Summer Internship Program
June 2–July 31, 2025
Application open Dec. 13, 2024–February 2, 2025.
APPLY
Closed Mondays
June 2–July 31, 2025
The Penn Museum summer internship program provides rigorous and impactful mentorship, training, and career development opportunities for undergraduates, recent grads, and grad students from any college or university. This nine-week, 300-hour paid internship program combines departmental placements with weekly lectures and field trips to provide interns with a comprehensive introduction to a wide range of museum careers.
The Penn Museum values diversity and seeks talented interns from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. This includes but is not limited to those who are the first generation in their family to attend college, who come from low-income backgrounds and/or have had limited access to museum experiences.
For more information, please contact the Academic Engagement Department at interns@pennmuseum.org or 215.746.6978.
Interns are paid $17 an hour ($5100 for 300 hours) and will become temporary employees of the University of Pennsylvania. All payment received is taxable income.
Eligible Penn students in the College of Arts and Sciences should also apply to the Summer Humanities Internship Program.
Penn and non-Penn students may be eligible for summer work-study or other funding sources through their home institutions. If you have applied for a summer work-study allocation or other external funding source, please select the appropriate box when filling out the Summer Internship Program application.
Travel assistance to and from Philadelphia may be available for interns who are relocating to the city for the summer internship program. Accepted interns are responsible for making their own housing and local commuting arrangements for the summer.
Yes, we accept applications from international students enrolled in degree-granting programs. Non-Penn international students will need CPT or OPT authorization in order to be paid by the University of Pennsylvania.
The Marketing and Communications Department builds overall brand awareness while supporting visitation and audience engagement across exhibitions, learning and public engagement programs, research, scholarship, and many other exciting initiatives at the Penn Museum. The department intern will assist in the execution and logistical operations of communications media and marketing campaigns to help grow and diversify the Museum’s various audiences.
Marketing and Communications Interns may:
The Public Engagement team creates diverse programs for various audiences throughout the year. An intern will contribute to the planning and execution of these programs under the guidance of the Associate Director of Public Engagement. Responsibilities will include supporting Garden Jams, which takes place every Wednesday in July from 5 to 8 pm. We're looking for applicants with strong customer service skills, who are open to working with visitors of all ages. While the internship hours offer flexibility, availability on Wednesday evenings from 4 to 9 pm is a requirement for successful candidates.
Public Programs Interns may:
Penn Museum Anthropology Camp is a summer day camp designed for children ages 6-13 and has been in operation for over 20 years. Through the scope of Penn Museum’s international collections, campers delight in topics such as mythology, dance, music, art, and customs from both long-ago civilizations and modern cultures. Through gallery tours, art activities, games, and special guest performances campers learn about the diversity of humankind from the past and to the present.
The Summer Camp Intern fosters a fun and positive learning environment by facilitating friendships and teamwork among campers. Reporting to the Assistant Director, Family & Camp Programs, the Summer Camp Intern assists with summer camp activities, including outdoor recess time and weekly workshops. The Intern will research and lead art-making activities and act as a mentor to camp participants. They will communicate with parents and enforce camper pickup protocol at the camp’s sign-out station. Additionally, the Summer Camp Intern will assist with summer family programming as needed. This includes facilitated art-making activities in museum galleries, cart experiences, and Daily Digs.
Summer Camp Interns may:
The Family Programs team at Penn Museum produces a wide variety of programs such as Summer Wonder, Up Late with the Sphinx, Winter Break, Scout Programs, and Cartifacts. Reporting to the Assistant Director, Family & Camp Programs, the Family Programs intern will help assist with program facilitation during Summer Wonder, our gallery-based family program offered during June and July. The Family Programs intern will help foster a fun and positive learning environment by leading art-making workshops and activities in museum galleries. They will administer and collect visitor surveys to help us understand how families enjoy these experiences. The Family Programs Intern will also support cart experiences and family friendly Daily Digs during Summer Wonder.
The Family Programs intern will work on a Wednesday-Sunday schedule June 27-July 31 in order to support summer programming needs.
Family Programs Interns may:
The Learning Programs Department encompasses the Penn Museum’s K-12 Education program which strives to create and promote innovative, relevant, and engaging educational resources and programs to a variety of audiences. Over 160,000 people visit the Museum annually, including approximately 27,000 students from Philadelphia-area public, parochial, and private schools. The Museum’s various on- and off- site education programs support core school curricula and allow students to experience different cultures rather than simply read about them in a textbook. Learning Programs also manages group reservations including adult, senior, college student, and tour operator groups.
LPE Interns may:
The Penn Cultural Heritage Center (PennCHC), a research center at the Penn Museum, is committed to the preservation of cultural heritage as part of the foundation for social justice worldwide. The PennCHC implements a bottom-up approach to heritage preservation, ensuring that ideas, decisions, and narratives about the past rest in the hands of local communities.
Founded in 2008 and directed by Richard M. Leventhal, the PennCHC draws upon the expertise of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and collaborates with researchers across the University of Pennsylvania and beyond whose research intersects with contemporary heritage issues. Since its inception, the PennCHC has created forums that bring together academics with non-academic stakeholders in cultural property policy programs.
Project description:
Penn CHC Intern responsibilities may include:
Interns working on this project will spend the first half of the summer with the Exhibitions Department and the second half with the Director’s Office.
The Exhibitions Department is responsible for the development, design, fabrication, and installation of all new temporary and permanent exhibits, as well as maintaining existing displays in the Museum. In collaboration with various departments, schools, and partners, the Exhibitions Department works with curators and subject-matter experts to develop exhibition content for designated audiences.
Exhibitions Interns may:
The Director's Office oversees and coordinates the work done across all Penn Museum departments, centers, and curatorial sections to advance the Museum’s mission to be a center for inquiry and the ongoing exploration of humanity for our Penn, regional, national, and global communities, following ethical standards and practices. The Director’s Office leads specific initiatives that support the goals of the Museum’s 2024–2027 Strategic Plan.
Project Description:
One such current initiative is the creation of a new book that can serve as a general overview of the Museum’s collections and collections practices with information about top highlighted objects. The book would be available by fall 2026, in tandem with the opening of the Main Level Ancient Egypt and Nubia Galleries.
Specific Intern Duties:
At the Penn Museum Archives, we collect the stories behind the artifacts. The archives include records of the museum’s archaeological expeditions to every inhabited continent, the history of the Penn Museum, and the history of the fields of archaeology and anthropology. In addition to field notes and correspondence, we hold three-quarters of a million images and nearly one thousand reels of motion picture film. This project is well suited for interns with a high attention to detail, strong organizational skills, and the ability to work independently. All training will be provided.
Specific Intern Duties:
The Royal Cemetery at the ancient city of Ur was excavated from 1926 to 1932 by Sir Leonard Woolley in a joint Penn / British Museum project. It has been analyzed many times over the decades, but most analyses have concentrated on only 16 of the graves, the ones that Woolley designated as royal. These are fascinating to be sure, but there were more than 2000 graves in the area and so the 'Royal Cemetery' is much more than that. This project will analyze data on as many of the graves as possible (not all were recorded).
Woolley's data for the cemetery is good, but somewhat incomplete and scattered across original field notes and publications. There are also later articles that have reanalyzed the data. As part of the joint Penn / British Museum Ur-Online project (2012-2015), many people digitized data on Ur overall, but the Royal Cemetery remains incomplete. Thus, the intern for the summer of 2025 will assess the level of completion and continue the digitization and analytical process for this specific area. Digitization can be tedious, but the end goal is a digital map that will allow us to analyze the distribution of graves as never before. We hope to do this in 3D, but the first step is sorting the 2D maps that Woolley left behind as well as transcribing the hand-written notes to determine the third dimension, the depth of each grave. There will be many complications and no one really knows how much information there is, but that's part of the excitement of a research project.
Specific Intern Duties:
In order to accomplish these tasks, the intern must be well organized and detail oriented. Familiarity with GIS programs (QGIS, ArcGIS, etc.) and 3D programs (Sketchup, Unity, etc.) is helpful but more important is the willingness to search out training on such programs for specific tasks. There are many training documents and videos on the internet and these can help a great deal in specific use of specific programs. This is why self-motivation and lateral thinking is required for the project (if the intern runs into difficulty with a computer program, they should be willing to seek solutions on their own as well as with the supervisor).
Prior study in Mesopotamia and early cities will be helpful, but interest in this topic is more important. The student will learn about early Mesopotamian dynasties and will ultimately address the question that we have been unable to definitively answer for 100 years: Who is buried in the Royal Cemetery? see, for example, the article in Expedition by P.R.S. Moorey:
https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/what-do-we-know-about-the-people-buried-in-the-royal-cemetery/
Note: this project will analyze some data concerning human remains but it will not involve the direct handling of them. It may, however, involve analysis of old photographs of skeletal remains. We will primarily discuss burial goods and may observe some of these artifacts in museum storage. Our goal is to understand how ancient Mesopotamians lived and what their burial practices and beliefs were. We will always do so with the greatest of respect.
The Museum’s Collections Division consists of the Conservation Department, the Registrar’s Office, Special Projects, and 11 Curatorial Sections. The Collections Division works closely with the Digital Records, Archives, and Publications (DRAP) Department, particularly in relation to the Collections Database, EMu. An intern working with three different sections (Mediterranean Section, Registrar, and DRAP) will learn collections stewardship and registration skills. The intern will have a chance to learn basic collections management skills such as object handling, cataloguing, photography, numbering, rehousing, and using the collections database to support collections research. This type of work supports the care and stewardship of the collections, which is at the core of our mission. These projects are well suited for interns with a high attention to detail, strong organizational skills, and the ability to work alone or in a pair.
Specific Intern Duties:
The Museum’s Collections Division consists of the Conservation Department, the Registrar’s Office, Special Projects, and 11 Curatorial Sections. The Collections Division works closely with the Digital Records, Archives, and Publications (DRAP) Department, particularly in relation to the Collections Database, EMu. An intern working with three different sections (Mediterranean Section, Registrar, and DRAP) will learn collections stewardship and registration skills. The intern will have a chance to learn basic collections management skills such as object handling, cataloguing, photography, numbering, rehousing, and using the collections database to support collections research. This type of work supports the care and stewardship of the collections, which is at the core of our mission. These projects are well suited for interns with a high attention to detail, strong organizational skills, and the ability to work alone or in a pair.
Specific Intern Duties:
Special Projects: Situated within the museum’s Collections Division, Special Projects serves as a hub for cross-departmental projects that impact the collection and the collections storage areas. The Special Projects department works closely with the Registrar’s Office, Conservation Department, Exhibitions Department, and Building Operations Department to plan, manage, and facilitate institutional projects as they arise, which currently includes collections storage assessment, the Ancient Egypt and Nubia Galleries, and the ongoing Coxe Wing Renovation. Past projects have included the off-site move of the Egyptian collection, archaeological repatriations, and a vibration monitoring/mitigation project. A summer internship within the Special Projects department will include exposure to the museum’s collections, projects, spaces, and departments with a focus on institutional collaboration and project management.
Conservation: The Penn Museum’s Conservation Department is tasked with the long-term preservation and conservation of the Museum’s object collections. The Department’s regular duties include review, treatment, and setting exhibition parameters for all objects going on exhibition or out on loan, working with Collections staff to provide the best possible environment for the long-term preservation of collections in storage, and providing conservation consultation for Museum staff, researchers, and students. A summer internship in the Conservation Department will include opportunities to learn more about the education and training that is required to become a conservator and opportunities to contribute to preservation and conservation efforts, including documenting artifacts in the collection.
Specific Intern Duties:
Special Projects: Situated within the museum’s Collections Division, Special Projects serves as a hub for cross-departmental projects that impact the collection and the collections storage areas. The Special Projects department works closely with the Registrar’s Office, Conservation Department, Exhibitions Department, and Building Operations Department to plan, manage, and facilitate institutional projects as they arise, which currently includes collections storage assessment, the Ancient Egypt and Nubia Galleries, and the ongoing Coxe Wing Renovation. Past projects have included the off-site move of the Egyptian collection, archaeological repatriations, and a vibration monitoring/mitigation project. A summer internship within the Special Projects department will include exposure to the museum’s collections, projects, spaces, and departments with a focus on institutional collaboration and project management.
Conservation: The Penn Museum’s Conservation Department is tasked with the long-term preservation and conservation of the Museum’s object collections. The Department’s regular duties include review, treatment, and setting exhibition parameters for all objects going on exhibition or out on loan, working with Collections staff to provide the best possible environment for the long-term preservation of collections in storage, and providing conservation consultation for Museum staff, researchers, and students. A summer internship in the Conservation Department will include opportunities to learn more about the education and training that is required to become a conservator and opportunities to contribute to preservation and conservation efforts, including documenting artifacts in the collection.
Specific Intern Duties:
The Provenance & Repatriation Office, situated within the Collections Division at the Penn Museum, oversees provenance research and manages requests for repatriation at the Penn Museum. Interns in this department will participate in collections management and related research projects on cultural items in the collections, primarily in the Museum’s American and/or Oceanian Sections. The intern will work closely with the Manager of Provenance & Repatriation and the Curatorial Section Keeper of Collections.
Provenance Research Interns may: