Photography by Fullness of Joy
At a time when you can rent a movie, order groceries, learn a new language, converse with friends, argue with strangers, work a 9–5, and access the entirety of human knowledge from home, there’s not much of a reason to leave the house. And yet that’s exactly why Americans today want to.
“With social media, the loneliness epidemic, and a lot of really challenging, troubling things going on in the world, museums are a place where people can gather, where it’s educational, where it’s enriching,” says Marisa Espe, director of communications for the Albany Institute of History & Art. “People can go into the galleries and be inspired, commune with the art, and spend time with each other. We find that our volunteers really want to help support the museum because they want to facilitate meaningful interactions like that.”
Volunteers help out in basically every department at the Albany Institute and are essential to the Bestie-winning art museum’s everyday operations. Library volunteers help scan and catalog the collection’s one million (!) documents. Development volunteers help with major mailings, as well as at special events hosted by the museum. Volunteer docents help facilitate tours for school groups and guide educational experiences in the galleries—like a recent activity that invited museumgoers to make their own postcards inspired by the Institute’s collection of Hudson River School paintings. And Espe herself oversees what she affectionately calls the “flyer brigade”—volunteers that help disseminate flyers for different Institute events in schools, libraries, community centers, and cafés around the Capital Region.
In short, volunteers help make the Albany Institute—New York State’s oldest museum and one of the oldest museums in the country—what it is. To get started, fill out the application on the volunteer page of albanyinstitute.org, email info@albanyinstitute.org, or call 518.463.4478.
