Meet Our Fall 2024 Interns

Meet our fall 2024 interns, who have just finished up their internships at the Phillips. Read about what they worked on over this past semester. Thank you, Geoff, Fudi, and Emma! Learn more about the Phillips’s paid internships.

Geoff Kelly (he/him) is a senior history major at American University and aspiring archivist. Over the past 3 months, he worked as the Library and Archives Intern under Juli Folk and Amanda Acosta, and has done just about everything, from scanning to processing documents/catalogues to removing photos from their frames. He parsed through a lot of old documents in the Phillips archives, logging hundreds of interesting/unique copied letters from as far back as 1920s. He’s sad to leave but has greatly enjoyed the time he’s spent at the Phillips. His favorite artist displayed at the Phillips is Mondrian—he can easily get lost in the geometric patterns (and has). He also hopes to see a proper Marjorie Phillips wing be installed one day, just like Duncan Phillips planned. In his free time, you can find him trainspotting.

Fudi Fickenscher grew up in Baltimore and graduated from Oberlin College. They spent their childhood visiting Baltimore and DC museums, leading them to pursue art history and museum studies! They are drawn to the art of francophone African and Caribbean countries and enjoy using their French skills to research and interview contemporary artists. This fall Fudi worked in the curatorial department with Associate Curator Camille Brown, curator of the upcoming exhibition Essex Hemphill: take care of your blessings, to help create some additional curatorial programming and an annotated bibliography for the catalogue, a complete list of works, and timeline, using interviews, biographies, and research from archives including DC Public Library, Library of Congress, Rainbow History Project, and Howard University. Fudi also proposed an individual project based on queer artists in Washington, DC, related to take care of your blessings. They had a blast with their cohort of interns and fellows and supervisor Shelby Bergstresser visiting museums and learning about the museum field. “Thank you to everyone at the Phillips and I hope you enjoy the upcoming exhibitions!” 

Emma Miller graduated from the University of Richmond in the spring of 2024, where she earned a degree in art history. Her undergraduate research focus was Latin American art, particularly the links between femininity, Catholic iconography, and Mexican material culture. As a Curatorial Intern at The Phillips Collection, she worked with Chief Curator Elsa Smithgall conducting research for an exhibition coming to the Phillips in 2026 about Spanish artist Joan Miró. She utilized her experience with primary source and archival research to develop a bibliography for the exhibition’s catalogue, translating sources from Spanish, making several trips to the Archives of American Art, National Gallery Library, SAAM Library, and the Phillips’s library. Her research contribution to this project highlights the work by women artists in the exhibition—notably Lee Krasner—and she is excited for it to open to the public! Emma is now local to DC and will continue her museum work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.