Returning Intern: Brown Payne

Image of Brown Payne standing in front of a bronze statue

Meet Brown Payne, one of our amazing returning interns on staff at the Van Every/Smith Galleries!

Brown is a Junior at Davidson College from Nashville, Tennessee. Brown is currently studying Art History, and studied abroad in Vienna, Austria this past semester and Amman, Jordan over the summer. 

Learn more about Brown:

While you were abroad, did you see a certain piece of art or museum exhibition that inspired you? Why?

“I saw a show about Austrian avant-garde art while I was abroad, which included works by two of my favorite artists, Maria Lassnig and Günter Brus; I had studied them before in school and was super interested in their representations of the body and sexuality.”

Is there anything from your abroad experience that you would like to apply to your time at the art galleries this semester?

“I took a class about Museums and Public History which dealt a lot with problems in museums and art galleries such as difficult objects, so I am excited to look at our own collection with a more critical view.”

What are you most excited to do this semester in the art gallery (or in art in general)?

“I am doing an independent study about the art and pedagogy of Black Mountain College, so I am excited to do research for that and visit the site of Black Mountain College near Asheville.”

Feel free to come chat with Brown or any of our other interns Monday-Friday from 10-5pm and Saturday-Sunday from 12-4pm.