Jajwalya Karajgikar completes The National Gallery of Art Internship Program

Jajwalya Karajgikar, a Computational Sciences graduate student and Digital Scholarship GRA at GMU University Libraries, interested in Digital Humanities research, interned with the National Gallery of Art virtually for the Summer 2020 and Fall 2020 semester with the mentorship of CSI faculty Dr. William Kennedy during which time she worked on several projects:

• Spearheaded the Tableau prototype of an analytics dashboard with 30+ graphs from open data obtained from various departments in the gallery. The dashboard will be key to better inform the public and the United States Office of Management and Budget of the Gallery’s financial, management & programmatic performance, and internally aid in interpreting the a forthcoming strategic plan for the Gallery moving forward. The Smithsonian Dashboard Team was consulted several times for this project.
• Identified 25+ possible Digital Humanities projects to bridge the technical, accessibility, diversity, inclusion divide transforming into a data-driven digital-first initiative in a post Covid-19 museum space.
• Conducted a Gallery-wide pop-up talk on Bellini & Titian's The Feast of the Gods examining the East-West interactions along the Ancient Silk Route through the lens of diplomatic trade gifts and technical art history, now stored in the NGA Curatorial Records.
• Researched & constructed the agent-based model museum simulation for visitor interaction behavior with art objects using NetLogo from Design Exhibitions & Visitor Experience department metrics.
• Advised the Conservation department with text analysis tools, techniques, & online course creation (digital pedagogy) on methodological qualitative research with data analysis for Photograph Conservators. Contributed to Conservation Andrew W. Mellon Fellow Veronica Diaz's research project in painting practice for photographs via Natural Language Processing text analysis, tools, techniques, & methodological qualitative research of over 30 years of records from ConservationSpace database. Contributed to the data visualization of preliminary versions of Freydal Manuscripts pigments and underdrawings materials.
• Attended weekly virtual gallery talks, tours, presentations, brown-bag lunches, coffee hours, inclusion roundtable meetings, town halls, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts colloquium, with curators, various department heads, top-level administrators (including the Director of the Gallery), former interns, museum educators, etc.

She found the internship experience to be most enriching and fulfilling. Read more about her internship experience on her blog https://www.JajandtheDigitalHumanities.com. The NGA Summer 2021 internships can be found on the NGA website.