Anthropology Student Yitzack Balmaceda Begins Michigan Museum Association Internship

Thanks to a donation from Henry Matthews and Tim Chester, the Michigan Museum Association (MMA) has been able to establish a paid remote internship this summer and fall. The program combines projects to help build MMA's capacity as well as experiences to help build skills and awareness of the museum community for the intern.

Yitzack Balmaceda, is a fifth year student at Wayne State University, and is currently finishing his bachelors in anthropology and east Asian studies. He intermediately speaks Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese. He grew up in Warren, Michigan and currently lives on Wayne State's Campus in Detroit.

The project this year is helping to make the MI Museum Census data more accessible, contributing to Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Access initiatives, and helping with policy research.

Yitzack is dedicated to social justice and has spent most of his youth and teen years working with different groups to combat inequality. He gained an interest in museums through this dedication, and his appreciation of the cultural arts. He is most excited to learn how to really work with a non-profit especially one whose main goal is not explicitly to combat inequality, but rather to share knowledge.

His favorite museum is the Detroit Historical Museum and says he loves to see the integration of social justice and museum curation with the recent '67 project. He hopes to be able to integrate his understanding of social justice into his future museum work.