Meet the Museum of Cycladic Art Summer 2024 Intern
Guest post by Megan Degenhardt
As a summer intern at the Museum of Cycladic Art, I spent five weeks on-site at the museum in Athens. Because I had never worked in a museum before, I wasn’t sure what to expect upon arriving in Greece. Thankfully, the internship was a great learning experience for me. I gained invaluable insight from spending time with the artifacts and working behind the scenes with the curators at the museum. The projects I completed were equal parts challenging and gratifying, and I feel more confident than ever in my knowledge of the ancient world.
The first week I spent looking through the catalogs of the different exhibitions at the museum, studying the artifacts as intimately as possible. The museum houses three collections containing artifacts from Cycladic, Cypriot, and Ancient Greek culture. Around 1500 objects are on display, and they range in date from the prehistoric Neolithic period to the Medieval period. Though there was a lot of material to cover, the information I learned about the collections, how they were organized, and details about individual artifacts were extremely beneficial to my time at the museum.
One of my roles was to aid visitors in the two temporary exhibitions that were on display. This task involved being in the halls of the museum, interacting with visitors, and answering any questions they may have about the exhibitions and museum. To prepare for this, I studied all the written material on both exhibitions and received preliminary tours. Once I knew the exhibitions well enough, I spent several hours a week at each exhibition. One, titled Cindy Sherman at Cycladic: Early Works, showcased four early series of the modern photographer Cindy Sherman. This exhibition highlighted an important theme for Sherman: the stereotypes placed on women by media and pop culture. The second exhibition was added to complement the first. It focused on the roles of women in antiquity and was curated to bridge the discussion of gender roles between modern and ancient times.
Another project I worked on was creating a tour of the permanent exhibitions to give to a group of visitors. This task required an understanding of the curation of the exhibitions to tell the story behind each culture. The Cycladic culture was largely unfamiliar to me in my previous Classical studies, so that was the biggest challenge. However, the museum's resources, the reading material, and the curators I worked beside every day provided me with the guidance I needed.
The last task I received was editing the English descriptions of the objects on the museum website along with another American intern. This involved checking hundreds of descriptions for grammatical and spelling errors, as well as for clarity. We worked together to edit hundreds of descriptions, my main task being to edit the Ancient Greek collection. This task provided me the opportunity to get familiar with each and every artifact in the collection and to draw parallels between the different objects that I otherwise may not have noticed.
My time at the Museum of Cycladic Art allowed me to go out of my comfort zone by working in an unfamiliar environment and learning about cultures that were previously foreign to me. In my studies of Ancient History, I’ve found that the more you know about the context of a culture, the more you can understand it. Spending time with Cycladic and Cypriot art has proven to give me a better understanding of the Mediterranean and the context of Ancient Greek culture. This internship has been an incredible experience, and I am very thankful for the opportunity to work in such a welcoming and enriching environment.
Megan Degenhardt
Museum of Cycladic Art Summer Internship
This 5-week program for Harvard students is meant to familiarize interns with the activities performed in a museum environment and to provide high-quality professional training. The interns work in collaboration with curators, museum educators, and communication experts. Learn more about the Museum of Cycladic Art Summer Internship.