From May through August of 2000, I served for the New Orleans Museum of Art in New Orleans, Louisiana, as an intern. The institution provides a variety of museum experiences for both locals and tourists, and counted as one of the South's premier art museums. The Museum, however, has numerous issues and challenges. Although the institution is continuously expanding, the next decade will be a test for the Museum's staff members regarding management, programming, and competition. The following report provides overview of the Museum's mission, history, collections, as well as its organizational structure. I explain my internship in terms of tasks assigned, justifying my contribution to the institution.

The internship program at the New Orleans Museum of Art provides graduate and undergraduate students from universities and colleges with on-site training in various museum responsibilities under the guidance and training of a senior level staff member. Internships are available in the administration, curatorial, development or educational departments of the Museum. I chose the public relations department for my internship because public relations is an art organization's essential contact with its public through communications that are not entirely based on publicity, and as such I wanted to learn more about the operation of the department. Because public relations work requires some skill and confidence in writing (Rudman 9), I believed that I was qualified to assist in writing assignments with an undergraduate degree in English.

This paper demonstrates the overall success of bringing non-traditional audiences to a New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) exhibition, "Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present." It also highlights the success of some of its public programs. However, the process of attracting these audiences to the museum falls short in its attempts at developing long-term relationships with NOMA. The first chapter provides historical background on NOMA and offers an overview of the "Passionate Visions" project. Chapter Two describes, in relative detail, the project's community outreach component and implementation of its public programs. It closes with an analysis of short range and long term impacts. The final chapter further analyzes the project experience, inclusive of the management style of the project director, issues surrounding conflict of interest and ethics, and the degree of NOMA's commitment, or lack thereof, to long-term non-traditional audience inclusiveness.