Student Ambassadors Program Overview

We know that the art and educational fields have been ravaged since the start of COVID-19. Especially daunting is the situation for art history students looking to get practical experience or find a job. For this reason The Art Story has launched a Student Ambassador Program, aimed at providing students, at any stage in their course, with the opportunity to develop their written and marketing expertise, learn more about their favorite artists and art movements, gain CV points, and acquire new skills.

The program, which runs for a period of two months, has two strands to it: writing and marketing. Ambassadors will produce three blog posts spread across the two months, along with weekly posts on Instagram and on other social media platforms to promote their work. The Art Story team will provide editing and content feedback, marketing skill building, as well as technical support.

Regular check ins, by WhatsApp and email, will take place to answer questions. Towards the end of the period, Ambassadors will also be invited to participate in a workshop, covering basic content-producing, marketing, and review-writing skills. There is also the extended opportunity for ambassadors to be taken on as regular contributors to The Art Story.

See the results: Student Ambassador articles and blog posts. Student Ambassador social media marketing efforts on Instagram.

The Art Story Audience Development Team

The Student Ambassador program is organized and run by a small team of experienced art historians, editors, and marketers. Our goal is to share The Art Story’s resources to new student audiences, and we are excited to be part of this growing and impactful program.

	Michael Zurakhinsky - Founder and President Michael Zurakhinsky has an education in computer science and business, but for the last 12 years has been building The Art Story. He has been at the center of organizing hundreds of contributors and senior writers that compiled the world's biggest resource on the history of art. Now, as so much content has been covered by The Art Story in an encyclopedic manner, he is excited to turn more focus on attracting a wider audience to the arts, using the main resource as the foundation for further art appreciation efforts. He loves working with young and ambitious people and is excited to organize this program.
	Anna McNay – Student Ambassador Program Lead Anna McNay is an art writer, editor, and curator, who contributes regularly to a variety of print and online art and photography journals and newspapers, writes catalog essays, and hosts panels and in conversation events at galleries, art schools and online. McNay is a member of AICA (International Association of Art Critics) and holds an MA in History of Art from Birkbeck, University of London. She originally worked in academia as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow in Linguistics at the Humboldt University in Berlin and a Heath Harrison Teaching Fellow at the University of Oxford. Making material accessible to students is therefore close to her heart, and this is what brought her to The Art Story, to help share its clear and insightful offerings. The Student Ambassador Program unites her passions for writing and teaching, while also allowing her inner pedant to come out and add or remove commas ad infinitum.
	Valerie Hellstein – Senior Writer and Content Editor Valerie Hellstein is an independent scholar, educator, and editor. She has been a Senior Writer at The Art Story since 2017 and has published dozens of articles accross the web resource. Valerie also teaches university and adult education courses, and also works at the Denver Art Museum as the Publications and Programs Coordinator for the Petrie Institute of Western American Art. She received her PhD from Stony Brook University in 2010 and is currently at work on a book about Abstract Expressionism, The Club, and the Cold War.

Our Cohorts:

Cohort 1 – July and August 2020 – University of Nottingham

Cohort 2 – August and September 2020

Cohort 3 – October and November 2020

For more information about the program or to apply, please email: info@theartstory.org

More about The Art Story:

The Art Story ( TheArtStory.org) is an educational, not-for-profit centered around the website (www.TheArtStory.org) that is available free, worldwide on any online device. Beyond Warhol and Picasso, any reader can explore the life and works of the Impressionists, the idea of Renaissance Humanism, poet Charles Baudelaire’s contributions to visual art, and fascinating art periods such as the Harlem Renaissance or the Vienna Secession. Thousands of topics are professionally written and curated, and fully focused on art history. We continue to grow and hope you enjoy our hard work.