Peggy Guggenheim was a glamorous American heiress who spent much of her life traveling throughout Europe, assembling a collection of Cubist, Surrealist and abstract expressionist masterpieces. Joanna Zotti is the cheerful daughter of an actuary and a radiologist from Roseland, N.J., who has spent her last four years at Rutgers University-New Brunswick studying Italian and art history.

Their stories are about to intersect in a surprising, and delightful, way. Zotti, who graduates this May, has been chosen for a prestigious autumn internship at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy. Housed in a gorgeous palazzo on the Grand Canal, the museum is an open-to-the-public treasure displaying the famed collector’s carefully curated legacy, including pieces by De Chirico, Braque, Kandinsky, Picasso and Guggenheim’s husband, Max Ernst.