Praxis Course: Museum Studies Praxis Seminar
Semester: Spring 2026
Faculty Advisor/Professor: Monique Scott
Community Partner: Icebox Project Space
Praxis Site Supervisor: Timothy Belknap
Praxis Poster:
HART_KennaPettigrew
Further Context:
This semester, I worked as a curatorial intern for Icebox Project Space, an independent, artist-run gallery in Kensington. I secured my internship by cold emailing Icebox to inquire about whether or not they were open to hosting an intern, one of the co-curators, Tim Belknap, invited me to come see their current exhibition last winter, in December 2025. I saw the show, we had a brief meeting, and we were both fairly confident right off the bat that Icebox would be a good fit for me.
Throughout my spring season at Icebox, there were three different programs I got to participate in: an audiovisual experimentation series called Light and Sound, a collections research side project, and an annual video festival called 20/92. Icebox is an incredibly dynamic space, and patrons will find that the gallery space can look entirely different week-to-week depending on the current project.
During Light and Sound, which runs from late January to the end of March, Tim assembles an audiovisual platform using lighting design, video mixing, and an eight-foot-tall disco ball mounted on Icebox’s ceiling to bring in local performance artists, musicians, DJs, and anyone else attracted to the singularity of his platform to host events of every caliber. As an intern, working during Light and Sound looked meant getting hands-on coaching about how he does his AV set-up while a show is going. From there, I went on to independently run lights for upcoming performances, which was really exciting.
In between Light and Sound and the launch of their video festival, Tim and I worked on a side project he had going in Germantown – a curatorial project at the Madonna Art Museum. The Madonna Art Museum is an emergent religious art collection belonging to the Basilica Shrine of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in Germantown. After a preliminary appraisal and a visit from an expert in Renaissance art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tim and I were able to use available information to do further collections research and prepare for a grand opening event scheduled for mid-May.
By the end of April, I received my final assignment: cataloguing entries for Icebox’s annual 20/92 video festival. As an art history major most interested in contemporary art who was concurrently completing my thesis on a feature film, it was such a welcome task to see what emergent filmmakers are trying worldwide. I learned a lot of valuable curatorial lessons by sitting down with Tim and Logan to discuss not just the artistic merits of each individual piece, but how they would fit thematically with other films we were considering admitting and, most importantly, how they would suit the immersive environment of the Icebox’s screening room. I’m very excited to attend the festival in mid-May and see all the films in their final form!
I greatly enjoyed my time as an intern at Icebox, and it was such an affirming feeling to be in a space that is so aligned with my interests and goals for the future as I prepare to graduate and enter the working world. I’m so looking forward to continued involvement at Icebox during my post-graduate life, when I’ll be living in Philadelphia!