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Bayans was selected from top students from around the world to receive the only six-month internship the museum awarded this year. “OSU art history students have been applying for this internship for the past 15 to 20 years, and Kristin is the first to receive one,” said Nancy Wilkinson, OSU art history professor and director of the OSU School of International Studies.
Bayans says she was very excited to get an interview for the internship. Only about 25 percent of the thousands of students applying are selected for interviews.
“I met some of the other people interviewing, and they were all from Ivy League and British schools,” she said. “I left feeling like I wouldn’t get the internship because of the competition and the fact that the interviewer said most of the museum’s interns were from New England. I thought I was probably from the wrong place.” But, she was thrilled to learn that all of her hard work had paid off and she would be heading to New York this summer to pursue the opportunity of a lifetime.
Bayans has always loved art and was already winning statewide honors for her work as a student at Putnam City North High School.
She will graduate from OSU with honors this May with majors in both studio art and art history and a minor in history. She worked four years as an assistant in the OSU Art Department’s Visual Resource Library filing, conducting research and taking photographs.
She also contributed to research and installed several exhibitions at OSU’s Gardiner Art Gallery and was curator for one OSU exhibit. Additionally, she was a research assistant working with the State of Oklahoma’s Legislative Art Collection and a research and auction assistant with Melton Art Gallery and Reference Library in Oklahoma City.
She’s also researched, written and presented several professional and academic papers and received many scholarships and honors. Last summer, she spent three months studying art and architecture in nine different countries.
Bayans will draw on all she’s learned and be prepared for a new education as an intern at the Metropolitan Museum. “I’ll be leading special tours and have to be familiar with all the museum’s collections,” she said.
This is no small feat considering that the two-million-square-foot building houses more than two million works of art spanning 5,000 years of world culture, from prehistory to the present and from every part of the globe.
Along with showing important guests around the museum, Bayans will work with the curators of the museum’s American Decorative Arts Department.
She is particularly interested in 19th Century Gilded Age and American Expatriate art. She’s also very interested in early photography, especially that of Edward Steichen. Many of Steichen’s photographs are housed at the Metropolitan, and she looks forward to continuing her research on his work.
After completing her internship, she plans to attend graduate school and hopes to eventually teach and curate a collection at a university.
For information about this page, send e-mail to Carolyn Gonzales.
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