My name is Casey Beidel, and I’m a rising sophomore planning on concentrating in Sociology with intended certificates in American Studies, Music Theater, and Theater. I am a proud member of Mathey College and am actively involved in the Triangle Club and Princeton University Players, and looking forward to pursuing other arts groups on campus next year. I’m from Rutherford, New Jersey, and in my free time I love performing, music, baking, and running!
This summer, I am interning at the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) in Dumbo, Brooklyn, through Princeton Internships in Civic Service. NYFA helps support artists and arts organizations through generous grants, fellowships, and opportunities. The main area around which my internship is focused is Marketing, but I have had the unique experience of working in multiple departments throughout my internship.
For the first four weeks, I worked in the Communications department. In Communications, my day-to-day tasks ranged from managing the Classifieds job board (an online board where job-seekers can find nationwide jobs in all aspects of the art world) to auditing NYFA’s social media to organizing profiles for artists who received the prestigious NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in 2021. I conducted market research and explored how the COVID-19 pandemic affected certain arts organizations in the area and job availability in the arts.
I am currently working in the Learning department, which offers plentiful professional development opportunities. Some of these programs include the Immigrant Artist Program, focused on helping immigrant artists acquire resources and opportunities to foster their creative careers, and Entrepreneurial Intensives, dedicated to arts-focused and creative entrepreneurs. My tasks in the Learning department have involved conducting research on our newsletter, developing flyers for the Professional Development programs, and investigating how artists hear about what NYFA offers.
For the last three weeks of the internship, I will be working with the Development department to explore the possibility of NYFA developing its own art sales space. It will be very exciting to help catalyze an entirely new sphere for NYFA in the art world of New York and beyond.
Although the internship is currently remote, I am excited about the possibility of heading into the office soon, and I am already beyond grateful for the knowledge and experiences that my time at NYFA has given me. I am looking forward to the rest of the summer and am so grateful to be working for an organization that is helping the art world come back to life after such an immensely challenging year.
