Beautiful grad flowers from friends and family ♥︎

Meet our 2026 Getty Marrow Archives Preservation Summer Intern, Grace Bui-Luu!

Tell us a little about yourself.

Hello! My name is Grace, and I am a recent UCLA graduate in Psychology with minors in Film and Digital Humanities. Born and raised in the Inland Empire area of Southern California, I am a multidisciplinary artist who dabbles in illustration and design. Among other things, I am particularly fond of classic children’s books, anything chocolate-flavored, and the filmography of actor-singer Leslie Cheung.

How did you hear about Visual Communications and what drew you to apply?

I had interned a while back for a documentary film that premiered at VC’s annual film festival (shoutout to Brandon and the rest of the Home Court team!). As a (now informal) student of cinema and media studies, I continue to be in awe of liberatory histories—histories where peoples and stories don’t exist independently of one another but live on as sites of collective resistance and strength. Knowing that this was VC’s bread and butter, I saw it as a space where I would grow the most. As a kid, I was pretty emotionally detached from my Vietnamese American community and the diaspora politics that came with it; it was only recently, through exposure to VC and similar organizations, that I’ve had the privilege of critically understanding and questioning the histories that continue to shape my local communities. From that point on, I knew that entering VC’s archives would allow me to be more conscious of memory work as practiced outside an institutional setting, and from perspectives more deeply anchored in art, activism, and solidarity.

What do you hope to learn from this internship?

More than anything, I hope to learn from the humans—both past and present—who make up the communities around me. I hope to learn how to connect with those humans, how to be curious about those humans, and how to care for those humans proactively. It is a magical thing to engage with a community archive, and to work directly with folks who are already so immersed in the histories and possibilities of their multigenerational communities, because I’m now inheriting a wealth of knowledge that I only hope to share widely with others.

MBTI: INFJ-T

Artists on Repeat: Weyes Blood, Downtown Singapore, SWV

3 Favorite Films: Princess Mononoke (1997), Cure (1997), Ernest & Celestine (2012)

Favorite Place in the World: The movie theater! (Followed by Little Saigon in OC, and the bigger Saigon in the motherland)

What do you like to do in your free time?: I like to doodle, watch older movies on the big screen, collect ephemera with cool packaging designs, get through every Legend of Zelda video game, curate gifts for friends and family, and do nothing and everything with my younger sisters.

Hidden Talent: I can lick my nose!

Hot Take: The best brand of cereal is Raisin Nut Bran.

Restaurant Recommendation: Biriyani Kabob House is a small family-owned spot in Little Bangladesh that has some lamb biriyani to die for, and it usually lasts me several meals!

NEWS

Meet a VC Intern: Grace Bui-Luu