Student Guide to the Georgia Museum of Art

Students have a range of options to get involved at the Georgia Museum of Art

Next week, thousands of students will be returning to campus with even more joining for their first year. The Georgia Museum of Art is a great place for students to get involved, and they have many different opportunities to do so. Take a look below for all of the resources the museum offers to University of Georgia students.

Internships

The museum offers internships in a number of areas: curatorial, development, design and preparation, education, publications and public relations. Interns are expected to work approximately 12-15 hours per week as well as one special event per semester. These positions are best suited for rising juniors and above. For more information, read about the different types of interns here.

Student Association

The Student Association at the museum shares the mission of the Georgia Museum of Art and the University of Georgia to support and promote teaching, research and service. The GMOA Student Association is committed to promoting the museum to students and encouraging them to be involved in the arts here at UGA and in Athens. They do this by “hosting student nights at the museum and organizing community art events, enabling students and community members to come together all in the name of art.” You can learn more about the student association here.

Student Docents

The museum’s student docent corps is a specially trained group of student volunteers who lead conversation-based tours of the museum’s permanent collection and temporary exhibitions. This program requires a commitment for fall and spring semesters, 12 tours and continuing-education attendance on select Thursday evenings. Student docents learn about the museum and help museum visitors feel welcome and comfortable. No experience in education or art is necessary, and all training is provided. You can find the application here.

Events

The museum holds special events weekly, with a wide range of activities. These include movie nights, yoga in the galleries, meditation sessions, study nights and late night parties, among others. For a full list of upcoming events, pick up a copy of Facet at the museum or view our online calendar.

Spotted!

We'd forgotten to check back in on the Athens Banner-Herald's site but Spotted was taking photos at the student activities fair and captured a pair of our cute interns (Aurelie and Jennifer, whose names you may recognize from this blog). Click here to see the rest of the gallery.

Art Around Athens

We know it's a really busy week, but it would be a real shame to miss tonight's visiting artist lecture by Guerra de la Paz (Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz) at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at 5:30 p.m. Here's what the art school has to say about their work:

Guerra de la Paz is the composite name that represents the creative team efforts of Cuban born artists, Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz. We began working as a collective in 1996 when we decided to share a studio in Miami’s Little Haiti. It has evolved into an ongoing collaboration that has grown by way of experimentation and constant dialog, combining two contrastive personalities to form a single entity with a visual language that conveys a universal message referencing the many different dimensions of the human experience; A cross-cultural look at dichotomies and parallels, mixing classicism with the general consensus of the day and iconic imagery with a complexity of identities.

We’re visually stimulated by our immediate surroundings. Our neighborhood has been the catalyst for much of our work - A paradox where gritty industrial warehouses cohabitate with lush tropical vegetation. Gentrified pockets juxtaposed by rustic areas adorned with hand painted murals and billboards that are quickly redesigned by nature. The ever-present evidence of erosion guarantees that nothing stays new for long and exposes a sense of impermanence that encourages our own bucolic approach, to collect and reuse discarded materials. Deemed obsolete - a testament to the passing of time and the realization of a modernity fading away – their roles are redefined when they become components in our compositions.

Our close proximity to the Pepe businesses that once thrived in Little Haiti has been a major source of inspiration. Gaining access to an overabundance of discarded clothing - relics that once helped define an individual’s personality and communally speak of environmental issues, mass consumption, and disposability – opened the doors for us to working with garments as a material. We often see ourselves as vehicles guided by their essence and silent histories.

Although it has been a great influence, by no means do we feel bound to what we amass from around our studio. And though repurposing the ready-made remains a dominant factor in our method, it is important to maintain our aesthetic and have found incorporating other materials to be inevitable. Weather new or old, handmade or manufactured, the main objective is to realize our concepts to the fullest. Deviating from our painting backgrounds, we apply this principle to our entire process and choose to not limit ourselves to any one style or technique, integrating a diverse range of work into a definitive shared vision.

Also, we'll be at the UGA Student Activities Fair today, starting at 11 a.m., in the Tate Center Grand Ballroom, helping promote our new/reinvigorated GMOA student group. There's a rumor of cookies, too.