The following story originally appeared on the website for the Charles Center. – Ed.

Driven by a passion for museums and a taste for adventure, this year’s cohort of 10 Woody interns is exploring the field alongside specialists in Virginia, Delaware, Ohio, South Carolina and Washington, D.C.

The  Woody Internship in Museum Studies, now in its 12th year, is supported by visionary donors  Carol Woody ’71 and Robert Woody and provides undergraduates with unique opportunities to apply their academic interests to practical research roles within leading museums in the region and beyond.

New additions include the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., which returns to the Woody Museum Internship program after a brief hiatus. Also, the Charleston Museum, in Charleston, South Carolina, welcomes its inaugural student intern this summer.

William Armacost ’26, an art history and environmental science double major, is helping to establish the new partnership with the Charleston Museum, while expanding his skills through intensive archival research.

Armacost is taking on a special project, researching a 19th-century fire pump cart made by enslaved craftspeople.

By delving into the museum’s archives, he hopes to contextualize the object and help curate an exhibit that will tell its story, as well as those of the individuals who created, employed, and benefited from it.

Armacost knows firsthand how museum exhibits can be used as powerful tools of artistic and historical expression. Last year he took “The Curatorial Project,” an art history practicum taught by Associate Professor of Art History Sibel Zandi-Sayek, in which students research an artist, curate their own exhibit and then stage it in Andrews Hall for students, staff and the general public.

Curating exhibits, Armacost said, creates fascinating opportunities to connect with museumgoers deeply and powerfully about a specific moment in history.

“I think there’s just something really interesting about how museums present information to the public,” he said. “There’s limited space, so you have to make sure that you’re highlighting certain things and expressing them in a way that’s democratic and equitable to all people.”

Sophie Hatfield ’26 is interning with the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her path to museum studies had an unexpected beginning.

Now a history major, Hatfield originally came to William & Mary to study computer science. That is, until a COLL 200 she took in the history department revealed a hidden passion for uncovering and understanding the past.

Her interest in historical work led her to an internship last summer through Strategic Cultural Partnerships with the Mariners’ Museum in nearby Newport News, where she caught a glimpse into the dynamic realm of museum outreach.

“I got to see a bunch of different sides of museum work,” Hatfield said. “I was mostly with the curatorial department, but I got to work a little bit with education and sometimes with their park service and with a lot of their volunteers. I saw a lot of the outreach side, and I really liked it, so I realized that was probably something I would be happy going into as a career.”

In the future, Hatfield hopes to continue working with museums as a tool for public education, “because you get to interact with a large demographic of people,” she said. “You get to share information and make it more accessible outside of a database,” which are crucial to connecting with communities and keeping history alive.

Hatfield hopes to apply her outreach experience to her summer internship with the Taft, where she is gaining experience working with art history.

The Taft is a “historic house museum and I haven’t worked with one of those before,” she said. “It’s also an art museum, so I’m excited to see if that is part of the story that they incorporate and what they present to the public — how they balance both of those histories.”

Having never lived outside of Virginia she is also looking forward to exploring Cincinnati from a historical perspective.

Cadence Hodge ’28,  a Sharpe Community Scholar and an intended history and public health double major, is looking forward to interning with Preservation Virginia in Richmond and at its Smith’s Fort site in Surry, Virginia.

A Washington, D.C., native, Hodge’s love of museums started in childhood, born from the many family trips to museums like the Smithsonian’s Hirshorn Museum & Sculpture Garden and the National Portrait Gallery.

Ever since, Hodge has pursued her passion for history, joining the Bray School Lab in her first year at W&M.

Hodge said that her favorite part of working at the lab, and any museum, is the opportunity to connect with the people whose stories are captured by history.

“I went to the Bray School dedication in October, and they had the Descendant Community Choir. It is crazy to think that I’m researching the people that those kids descend from directly,” Hodge said. “I like that feeling of connection, and I like being able to make people’s stories accessible to them. That’s beautiful.”

At Preservation Virginia, Hodge is collaborating with both the people who feature in local history and the historians and museum staff who bring these histories to life behind the scenes.
Working with experts in the field, the Woody internship allows Hodge to gain crucial hands-on experience in different areas of the museum, propelling her toward her dream career.

Interested in keeping up with news from all of our Woody interns this summer? Check out the Charles Center Instagram page here.