March 23, 2018
Diary of an NUS Museum Intern is a series of blog posts written by our interns about their experiences during the course of their internships. Working alongside their mentors, our interns have waded through tons of historical research, assisted in curatorial work, pitched in during exhibition installations and organised outreach events! If you would like to become our next intern, visit NUS Museum’s student development page for more information.
Jolene Teo is a third-year History student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. As our Museum Archival Research Intern, Jolene researched on and compiled a bibliography of writings related to William Willetts, the second curator of the Art Museum in the University of Malaya, researching and compiling materials on the University of Malaya, as well as researching and compiling a bibliography of writings related to Roxanna Brown and Constance Sheares.
Despite knowing close to nothing about William Willetts, the second curator of the Art Museum in the University of Malaya, I decided to challenge myself and applied to be a Research Assistant Intern for an upcoming lecture about him under NUS Museum to find out more about this figure. Being a History student, I wanted to try applying the skills I learnt in school to museum work and learning new things as well. As I was always interested in the arts, I wanted to explore the various roles played by the museum staff from curating an exhibit to the day to day running of a museum. Therefore, this internship was the best of both worlds for me and I applied for it without hesitation.I remember being completely lost on the first day and hitting several dead ends along the way, but it was certainly a fruitful journey of growth and perseverance. I started off reading several materials provided by the museum staff to get a brief overview of Willetts. Slowly, I started to branch off on my own and dug around NewspaperSG, National Archives, and visiting various libraries to find out more information. The museum staff have all been very friendly and helpful in answering our questions and letting us know what they do even if it was not related to what the interns were doing, so we were able to explore other areas as well. We also got a break from what we are doing by going on field trips or workshops to learn more about the museum itself and what they do.