Smithsonian American Art Museum Internship With Abigail Allport '26
Abigail Allport '26
video by Stephen Munchel
From the galleries to the archives: Lessons from a summer immersion experience
Spending her days at one of the country’s most prestigious museums, Abigail Allport '26 (art history, Chinese) was a summer intern at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.
“I've always been interested in working in museums and finding out what it's like to work in a curatorial department,” she says. She certainly found out, helping with exhibition upkeep, monitoring audience response cards and assisting her supervisors with exhibition research.
“One of the coolest things that I got to do was attend an art review for a potential acquisition,” says Allport, who plans on attending graduate school for art history after Dickinson. “It was really a privilege to shadow my supervisors and be able to just walk through the galleries with them and get their own perspective as curators. It gave me an opportunity to see from the inside what their day-to-day work is like.”
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Published August 25, 2025