Kaily Carson, BA 2021

I graduated from Utah State in 2021 with a B.A. in art history and a museum studies certificate. While at Utah State, I had the opportunity to work at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art and professors helped me arrange internships at the Utah State Museum of Anthropology and Minnilusa Historical Association in Rapid City, South Dakota. These hands-on experiences combined with classroom learning and research prepared me to enter the museum field directly after graduation, and I began working as the curator of the National Orphan Train Complex (NOTC) in Concordia, Kansas.

While at NOTC, I managed a collection of roughly 3,000 objects, facilitated the digitization of over 30,000 pages of orphanage records, and developed a traveling exhibition, All Aboard the Orphan Train!, which began touring in 2023 and continues to travel the country. I also presented on a number of topics at various events across the Midwest, including the 2023 Kansas Museum Association conference. In 2024, I left NOTC to pursue a master’s degree in art history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). Through UWM, I secured an internship at SPACES Archive in Sheboygan, Wisconsin and now serve as the teaching assistant at the Emile H. Mathis Gallery. I am currently working on my thesis and accompanying exhibition about the use of American flag in activist art from 1960s to present.