Dayna Joseph ’19 shares her experience working at the Tang Teaching Museum as the 2017-2018 Carole Marchand ’57 Endowed Intern and discusses curating her exhibition New Ms. Thang.
Dayna Joseph ’19 talks about curating the exhibition “New Ms. Thang” and describes her experience as the Tang’s Marchand Intern.
“My experience curating New Ms. Thang expanded my knowledge of a curator’s role in museums and solidified my desire to explore a career in museums.”
— Dayna Joseph ‘19
The Tang Museum has been my community these past four years and during my junior year, I had the honor of being the 2017-2018 Carole Marchand Intern. As an art history major and arts administration minor, I really enjoyed being in a professional environment and being able to learn on the job. The hands-on experience working with both the student workers and the staff at the Tang has been really valuable to me. Everyone has been incredibly supportive, and being able to come into work every day and be around the best people and be around the most amazing artists and artworks has been a really great experience for me.
For my capstone project as the Marchand Intern I curated the exhibition New Ms. Thang, which examined the relationship between the glamour of classic Hollywood and glamour as redefined by contemporary Black female photographers and their subjects. I worked with the Curatorial Department to select a group of photographs from the mid-20th century by George Hurrell, along with photographs by four contemporary Black female photographers. Another component of the show was a collection of vernacular photos from both the Tang collection and my own family albums, to show how everyday Black women display their glamour in their own way, without an artist’s influence. My hope is that visitors to the exhibition were prompted to think about glamour as more fluid and inclusive of all women who are confident in themselves and their agency.
My experience curating New Ms. Thang expanded my knowledge of a curator’s role in museums and solidified my desire to explore a career in museums. I was able to see how a curator starts from just the seed of an idea, all the way to curating a full exhibition and seeing it open to the public. Seeing this project to fruition was the most rewarding aspect of my collegiate career.
The process of developing New Ms. Thang was also rewarding to me as a Black woman. I was able to demonstrate with the works chosen why representation matters. Not only is it important for Black women to be visible in various artistic settings, it is also imperative that we have Black female curators. It’s important to me personally and to the longevity of a museum that there are Black women who are part of the decision-making processes. Hopefully shows like New Ms. Thang will help bring even more Black women like me into the museum.