Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Kally Ngiang

Note: Diary of an NUS Museum Intern is a series of blog posts written by our interns about their experiences during the course of their internships. Working alongside their mentors, our interns have waded through tons of historical research, assisted in curatorial work, pitched in during exhibition installations and organised outreach events! If you would like to become our next intern, visit our internship page for more information! 

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Kally is a year 3 Political Science student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.  As our Exhibitions Intern, Kally assisted in the research and exhibition making process for the exhibition 'Wartime Artists of Vietnam: Drawings and Posters from the Ambassador Dato’ N. Parameswaran Collection',


Day in the Life of Liam Holmes
By Kally Ngiang

8:00 am – wake up, get dressed, brush teeth, pack things, head out
8:30 am – Stop by Fine Food or Food Clique to get breakfast
9:00 am – reach the office
• Make a cup of tea instead of coffee because he’s trying to cut down on his coffee intake
• Start up his computer
9: 10 am – start work
• secondary source research, do some reading
• make a list of books to check out
• make a trip to the library to do more research and reading
12:00 pm – head for lunch at either Fine Food or YIH. Lunch menu includes: caifan, caifan, and… caifan.

1:00 pm – back at the office
• Continue working on secondary research

3:00 pm – attend a workshop on the Ways of Seeing

5:45 pm – end of the workshop
• discuss the workshop content with other interns
• pack bag
6:00 pm – end work!
6:15 pm – get dinner at Fine Food or Food Clique
7:00 pm – leave to do Stand Up Comedy
7:45 pm – arrive at the destination 
8:00 pm – show starts
11:00 pm – return home to sleep 

On our first day of work, our supervisor gave us each an area of research that differs from each other. The topic chosen are ones she believed to be of interest to us. This supervision and task delegation allow us to research more on a topic of interest whilst provide diversity and discussion topics amongst us two interns who are assigned to this project. Through this initial research phase, we can learn more about Vietnam, and also contribute our perspectives and research materials to the current exhibition information pool. 

As an intern working as an assistant to the curator of the Vietnam War Art Exhibition, I was able to see the behind the scenes of how an exhibition is made from scratch. From the layout, the curation, the framing of the artworks, the hanging of the artworks, the wall color, to the lighting. These are the different layers of work that requires communication and coordination from the different participants to set up the exhibition. This to me was an eye-opener and an experience that is hard to come by.

The museum program on its own has equipped us with a lot of exposure and experience on top of our internship assignments. These experiences are not ones that students get at their typical desk job internship. Every week, we were able to visit many different places. We went on backstage tours at the Esplanade and the UCC, attend talk shows, premiers, visit the Baba House, and even attend a raw play-in-process performance at Centre 42, a developmental theater space. Other than these different field trips, we were given projects to accomplish as a group. This project is done in collaboration with other interns of different departments and supervisors, thus allowing us to interact, learn, and know more about each other’s character and activities. With wholesome activities, we quickly learn and adapt to each other’s quirks to work together to accomplish different tasks around the museum, which simulates what work life will be like after graduation. It also brought about an internship experience that is not simply focused on the interaction between the supervisor and the intern working on the same project.