Alum on Internship Encounters Hawken Teacher - in Italy!

It`s a small world. While in Italy for an internship at the Peggy Guggenheim museum, Courtney Stewart `99 had to do a double take. \"Miss Buckly! I thought that was you but then I looked and saw the two different color socks and I knew it was you.\" It was indeed Denise Buckley, Chair of Hawken`s PK-12 art program, who was hosting a Hawken student art trip and was touring the 20th century art museum located in Venice. Courtney was at the Peggy Guggenheim museum in Venice having just completed a two-month internship. \"It was a great experience,\" said Courtney. \"Basically, they hire students from all over the world to run the museum. Every day we worked in different parts of the museum guarding galleries, working in the shop, running errands, working in the library, and most importantly giving talks to the public. This required students to do their own research on the pieces and movements represented in the museum. We were also required to give an academic seminar to the museum staff at the end of our time, on a subject of our choosing,\" said Courtney. The Peggy Guggenheim internship is a fairly competitive post for students ages 20 to 29. \"It isn`t necessarily limited to art history students,\" says Courtney. \"I studied museology for my masters and literature for my undergrad. Some students were still completing undergraduate degrees, while others were Ph.D. candidates. It is immensely diverse in participants.\" Courtney currently works in exhibition programming at Design Exchange, Canada`s design museum, and also does research and collections management at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Museum. She has applied to go back to school in the fall for a Ph.D. in art history. Courtney adds that she was inspired to work in Italy by former faculty member Stergios Lazos and a Hawken student trip he led. \"He is one of the great Hawken teachers that really shaped where I am now and where I am heading,\" said Courtney.