I took the ‘conventional’ path in college that had the highest chances of landing me a museum job; I studied Art History, started an Art History Club, wrote an Honors Thesis on museums, and was that annoying student at office hours. All that effort and education still left me drowning in self-doubt and confusion about how people even landed that post-grad arts job.

A little insider’s tip from working at a museum for almost a year and a half now + witnessing how art education functions: People working in this field are scrappy, and teams in the art world are often very small. For example, I’m not just a social media manager, but I’m also an on-call event photographer, videographer, editor, researcher, marketing assistant, and writer. Every person I collaborate with at the museum also has a diverse set of skills that they use daily. Plus, they often draw on experiences that are unconventional/side project-y/not even museum-adjacent. When positioning yourself to work in this world, think of every possible skill you have and make that known to employers. People in G.L.A.M. are self-starters, highly organized, and very ambitious. This isn’t the field for you if you always need direction from someone else just to get started.

In this letter, five ideas that range in effort levels from very little to moderately difficult aim to serve as your jumping-off point. From who to contact and how to cold email a museum or gallery for work to tips on making a portfolio and networking in the art world, even experienced art professionals will find a new tidbit here.

1. Make a portfolio and craft your pitch

A passionate cover letter remains effective, yet in creative industries, words can only support your experience to an extent. Nowadays, hiring managers are reviewing hundreds upon hundreds of applications that all sound the same. Providing a visual aid that can also speak to your personality might just be the hack to get you noticed.

After I graduated one quarter early from my Art History program in college, my first task was

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While floral events are popping up at museums around the world, the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco was one of the first to do it. Their Bouquets to Art program, now in its 42nd year, invites floral designers from across the Bay Area to take inspiration from works on view from the museum’s permanent collection. The popular event and fundraiser for the museums opened this week at the Legion of Honor and de Young, with over 100 arrangements to feast your eyes upon.

Coverage of the Legion of Honor’s last event…

I got a special press invite to watch the bouquet formation in action on Monday, getting a full tour of the pop-up arrangements, chatting with artists, and learning more about how this San Francisco museum puts on this flagship event every year.

How do florists choose the art that inspires their arrangements?

They don’t. Florists apply to participate in the fall and hope for the best.

The de Young and Legion assign artworks to event participants based off of their floral styles. Sometimes, the artworks repeat every year. For example, florists are consistently assigned to make something inspired by a set of looped wire sculptures by Ruth Asawa that entered the de Young Museum’s collection in 2005, a gift from the artist.

Spacing and location have a lot to do with the choice of artworks, too. The museums consciously assign artworks that aren’t right next to each other to give the floral arrangements room to breathe and accommodate the high visitor traffic during this annual event.

What’s the process like for florists? How do they plan and prepare?

Planning is key. Once they’re assigned an artwork, some start sketching out a design and picking forms or textures from the work to recreate with plants. Yet others might start by choosing their blooms first, especially if one type of flower will serve as the foundation of the arrangement.

This event isn’t your regular floral design show. It’s a fundraiser for the museums’ exhibitions, conservation projects, and educational programs. The quality of the florals matters and reflects the image of the museums. Akin to a special exhibition, visitors are paying more to get in and want to be wowed.

How florists make sure their flowers are approved, execute their visions inside the museum, and keep flowers fresh for 5+ days

If you’ve worked at a museum, you know about the ‘no plants’ rule. When I started my first museum job, I couldn’t even bring a cactus to my desk. My office was on the same floor as our collections storage, and I was told that even one loose bug run the risk of getting into our thousands of archival papers.

Bouquets to Art runs a similar vetting process. Florists check into the museum with materials ready for inspection by the museum’s conservators. Plants are misted down with bug-killed agents and examined for any abnormalities or insects.

Once inside, the florists map to their artwork and get to building. Things get dirty real quick. Tarps on the floor catch trimmings of pampass grasses while industrial rolling carts hold chicken wire, pliers, hand-dyed orchids, and callalilies. One mother-daughter pair used a bench inside the gallery to prep their flowers on top of old newspapers.

I loved watching the florists’ creations evolve and grow, one stem after the other. Most show up in pairs of two, and I loved meeting the family members and friends showing up for their floral afficianados as assistants for the day. The Floral Exhibitors team, that’s typically run by experts in the Bay Area flower industry, inspect the arrangements daily. If someone’s roses look droopy or they notice leaves curling in, they’ll reach out to that florist and do a refresh to ensure all bouquets look their best for the duration of the six-day event.

More of my favorite ‘Bouquets to Art’ creations

I’m no flower expert, but I definitely noticed some trends among the arrangements. Hand-painted anthuriums were a stem of choice for many.

The centerpiece work of the presentation at the Legion of Honor is a collab with found floral called “The Artists’ Garden” that is being tended to all week. Just a few weeks prior I saw the Thom Browne runway show happen in this very gallery. Crazy!

This was also the best-smelling exhibition I’ve ever attended. The rose and jasmine scents from these two arrangements were a pleasant surprise and I loved how these two chose florals that emulated the textures of a billowing satin cloak or a sensual, marble body.

It’s not too late to get tickets to Bouquets to Art, on view through this Sunday! They sell quick, but there are a few visiting slots available and dozens more arrangements at their sister museum in Golden Gate Park, the de Young.

Last week, I had accepted that my dream assignment wasn’t going to happen. It would be insane for GQ to send fashion show press credentials to me, a 24-year-old journalist and social media coordinator for a publication that New Yorkers and global fashion people certainly don’t read.

The assignment first caught my eye when Vogue announced the second annual GQ Bowl, a runway show held in the Super Bowl host city, would take over a San Francisco museum with a presentation from none other than Thom Browne. Stunning arts venue. Incredible designer always pushing the envelope. Celebrities guaranteed to attend. I immediately sent the media alert to the culture editor at the newspaper where I work. Some of my coworkers had connections at Condé Nast and would try their best to get a response from GQ.

On Wednesday afternoon, two days before the show, the coast was clear. I had an invite in my inbox. What the hell was I going to wear?

My sartorial dilemma was probably general anxiety about the event reinterpreted, but the night before, I made an emergency trip to Crossroads Trading and picked pieces that turned out to be more Miu Miu than Thom Browne. Instead, I wore pieces entirely from my closet: a secondhand Theory wool skirt, a secondhand cropped Everlane button-up, Le Bon Shoppe socks with Thom’s signature stripes, and my Coach derbies. Right on theme, but understated. I was a member of the press working at the show after all, not a public figure lucky enough to be invited.

You can read a more polished recap of my night for the San Francisco Standard, but here’s a play-by-play of the night, the celebrities I saw, my thoughts on the collection, and how I created editorial content about the event in record time.

What is the GQ Bowl, and why’d they pick Thom Browne?

The GQ Bowl, hosted in the region of that year’s Super Bowl, celebrates the intersection of fashion and sport, bringing both models and athletes to the runway. The result is one of the buzziest, well-dressed events of Super Bowl week and a masterclass in athletic-inspired, high-end clothing.

After an inaugural sports-themed runway show from designer Emily Bode in New Orleans last year, GQ’s outgoing global editorial director Will Welch and fashion designer Thom Browne hosted the magazine’s second annual GQ Bowl at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor Museum, an hour north of Levi’s Stadium, where Bad Bunny would perform two days later.

In a cheeky promo video, Gigi Hadid put Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs in model training camp to prepare him for the biggest night of his career, the GQ Bowl, of course. Neither Hadid nor Diggs walked this runway, but we can appreciate all of the storytelling on GQ’s part ahead of the event.

Sports-inspired iconography has long been a part of Thom Browne’s design ethos. Browne’s signature four white stripes — which used to be three until Adidas claimed the label’s designs looked too similar — draws direct inspiration from vintage varsity attire. You wouldn’t guess that Browne is a football fan, but every Thanksgiving, Browne hosts a football game with models and celebrities clad in Browne’s athletic-adjacent attire to pay homage to his family’s tradition of playing backyard pickup in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The man loves a theme!

I got a lot of questions after sharing videos from the event, along the lines of, “How did I not know about this?” and “Could normal people buy tickets to the show?”

Below the paywall: How the runway show went down, interviewing Teyana Taylor, Alix Earle, Wisdom Kaye and Suni Lee, the fashion show itself and celebs’ thoughts on the clothes, plus how I turned in my event recap article + viral social content before every other news outlet

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This year has passed freakishly fast. At the time of writing this, it’s late October which means I’ve been working as a social media manager and content creator for a museum (technically two separate institutions with different identities) for 10 months!

I absolutely love this role and feel so lucky to have gotten it, but have to preface that the current museum and gallery landscape is an absolute mess. Working at cultural institutions now probably looks a lot different than it used to just with all of the uncertainty and change hitting the U.S.

Censorship and the dismantling of DEI has instilled fear around works curators want to show at museums and has affected many shows across the states, most notably Amy Sherald’s American Sublime, which was set to premiere at the Smithsonian, but with hesitance towards one of Sherald’s painting of a trans woman. I commend Sherald’s decision to stand by her work and withdraw from the Smithsonian. American Sublime luckily found a new venue with no censorship issues, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and will open on November 2.

Next came the budget cuts and cancellation of National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants after Trump called for their elimination. While the NEA isn’t eliminated yet from the federal budget, there’s a chance it could be in 2026. I felt these funding cuts personally. Coworkers of mine were laid off. Opportunities for career growth were halted.

Across the country, museum staff is shrinking, but we’re still standing strong and committed to serving our communities, which makes it all worth it. Art is so important in times like this and so is supporting the arts!

As I’ve been sharing some of the incredible works I get to see everyday while working at a museum (exhibit A, exhibit B, exhibit C), I’ve also been getting questions about the job and my experience! I thought I’d answer some of the most common ones, but my DMs and comments are always open for more!

How did you get into this career path with existing experience?

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Two years ago, I gave up on ever working in the arts. I was on my path to graduating with a B.A. in Art History, a degree I would tell people I pursued ‘just for fun.’ I poured years of my life studying obscure architecture and artists because at least it was ‘more interesting than getting a communications degree.’ I finagled my way into the History Honors Thesis class because I ‘felt like it would look good on job apps.’

Something was compelling me to downplay my passion for the arts whenever I was asked about it by people outside of my circle. Practicality, maybe. Or perhaps judgements from others who pursued college majors with a higher employment rate.

Inside, I knew living post-college without any art world touchpoint would mean a life lived unfulfilled. Yet, my fate was already sealed. I couldn’t get a single internship or job in the arts during college. I went to office hours and had a job at the campus paper and wrote the museum-focused honors thesis. The one offer that I passed on was an unpaid internship to teach art history to kindergarteners. At the time, I also didn't deal with rejection very well. So, I ruled out ever working in an arts institution.

Along came the justifications to ease my disappointment.

“I’d probably be working alone and in a dark basement” or "The people would be horribly pretentious” or “There wouldn’t be open jobs that weren’t in fundraising or curatorial” were my excuses. All but one of these statements is somewhat true of actually working at a museum. Hint: my office has a non-operable window.

My pessimism towards working at a museum mostly came from being uninformed. I hadn’t spoken to a lot of people who had the jobs I wanted at museums. I didn’t do my research on how to break into the field. I didn’t even know which jobs I wanted. Applying to everything was my initial strategy that quickly burnt me out and didn’t get me to where I am today.

This piece is meant to help folks out who are in this same position I’m referencing: inspired but growing frustrated and confused about where to even start. Whether you have no background in the arts or eat, sleep, and breathe museums, I know you’ll find a helpful tidbit here.

Some real facts we must address

I don’t mean to scare you off from aspiring to work in the arts but rather, help you approach this in a way that’s realistic and attainable for you, no matter what existing experience you possess.

Like many fields, the arts are underfunded, teams are small, and most roles require additional degrees. In today’s landscape, funding is even tighter, jobs are more competitive, and cultural institutions are shrinking their teams. Last month, one of my coworkers was impacted by our museum’s layoffs, dwindling our tiny marketing team of four people down to three. It was an event that completely shifted morale even after months of trimming funding due to withdrawal of many federal grants.

Circumstances are simply unfortunate right now, but this doesn’t mean you should give up. The art world job hunt becomes more approachable once you recognize the piece that makes you unique and where it fits into the art world puzzle.

Here’s all the steps I’d take to kickstart an exploration of working in the arts and start applying to opportunities truly tailored to my skills, qualifications, and interests:

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