Welcome to the Summer Interns!

July 24, 2025

The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) is delighted to host six undergraduates and one recent graduate for the 2025 summer internship season, which began on June 9 and continues through August 8.  

The season kicked off with a weeklong orientation that included morning artmaking activities, meet-and-greets with staff across departments, and a welcome lunch with mentors. Throughout the summer, the Summer Intern Enrichment Series brings interns from the Yale University Art Gallery and the YCBA together each week for engaging sessions focused on museum career paths, hands-on experiences, and time to socialize with peers. These moments of shared learning encourage the interns to explore the diverse world of museum careers as they focus on their departmental projects.  

Paul Chum  
New Haven Promise Summer Scholar in Paintings and Sculpture  

University of Connecticut, Storrs, ’26: English and Philosophy 
This summer, Paul joins the department of Paintings and Sculpture. Throughout his internship, he is gaining valuable insights into curatorial practices and the daily operations of a curatorial team. His project includes researching the YCBA’s art collection, assisting with curator and staff research requests, updating and organizing curatorial files for collection objects, and managing information in the YCBA’s collections database, The Museum System (TMS).  

George Cole
New Haven Promise Summer Scholar in Collections Information Access  

George Washington University, ’27: Computer Science 
George is working closely with the Collections Information Access department, developing data visualizations of the movements of paintings, artists, and dealers represented in the YCBA collection. George is also helping the department select images for artists’ records as the museum prepares to launch a new online collection catalogue later this summer.

Mia Coppola
The View from Here Alumni Intern in Education and Imaging  

Sacred Heart University, ’27: Strategic Communication, Public Relations, and Advertising 
An alumna of the YCBA teen photography program “The View from Here” (TVFH), Mia supports both the Education and Imaging departments. In Education, Mia is learning how to transform making photographs into a practice of teaching with objects from the YCBA collection. She is also collaborating with Education staff to develop thematic programming around photography for K–12 audiences, organize summer tours of the current TVFH cohort’s display at Yale Schwarzman Center, and develop three sessions to co-teach for the fall TVFH class. In Imaging, she assists in capturing museum events and supports the digitization of works in the YCBA’s collection.  

Charlee Ferguson
New Haven Promise Summer Scholar in the Reference Library and Photo Archives  

Bridgeport University, ’28: Health Sciences 
Charlee joins the Reference Library and Photo Archives. She is exploring the YCBA’s Paintings and Sculpture collection by conducting object-based research and compiling bibliographic citations for objects. Charlee has also been introduced to a variety of art historical resources in print and electronic formats, and is delving into historical and current books, journals, newspapers, auction and dealer catalogues, dissertations, and online resources to add bibliographic citations to TMS.  

Neil Grasty
Summer Intern in the Director’s Office

Morehouse College, ’24: BA in Art History 
Neil is learning about the day‐to‐day operations of the Director’s Office and the role of the director within the museum, including the administrative responsibilities and strategic planning required for a career in an art museum. Neil helps maintain the Director’s Office correspondence with key stakeholders, facilitates research requests, updates and organizes the contents of department files, and greets external guests for special events.  

Jiayang Jin
Patrick McCaughey Bartels Summer Intern Scholar in Prints and Drawings  

Yale University, ’27: Art History 
Jiayang is working closely with the department of Prints and Drawings to contribute to exhibition research and development. This includes conducting research on individual artists, techniques, and historical background, as well as aiding in the development of exhibition checklists for upcoming exhibitions of British pastels and of drawings by the Trinidadian artist Michel-Jean Cazabon.

Kemper Rodi
Amy Meyers Bartels Summer Intern Scholar in Paintings and Sculpture  

Yale University, ’27: American Studies and Italian Language 
Kemper supports the work of the department of Paintings and Sculpture. She is researching the growing number of works made by women artists in the collection, particularly recent acquisitions by Mary Beale (1633–1699), Maria Spilsbury (1776–1820), and Emma Soyer (1813–1842). She is also working on identifying and addressing outmoded or inaccurate language in titles and descriptions relating to the Paintings and Sculpture collection.