Virtual Internships Are Here to Stay—and That’s a Good Thing

Amid the challenges of 2020, one of the most successful learning experiences for me was pivoting to a 100 percent remote internship program at the National Gallery of Art.

When I began planning to make the transition last March, I saw virtual internships as a temporary workaround during the pandemic. But after a broad research process where I absorbed best practices from museums, the corporate world, higher education, and associations, a switch went off in my head. I started to see that we should embrace the unique benefits of virtual internships as a way to move museums more fully into the twenty-first century.