Student opportunities
Museums are more important than ever. They are responsible for cultural stewardship and serve as gathering places for communities, interaction, participation, reflection, learning and act as an agent of social change. Get involved at the Madden Museum of Art through the School of Art & Art History at the University of Denver. Apply now!
Opportunities include
Student-curated exhibitions
Publishing
Conducting original research
Collections care
Community outreach
Museum interpretation
Graphic & Exhibit design
Public & Virtual Tour design
Marketing
Museum management
Under the guidance of Program Director Nicole Parks, the Madden Museum of Art's programming and management is fully operated and run by University of Denver students.
Classes and Workshops
Collections Care Workshops & Trainings
Artworks have to be moved, packed, transported, stored and presented properly to guarantee their preservation and safety. Students, curators, gallery staff, art handlers and technicians are in direct and frequent contact with artworks and therefore need to know the essentials of proper care, maintenance and preservation.
Art Handling Training
Art Handling Training is required of all staff and students working at the Madden Museum. While the training was designed specifically to prepare students for their future careers in the museum field, this training assures consistency across our organization and allows us to properly care for the collections exhibited and stored at the museum but elsewhere across DU. We advocate for museum industry standards concerning art storage and handling, and our trainings has helped form skilled curators, collection managers, preparators, and the like, who all are critical to the livelihood of arts organizations far and wide, from small community non-profit art spaces and private collections to major cultural institutions and commercial galleries. DU is committed to industry-wide best practices and standards to preserve and protect art and artifacts and continue to enrich the lives of present and future generations of students and the community.
Condition Reporting Workshops
To condition report is to document details about the current condition of a work of art and associated parts like its frame or base. It is an accurate and informative account of an object’s state of preservation at a particular moment in time. We conduct condition reporting frequently to not only properly care for the objects at the museum, but to provide students with skills for their future careers as condition reporting is a valuable tool for managing collections, and training offers a systematic approach to reviewing the condition of items in our collection, as well as a consistent framework, and a set of terms for making useful reports.
Workshops are conducted frequently. The largest occurred over a five-day period in April 2019 when graduate students documented the current condition of over a 100 art objects displayed at the Madden Museum.
Art History, Museum Studies, and Studio Art Classes
Museums are classrooms for the curious, and it’s no different here. In addition to providing hands-on training for students, we also host numerous DU classes at the museum. From Art History and Museum Studies courses to painting and drawing classes and used as a case study for non-profit management and marketing students, the museum is a dynamic setting that can serve a variety of needs and classes.
Studio Art Classes
The museum provides opportunities for students studying fine art to work directly from art objects on exhibit. In fall 2020, the Madden Museum transformed into a painting and drawing studio for 10 fine art students under the direction of painting Professor Deborah Howard. Using the Madden Collection as inspiration, the students created original works of art.
Museum Studies Courses
Led by instructor and Madden Museum Program Director, students enrolled in Curatorial Practicum work collaboratively to plan and execute an exhibition to be displayed at the Madden Museum of Art. The process may include choosing a theme and selecting works of art, researching artists and themes, developing a budget, scheduling, an exhibition checklist, modeling the gallery, visual exhibition design, keeping in mind conservation and collections management factors, shipping, installation, educational outreach to the public, publicity, and other issues related to exhibition planning.
Lectures
Hosting classes, conducting tours, and giving lectures is all part of the experience working at the Madden Museum.
Publications
Students working at the Madden Museum and those enrolled in the Curatorial Practicum course are given opportunities to write for a variety of museum publications and educational materials. Writing for a museum audience differs from writing an academic paper, and the Madden has opportunities for students to gain experience writing for this particular audience—a skill necessary for future museum work.