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Amanda Skinner still remembers the knitted animal pelts.

As an undergraduate art history student at the University of Maine, Skinner helped install an exhibition at the Zillman Art Museum (ZAM) featuring the work of artist Ruth Marshall, who used yarn to create lifelike representations of animal skins, including those of endangered species.

The artwork was striking. So was the artist’s background. Marshall had worked designing animal habitats for zoos, combining an understanding of science with an artist’s eye for detail.

For Skinner, the experience offered an early glimpse of the unexpected ways art, science and education can intersect — and the role museums play in bringing those connections to the public.

“It was a formative experience,” Skinner recalled.

More than a decade later, Skinner is assistant director for museum communications at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, where she helps connect audiences with art through exhibitions, publications and public outreach.

Her career began, in part, behind the scenes at ZAM.

Skinner is among a group of 91���� graduates who have built careers in museums after participating in ZAM’s curatorial internship program. Established about 15 years ago, the paid internship gives students hands-on experience with the work that happens long before visitors walk through an exhibition.

The program reflects 91����’s learner-centered approach to education, bringing students alongside experienced professionals to apply classroom knowledge in a working museum.

George Kinghorn, the museum’s executive director and curator, established the program in collaboration with 91����’s Department of Art. Each year, one student is selected to work alongside museum staff, gaining access to a permanent collection of more than 6,000 works of art. Interns learn to develop exhibition concepts, research and select artwork, write interpretive materials and help with art installations.

Originally a semesterlong experience, the internship expanded to a full academic year in 2019, allowing students to participate more fully in the curatorial process.

Kinghorn said one measure of the program’s success is seeing former interns pursue graduate studies and enter the museum profession.

For Skinner and fellow graduates Caroline Strolic and Delaney Burns-Fumagalli, those careers have taken distinctly different directions, from managing collections at one of the Southwest’s major art museums to helping oversee communications and operations at museums in Maine.

Their experiences illustrate the range of careers available in museums, and how an internship focused on curatorial work can help students translate different academic interests into professional opportunities.

Finding a place behind the scenes

Strolic, now an assistant registrar at the Phoenix Art Museum, was drawn to museums long before she understood the jobs available inside them.

Growing up in Arizona, she visited the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where she became fascinated not only by the objects on display but by the decisions that brought them before the public.

“There’s people out there who decide what I get to see and how I learn it,” she recalled thinking.

She wanted to become one of them.

Strolic enrolled at 91����, where she competed on the swimming team and studied art history. Her ZAM internship unfolded during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the museum operating under restrictions, she researched artwork, wrote interpretive materials and developed a proposal for an exhibition.

She also gained experience at 91����’s Hudson Museum.

Those opportunities helped her discover the range of work involved in running a museum and where her interests fit.

“It really helped me figure out which path I wanted to go in,” said Strolic, who graduated in 2021.

She went on to earn a master’s degree in the history of art and architecture and a certificate in museum studies from Boston University.

At Taliesin West, architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s former winter home in Arizona, she helped inventory a collection that had accumulated over decades.

Now, at the Phoenix Art Museum, she coordinates loans, shipping and other logistical aspects of exhibitions, helping ensure that artwork is properly documented, transported and cared for.

Much of the work happens out of public view. But for Strolic, its value becomes clear when visitors encounter something that sparks their curiosity.

She finds particular satisfaction in hearing people discuss the artwork and ask questions about what they are seeing.

“The arts do matter,” she said.

Art beyond the gallery walls

For Delaney Burns-Fumagalli, the ZAM internship was an opportunity worth pursuing more than once.

“I think I applied for it two or three years in a row,” she said. “I was like, I need to do this. This sounds amazing.”

A native of Gorham, Maine, Burns-Fumagalli was studying marketing and studio art at 91����. She had developed a passion for printmaking, but she also wanted to understand how museums operated and cared for the art entrusted to them.

Selected for the internship during her final year, she worked closely with ZAM’s registrar, documenting works on paper in the museum’s collection.

The assignment introduced her to the meticulous work of cataloging, organizing and preserving artwork. It also exposed her to artists and techniques that influenced her own creative practice.

“It was really exciting to see what a collection looks like, how it’s managed, how it’s cared for,” she said.

Burns-Fumagalli graduated in 2022 and earned a master of fine arts in print media and photography from Boston University, concentrating on printmaking.

Today, she is assistant to the executive director at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, where her work encompasses board relations, marketing, advertising, graphic design and other administrative responsibilities.

She has also designed the museum’s annual publication, bringing together her interests in art, design and communication.

The job has shown her how many different skills are needed to sustain an arts institution, something she first began to appreciate while working with ZAM’s collection.

Burns-Fumagalli has continued making art and teaching, including two semesters of introductory printmaking at 91���� and teaching at Maine College of Art & Design.

A career comes full circle

For Skinner, the path to the museum profession began with a career she quickly realized she did not want.

The daughter of two medical professionals, she initially enrolled at Saint Anselm College with plans to study nursing. But on the first day of a nursing-related biology class, she knew she had made the wrong choice.

“I was like, this is not me,” she recalled.

She transferred to 91���� to study art history and graduated in 2013 with minors in business administration, digital arts and anthropology.

At ZAM, she helped write interpretive labels explaining artwork to visitors, an experience that proved particularly valuable preparation for her career in communications.

After earning graduate degrees in museum studies and art history from Tufts University, Skinner joined the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, starting as an art handler before moving into administration and communications.

Today, her responsibilities include exhibition promotion, graphic design, media relations, website management and social media. She also teaches art history at Maine College of Art & Design.

Her work draws on a lesson she first learned at ZAM: Museums have an educational responsibility that extends beyond displaying objects.

“Not just spaces for enjoyment, but also spaces for learning and for education,” she said.

Now, working at another college museum, Skinner helps provide undergraduates with the kind of experience that shaped her own career.

The next generation

At ZAM, that opportunity has passed to Liz Cambron.

A fifth-year 91���� studio art major who specializes in oil painting, Cambron began her yearlong internship in August. She was immediately drawn into the work of dismantling an exhibition, learning how to handle, pack, move and store artwork.

She then helped install an exhibition celebrating the museum’s 80th anniversary, gaining experience with the decisions and physical work involved in transforming a gallery.

Cambron, who initially enrolled at 91���� to study biomedical engineering, had not always envisioned a future in the arts. Even after switching to studio art, she knew relatively little about the professional work involved in running a museum.

The internship has begun to change that.

She has learned how collections are cared for, how exhibitions come together and how museum staff work with contemporary artists. The experience has also given her a clearer sense of what she wants to do after graduating in May.

Kinghorn said that exposure to the profession was precisely what he hoped to provide when he, along with professor of art history Justin Wolff,  established the internship. As a college student, he had known little about the range of careers available in museums.

For Cambron, a museum career remains a possibility rather than a destination. But the work she is doing now — handling artwork, preparing exhibitions and learning from museum professionals — resembles the experiences that helped Skinner, Strolic and Burns-Fumagalli find their places in the field.

Cambron hopes to remain in Maine after graduation. The internship has also helped her see that a museum career is within reach, even without a museum studies degree.

Learning that, she said, made it feel much more accessible.

“I want to stay in the museum field,” she said. “I’m really enjoying it.”

Contact: David Nordman, david.nordman@maine.edu