Kristin Ringuette Interned with Unrequited Leisure

from FSU Art BA ’20 Kristin Ringuette:

My time with Unrequited Leisure has given me the opportunity to learn new skills that I haven’t before. My responsibilities included working in WordPress, researching, running social media and working with MailChimp. My goals for this internship was to learn as much as I can about how a gallery is run at a National and International level. It has introduced me to multiple contemporary digital artists and interesting books.

It has been extremely rewarding researching contemporary artists that work in the field right now. While updating the website on WordPress and adding information into MailChimp, I was able to see many digital artists who work with video, projection and digital media. I was able to discover different artist websites as well as how they promote their work on social media platforms. Other responsibilities included doing research for catalog essays by reading books such as The Amateur which opened my mind to theories about professionalism and introduced me to the German philosopher Hannah Arendt. Throughout my time at the gallery I was also able to work in social media and WordPress which will improve my technical skills on both of those platforms. By updating their website I was able to learn how to create pages, move menus and add links through wordpress.

Besides the technical skills I learned at this internship I found it inspiring how the gallery handled the current climate. For example, when the Black Lives Matter movement took the world by storm I was highly impressed with the reaction from the gallery. I was requested to help find resources for the movement which was linked to their website. Some of the challenges I faced throughout this internship was the remote location. Communication was different but it provided me with experience working with Zoom and communicating through email. I would recommend this internship to other students who are interested in working in any field of art. It provides assignments that build technical skills, shows by example how galleries should respond to the world and helps build knowledge on contemporary artists and books