(Rewritten from a first-person account by Eden Porter. All photos provided by Porter.)
Eden Porter‘s first art history course at Wesleyan was intriguing, and she was blown away by how much her classmates already seemed to know about the fascinating content. Putting in effort to excel in her art history courses, Porter’s confidence and passion grew after a stint at an art museum.
The recipient of the inaugural Wesleyan-sponsored Peggy Guggenheim Collection (PGC) Internship, Porter ’27 spent two months at Venice, Italy this past summer, where she contributed in a multitude of ways and used her time with visitors to transform the museum into a more inviting place for everyone.
The true joy of this summer was engaging in the Education Department initiatives with the common goal of making art more accessible. Here I felt a real calling.
Eden Porter ’27
“I brainstormed activities that will be implemented into the fall programming, gave tours to children and led them in art workshops during Kid’s Days both in Italian and English, and was lucky enough to assist in the ‘Io Vado al Museo’ (‘I Go to the Museum‘) initiative which welcomed visitors with migration backgrounds to engage with the Collection, utilizing translanguaging techniques. In my second month, I was made a Kid’s Day Capa (Coordinator),” said the Art History minor.
Applicants for the Wesleyan-sponsored PGC Internship should have a basic command of Italian. Porter, an American who was raised speaking Italian, took the opportunity to practice her Italian in a professional capacity.
“On ‘Venice Art Night’, the extended hours visitors were mostly Italian residents. As such, I was asked to deliver a 15-minute presentation on the temporary exhibition (Maria Helena Vieira da Silva: Anatomy of Space) entirely in Italian to the large crowd. I diligently prepared, memorizing the Italian script I wrote and rehearsed the more challenging pronunciations. I cherished the opportunity to put my skills to the test in a moment of success which became a point of pride for me and my team,” she said.
The museum attracted a healthy flow of visitors, whom Porter welcomed with her warmest smile: a high school teacher from New York City, a young German playwright, a Colombian history buff, families on vacation, and Italian high school students. She shared the knowledge she had acquired about the collection and listened to the visitors’ impressions of the artworks. “I learned just as much from their fresh perspectives as they did from my researched anecdotes,” she said.
Beyond the responsibility entrusted to her, Porter enjoyed access to the modern art history library at the PGC, which she described as “fully stocked.”
“I luxuriated in the cave of knowledge under the historic single-story Venetian palazzo. During the workday, I took advantage of scheduled study times to develop well-researched talks using library resources,” she said.
Before wrapping up their time at the PGC, every intern had to do a twenty-minute final presentation on a topic of their choice. “After stumbling upon a postcard of an unusual Tuscan church fresco painted by (Colombian artist) Fernando Botero, I chose to investigate post enlightenment art in religious space,” Porter said.
Porter said the internship has “furthered my conviction to pursue a future working to make art spaces more accessible.”
This summer, I could clearly see that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Eden Porter
The James E. Lieber Art History Internship Fund provided grant support for the Wesleyan-sponsored PGC Internship.