Director of Education & Interpretation [Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA]

Description

The Fowler Museum at UCLA seeks an experienced, energetic, creative and team-oriented Director of Education and Interpretation who will assume management responsibilities over the education and public program functions of the Museum and will work with curatorial and other senior staff on the development and implementation of interpretive strategies for exhibitions. This position reports to the Director of the Museum and will participate in the Fowler’s senior leadership team and in its next phase of strategic planning and envisioning the future.

Background:

The Fowler Museum at UCLA explores global arts and cultures with an emphasis on works from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the indigenous Americas—past and present. The Fowler enhances understanding and appreciation of the diverse peoples, cultures, and religions of the world through exhibitions, publications, and public programs, informed by interdisciplinary approaches and the perspectives of the cultures represented. The Fowler is known for its dynamic exhibition program and its scholarly publications. The Museum’s mission has expanded in recent years to include a strong focus on contemporary artistic production from the regions of the world the Fowler has long represented, and one of the goals is to show how artistic creativity is flourishing in the postcolonial, transnational contexts in which artists find themselves today.

The Fowler Museum was founded in 1963 to consolidate the multicultural collections on campus and to make them accessible to the University community and to the general public. In the course of its first fifty years, the Fowler Museum has presented more than 290 exhibitions, published 139 scholarly volumes, and has become one of the premier repositories of world arts. Its art and ethnographic collections now include more than 125,000 objects from six continents, and archaeological holdings exceed 600,000 items, offering a comprehensive resource for exhibitions, scholarship, and teaching central to the Museum’s mandate. The Fowler acknowledges the significance of a diverse range of art forms: sculpture; textiles; and painting; popular, commercial, and ephemeral arts; and performance arts.

The 100,000-sq.-ft. Fowler Museum building houses its renowned collections and includes 20,000 sq.-ft. of exhibition space.  Full-time, permanent staff at the Museum numbers 35. Currently, 30 volunteers contribute their time and expertise to a variety of departments, including curatorial, collections (including archaeology), photography, conservation, public events, Museum store, and membership. UCLA students are employed in many of the Museum’s departments, including curatorial, education, collections, programming, security, and administration.

Each year, the Fowler develops four to five large-scale and six to eight small-scale temporary exhibitions. Interdisciplinary, humanities-based research is integral to the Fowler’s mission and exhibitions showcase the most up-to-date scholarship on a geographical area, culture(s), and/or artistic genres as well as the work of emerging and mid-career international artists. The Fowler also has up to 3 traveling exhibitions on view at other museums at any one time.

Among its contemporaries nationwide, the Fowler is highly respected in the museum field and recognized for doing projects with ambitious and original content, innovative thematic approaches, research-based interdisciplinary scholarship, and inventive installation design. The Fowler is a leading academic publisher of single- and multi-authored scholarly volumes.

The Fowler considers the arts to be essential to lifelong learning and the well-being of individuals of all ages. To this end, the Museum has continually sought to serve and involve the diverse Los Angeles community through its public programs and functions as a center for learning about world arts and cultures. Our educational and public outreach programs provide an exceptional opportunity for individuals and families across Southern California to connect with their own heritages and histories.

The Fowler meets a critical need in the Los Angeles community by offering free arts education programs to K-12 public schools whose arts activities have been reduced or eliminated by district and state budget cuts. The Fowler Museum’s K-12 School Visit program serves an average of 7,500 students annually from 135 schools in Los Angeles and its surrounding areas.

The Fowler’s public programs (e.g. performances, symposia, lectures, conversations, family programs, and arts workshops) aim to stimulate curiosity in, and knowledge, and respect for the worlds peoples.  They seek to promote cross-cultural encounter, dialogue, engagement, and pride.

Job Summary Statement:

The Director of Education and Interpretation (DEI) reports to the Museum Director and is a member of  the Museum’s senior management team, contributing  to the development of short and long-range institutional, strategic, intellectual, artistic, and engagement goals for the Museum. The DEI oversees all aspects of exhibition interpretation, public programming, K-12 activities, and community outreach for the Fowler Museum.

As part of the Museum’s Curatorial Committee, the DEI provides leadership, vision, and develops new strategies for exhibition interpretation with a goal of enhancing access to and understanding of exhibitions and collections for diverse audiences. The DEI oversees the development, delivery, and analysis of programmatic offerings that enhance and broaden engagement with the Museum, including programs for the general public, the UCLA community, K-12 students, families and other constituencies.  The DEI is responsible for the development of curricular materials for schools and teachers.  The DEI initiates and maintains relationships with UCLA Faculty, Departments, and Centers to enhance the academic role and integration of the Museum in campus life.  The incumbent will have regular interaction with community leaders, school district personnel, and other stakeholders to further collaboration and partnerships and to ensure that the Museum’s programs meet the needs of the widest range of communities of Los Angeles.

The DEI supervises a Curator of Public Programs and an Education Manager.

Requirements

• At least five years of experience developing interpretive strategies, conceiving didactic materials, and overseeing public programs in a museum setting.
• Proven ability to develop and implement new interpretive strategies in a museum of art and culture.
• Ability to work in an executive team responsible for long and short term strategic planning, policy making, budgetary decisions, and personnel planning.
• Demonstrated Leadership skills and the ability to supervise and provide direction to staff.
• Extensive knowledge of administrative, exhibition, and educational issues facing museums and ability to communicate understanding of those issues to a diversity of academic and non-academic audiences.
• Knowledge of non-western art history, anthropology and educational theory.
• Experience developing engaging public programs for a variety of audiences.
• Skill in developing and managing department budgets.
• Strong interpersonal skills, with attention to consistency, flexibility, clear directions, leadership and dependability.
• Ability to develop and sustain relationships that have fundraising and audience building possibilities.
• Skill at interacting with the media and potential funders with professionalism and confidence.
• Demonstrated ability to work with living artists.
• Demonstrated skill in public speaking.
• Ability to deal with emergency situations vis a vis the public.
• Skill in interacting diplomatically with the public for the purpose of developing closer ties with the museum.
• Ability to establish and maintain cooperative working relationships with other staff members, subordinates, administrators, and volunteers.
• Skill in writing both for academic audiences and for the general public.
• Ability to work in teams with scholars in the development of exhibitions.
• Strong negotiating and leadership skills; exchanging ideas, information and opinions with others to formulate policies and programs and/or arrive jointly at decisions, conclusions, or solutions.
• Ability to train education staff as effective gallery teachers and communicators.
• Ability to develop and write curricular resources for teachers.
• Advanced knowledge of current theories on learning and curriculum development.
• Skill in fostering a stimulating and positive learning environment and demonstration of master teaching skills.
• Knowledge of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.
• Demonstrated expertise in qualitative research studies and disseminating findings to effect positive change on the project or organization.
• Ability to work some nights and weekends.

Additional Information:

UCLA offers full health, welfare, and retirement benefits to its permanent staff members; certain eligibility requirements must be met to qualify for all plans.

All applicants are required to submit an application, a cover letter, a CV, a writing sample, references and salary history through the UCLA Career Opportunity site, accessible from the UCLA Gateway Employment page. Please select “Campus Job Openings” from http://www.ucla.edu/employment.html to submit an application.

The Requisition number for this position is 24106. The application deadline is July 31, 2016.

Continued employment contingent upon completion of satisfactory background investigation.

UCLA is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.