) recipients have worked at four different museums here in the States and in England. The hiring process is currently underway for the most recent recipient of a Trust-sponsored position, and we look forward to hearing updates from our incoming associate at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York.

Creating an ongoing program of this scope requires a large measure of enthusiasm, a thorough knowledge of the field and its players, and fearless campaigning. Brock Jobe, a member of the Trust’s Board of Governors and Professor Emeritus of Decorative Arts for the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, happens to possess all these qualities in spades.

Trust Executive Director Matt Thurlow recently interviewed Brock and Sarah Parks, the recipient of our first sponsored curatorial internship. While we’re still experimenting with the idea of a podcast format, we hope you enjoy the following segment (for those of you on the go, it can also be downloaded here). As an aside, Sarah is now the project manager for Winterthur’s Boston Furniture Archive, which was highlighted in the Trust’s December magazine, and is due to go live this summer. Furniture lovers, rejoice!