Applications for our Summer Internship 2025 Program - In-Person are now open.
Job Title: Gallery Associate
Company Description
511 Gallery is a salon-type contemporary art gallery located in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. We represent and exhibit contemporary artists who work in all media, including painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, and site-specific art. We have as well an extensive practice, 511 Projects, in secondary-market and curatorial placement. In our secondary-market practice, we represent for deaccession artworks of primarily the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on behalf of public and private collections. Most recently and for the past seven years, such representation has been of the Yvonne Pene du Bois McKenney Estate, a collection of over 300 artworks by the twentieth-century French-American Modernist, Guy Pène du Bois and, on behalf of another institutional collection, the paintings of the American Magic Realist artist, George Tooker. In our curatorial practice, we propose, organize, and/or design exhibitions for museums, art centers, and corporate venues. The primary mission of both 511 Gallery and 511 Projects is to place fine art in public institutions and public spaces.
Job Description
511 seeks Gallery Associates for its Summer 2025 internship program, which begins on June 2, and concludes on August 8. For over twenty years, we have successfully incorporated interns into the work of our gallery, and they have gained valuable experience in all aspects of the gallery and art dealership business. Our interns are not go-fors, receptionists, or data inputters. Depending on their skills, talents and interests, interns might write thoughtful and analytical letters about specific artworks to curators and collectors; write press releases for exhibitions or about notable museum placements; correspond with artists, curators, and collectors; conduct research for our backroom projects; learn art-handling and installation skills; and research, write, and then propose new curatorial projects. For those interested in the curatorial experience, we currently welcome interns to participate in an international exhibition project on which we are working about artists in migration. 511 is a collaborative and non-hierarchical working environment. Gallery Associates thus emerge from their internships with a wide range of accomplishments, knowledge, and understanding of both the commercial and the museum-centered art world. Visits to auction houses and visits from art dealers specializing in other periods or genres are often included during our summer internships, as schedules permit. Our internships are not paid, but many interns have received course credit from their colleges for their experiences at 511. Gallery Associates have gone on from working at 511 to internships or full-time jobs at museums, galleries, and auction houses and/or to top graduate programs in art history, arts administration, and curatorial studies.
Qualifications
We consistently seek interns who are strong researchers and writers, and who like doing both; who have expressive but objective voices of their own when talking and writing about art; and who are passionate and curious about art and its history. Background in art history is preferred, but more important are the skills of reading, writing, and thinking.
How to apply
Please send by April 30, 2025, your resume, cover letter, and an academic, art-focused, analytical writing sample of three pages or more addressed to Bodhi Mathur at 511gallery@gmail.com with SUMMER 2025 INTERNSHIP APPLICATION as the subject line. For further information, please contact 511gallery@gmail.com.
