Internships Benefit Students and Museum
The Lam Museum offers internship opportunities to Wake Forest students each semester. Supervised by Academic Director Dr. Andrew Gurstelle, the interns can choose to work in any area of the Museum, gaining both instruction about museum studies and real-world experience. Each internship is unique to the student, but they result in a final project that enriches the museum’s public engagement. Here are a few projects completed over the past year:
Anthropology major Elaine Lu (’25) curated the current exhibit Poems Made to Wear: Traditional Colors in East Asia, which is on display through August 16. After researching color symbolism in East Asia, Elaine connected that information to Chinese and Japanese clothing and accessories in the Museum’s collection. The pieces are organized by the five basic colors of black, red, blue-green, white, and yellow, which are traditionally associated with the elements of water, fire, wood, metal, and earth respectively. Elaine’s exhibit is the inspiration for the upcoming Celebrate East Asia Open House on Saturday, April 12.
Anthropology major Elizabeth Elliott (‘27) chose to concentrate on museum education, tying her interest in linguistics to the museum’s elementary school outreach programs. She identified first grade social studies as the best audience for linguistics education because first graders in North Carolina learn about similarities and differences between Morocco, Iceland, and New Zealand. Elizabeth expanded this lesson on cultural diversity to include linguistic phenomena such as diffusion, loan words, and orthography. In a video that will soon have a permanent home on the Museum’s teacher resources website, Elizabeth explains each concept, prompts the viewer to participate in activities, and showcases relevant artifacts from the Lam Museum.
Economics major Jake Smith (’25) began his internship knowing he wanted to curate an exhibit, but unsure about the topic. Jake spent the preceding summer studying museology with Dr. Gurstelle in Vienna, Austria, and knew that he wanted his exhibit to evoke the feeling of historic European museums. Inspired by Vienna’s Imperial Armory and its typological displays of historic weapons, Jake settled on bows and arrows as his theme. The Lam Museum has many examples in its collection, as bows and arrows are important tools in many cultures, as well as potent symbols. After researching the breadth of the collection, Jake decided on a geographic theme to tie the diverse objects together. Jake’s exhibit is scheduled to go on display in early 2026.
As we begin the spring semester, we are excited to have four new interns who are just starting to define their projects. Their efforts this semester will translate into future exhibits, summer programs, research reports, conservation treatments, and ethnographic studies.