Comment | All hail the rise of the art internship

Increased debt, grade inflation and AI are making it harder for graduates to break into the art world
Evgenii Chernetcov
Is getting an internship as relevant as getting a master’s degree? For Brandon Busteed, the chief executive of the education company Edconic, these are not mutually exclusive outcomes.
He matters in our world because one of Edconic’s portfolio providers is Sotheby’s Institute, which has licensed the auction house’s name since it was spun out in 2003 but the businesses have since mostly maintained an arm’s-length relationship.
This changed in February, when Edconic joined forces with Sotheby’s to implement a formalised fellowship programme, which enables 20 of the institute’s master’s students in New York to work at the auction house for 12 weeks. They will be paid—well above the minimum wage, he says—and earn academic credit at the same time. Plans are afoot to roll the initiative out in London, likely from this time next year, with the aim of having a total of 60 students learn the trade from within.
Busteed identifies a triple-whammy that graduates are facing today. “Jobs are drying up, young adults are coming into the working world with more debt and they are now contending with artificial intelligence for many entry-level roles.” He notes, too, that grade inflation at universities makes it increasingly difficult for students to distinguish themselves.
Internships have long been a way into the working world: data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers shows an average offer rate of 72% from companies in the US to their interns, particularly in the creative industries where networks are the not-so-hidden codes to careers. Familiar, too, in the art world is that “a third of internships come through family connections, and not everyone has that social capital”, Busteed says.
He is putting his money where his mouth is. While the auction house has committed its experts’ time and resources to a new intake of staff, and will remunerate them through its own payroll, Sotheby’s Institute will reimburse any financial cost. “I see it as an extension of our faculty, like our library or careers service, and another way to meet the goal of our students getting jobs in the industry,” Busteed says. Meanwhile, the auction house is also doing its bit, with an existing scheme (beyond the Institute) that takes on around 40 interns each summer in New York.
I am biased in my admiration for the partnership. I sit on the board of governors at the Sotheby’s Institute, from where I also graduated 20 years ago. Thanks to a subsequent internship at this publication (via the Institute), I have worked in art journalism ever since. But it was a lucky break—as well as informal and unpaid—at a time when such arrangements were possible. It certainly isn’t a career path that could easily be mapped out for anyone else.
The Sotheby’s Institute programme is still for a lucky few—not everyone can afford postgraduate study—but offering students a practical bang for their buck seems to me to be forward-thinking and downright necessary, if we believe in the overall benefits of an educated population (a separate debate). To my mind, it certainly beats the status quo of a ton of qualified graduates not getting jobs.
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