When you
stare at a beautiful painting in a museum, you probably
don’t wonder what’s holding it securely to the wall;
you probably don’t even notice the wall behind it.
But
Kimberly Vaquedano does.
The
Co-Op City teen took a course in art handling, a niche
profession but a burgeoning field in a city where there
are scores of museums and hundreds of art galleries an
auction houses.
Art handlers
are the people who safely transport and store artwork
and artifacts.
They wrap,
pack, crate, ship, install and dismantle exhibits and
maintain permanent collections of framed and unframed
art at institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, Sotheby’s, the Brooklyn Museum.
“I didn’t
know there were people with whole careers in this,” said
Vaquedano. “There is a whole way of packing it, hanging
it, all these different instructions, tedious little
things.”
It’s an
unusual career, especially for kids from the Bronx. But
it’s in the borough where the only art handler training
program in the nation is offered, by the Bronx Council
on the Arts.
Vaquedano
interned at the Longwood Gallery at Hostos Community
College after taking the course, and now she works there
full-time.
She took the
training through Handle It!, a program developed a year
ago by the Riverdale Mental Health Association and
funded by NYCWorks, a joint initiative of the New York
City Council and United Way of New York City.
The program
provides career preparation and training as art handlers
and gallery assistants
for kids
17-21 without high school diplomas or jobs.
Graduates of
the three-month course are placed in internships with
museums and galleries and receive job placement
services. Participants learn skills in work readiness,
business communications and customer service, and
receive support services such as counseling and GED
preparation assistance.
The
Riverdale Mental Health Association, which provides
mental health and support services to children and
adults in the Bronx, was looking to develop a program
for young adults to teach them “hard skills,” but wanted
something “interesting and unique,” said Rita Liegner,
director of Handle It!
“The Bronx
Council on the Arts provides the hard skills, and we
give support,” said Liegner.
“They learn
to hang objects on walls, from ceilings.
“We brought
them on field trips to museums, galleries, such as the
Newberger Museum of Art in Purchase, the Brooklyn
Museum, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Bronx River
Arts Center.”
Most of the
kids who apply are artists or have an intense interest
in art.
Liegner said
40 youths participated in the program in its first two
sessions.
About eight
got permanent jobs.
The program
was funded for a year, and this month the group hopes to
hear that the funding
will
be extended for another year. If so, another Handle It!
Group will start training in April, Liegner said.
Vaquedano,
18, had dropped out of school to work, then quit her job
and was not really doing
anything
with her life. She wanted to get her equivalency
diploma, and a friend told her about the program.
“As soon as
she said ‘art,’ I was interested and motivated,”
Vaquedano said. “I need to paint
in high
school and I was getting into photography.”
She enjoyed
the field trips every other week, and took classes on
how to manage money,
work
etiquette, and the art handling.
“I learned a
lot…We went behind the scenes at the museums and spoke
to people,” she said.
“They
showed different hardware to hang the art; I thought
they just used a nail and a hook.
“But they
use techniques so they don’t damage the art, to hold it
securely, they showed us how to hang art on bricks and
concrete, what different types of walls to use, not just
sheetrock or plaster.”
She was
assigned an internship at Longwood Gallery for a month,
beginning as a receptionist, but enjoyed working on
grant applications for the artists, one of the financial
facets of the art world.
“The boss
hired me full-time,” she said proudly, referring to
William Aguado, executive director of Bronx Council on
the Arts Development Corp.
She plunged
into working, and now she is focusing on taking her GED
test.
She said she
may be putting her photography skills to work helping
one of the artists who
needs
pictures taken for one of his projects.
“I’ve been
here for about seven months, and I’ve met so many
artists I never would
have gotten
to interact with,” she said.
