Rockefeller Foundation and New York City Join Forces to Fund Internships at Cultural Organizations
The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs is beginning an initiative to improve diversity at major New York cultural institutions by financing paid internships at those organizations. The $1 million initiative, half financed by the city and the other half by the Rockefeller Foundation, will place City University of New York students as interns at places like Carnegie Hall, MoMA PS1 and the Museum of Natural History.
The program comes on the heels of a survey published this year that found the diversity in the cultural sector to be lacking. While the city’s residents are 33 percent white, according to the 2010 United States census, the cultural work force is 61.8 percent white.
“When I first read the survey, I wrote the mayor immediately and said, ‘I think there’s one powerful and immediately available resource to address the challenge the city faces, and that’s CUNY,’” CUNY’s chancellor, James B. Milliken, said...