Adirondack Experience, The Museum on Blue Mountain Lake (ADKX), in partnership with the human resources consulting group, Adirondack Diversity Solutions, will offer its inaugural 10-week summer diversity fellowship program beginning June 2.
This program is specially designed for college students from communities that have been historically underrepresented in arts organizations because of educational and economic disadvantage and ethnic background. The program will host six fellows at the museum who are interested in pursuing careers in the museum field.
“This is an exciting opportunity for the ADKX to help introduce young people to careers in the museum profession,” ADKX Executive Director David Kahn said. “Hopefully it will also serve as a model for other institutions located in rural locations that are interested in helping to diversify the museum profession.
“The lack of diversity among the Adirondacks’ permanent residents, visitors, and workforce – including the non-profit workforce – is a major issue that everyone in the region is grappling with. As the nation becomes increasingly diverse, rural tourism destinations such as the Adirondacks are overly reliant on a shrinking segment of the population. At the same time, the tourism industry is unprepared to properly welcome visitors from underrepresented communities.
ADKX, as with museums across the nation, is comprised of staff who do not reflect the increasingly diverse make-up of American society. According to the American Alliance of Museums: Although 28 percent of museum staffs are from minority backgrounds, the great majority of these workers are concentrated in security, facilities, finance and human resources jobs. Among museum curators, conservators, educators and leaders, only 4 percent are African-American and 3 percent Hispanic.
All six fellows will participate in formal presentations and Q&A sessions with the heads of six major ADKX departments: curatorial, public programming, K-12, exhibitions, development and marketing. In those sessions they will learn about overall museum operations.
In addition, the fellows will each be embedded in one of those six units to acquire more in depth knowledge of a single institutional function. Each will work with departmental staff on a project with a specific outcome that will be realized by the end of the 10-week fellowship.
Finally, fellows will partake in weekly mentoring sessions and community engagement opportunities led by Dr. Donathan Brown and Cindy Rodriguez of Adirondack Diversity Solutions.
More information about the fellowships is available at https://www.theadkx.org/about-us/employment/seasonal-employment/museum-diversity-fellowship/