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Author: Jennifer E. Sheppard (Page 3 of 5)

Weekly Jobs Round-Up

Welcome to the start of another week! Here are the latest job postings from around the country. Happy hunting!

Northeast

Director of Advancement / Concord Museum (Concord, MA)
Development Director / Fairfield Museum (Fairfield, CT)
Assistant/Associate Curator of Collections, Davis Museum / Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA)
Executive Director / Canterbury Shaker Village (Canterbury, NH)
Corporate Relations and Foundations Manager / Wadsworth Atheneum Musuem of Art (Hartford, CT)
Development Database Specialist / Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford, CT)
Lead Horticulturalist / Museum of Science (Boston, MA)
EiE Systems Analyst / Museum of Science (Boston, MA)
Stewardship Specialist / Museum of Science (Boston, MA)
Senior Curriculum Developer, Engineering is Elementary / Museum of Science (Boston, MA)
Professional Development Manager / Museum of Science (Boston, MA)
Membership Communications Officer / Museum of Science (Boston, MA)
Program Presenter, Staffed Exhibit Spaces / Museum of Science (Boston, MA)
Teaching Artists – Workshops Winter/Spring 2020 / Fuller Craft Museum (Brockton, MA)
Staff Assistant, Digital Imaging and Visual Resources (DIVR) / Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA)
Staff Assistant, Digital Infrastructure and Emerging Technology (DIET) / Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA)
Educational Programs Intern (Paid or Course Credited) / The Mary Baker Eddy Library (Boston, MA)
Retail Product Designer / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, MA)
Projectionist/Media Technical Specialist / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, MA)
Manager and Assistant Programmer of Film and Video / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, MA)
Salem Tour Guide / The Histrionic Academy (Salem, MA)

Mid-Atlantic

Director of Development / Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, VA)
Associate Curator of 18th and 19th Century European Painting and Sculpture / Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA)
Director of Marketing / Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY)
Art Center Educator / Burchfield Penney Art Center (Buffalo, NY)
Education Programs Manager / The American Civil War Museum (Richmond, VA)
Curatorial Research Associate / Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY)
Vice President, Education and Engagement / Museum of the City of New York (New York, NY)
Senior Coordinator, Donor Relations / American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY)
Postdoctoral Research Associate – 18th 19th c American British Art, Architecture, Landscape / National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (Washington, D.C.)
Manager of Education and Engagement / Old Dominion University (Norfolk, VA)
Museum Educator / The Capital Jewish Museum (Washington, D.C.)
Associate Director, Collections and Research Services (Chief Curator) / The New York Public Library (New York, NY)
Curator of Italian and Spanish Paintings / National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.)
Curator of Jewish Culture/Judaica / The Jewish Museum (New York, NY)
Marketing and Communications Manager / American Alliance of Museums (Arlington, VA)
Director, Sales and Advertising / American Alliance of Museums (Arlington, VA)
Registrar / Princeton University Art Museum (Princeton, NJ)
Paper Conservator (term) / Princeton University Library (Princeton, NJ)
Early Childhood Educator, Children and Family Learning / American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY)
Education Manager / The Museum of the City of New York (New York, NY)
Education Assistant – Professional Learning (F/T) / The Museum of the City of New York (New York, NY)

Southeast

Finance Director / Orlando Museum of Art (Orlando, FL)
Chief Museum Registrar / Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU (Miami, FL)
Museum Assistant Registrar / Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU (Miami, FL)
Curator of American Painting / Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art (Winter Park, FL)
Membership Manager / Sarasota Art Museum – Ringling College of Art + Design (Sarasota, FL)
Museum Manager / The Early Works Family of Museums (Huntsville, AL)

Midwest

Education Associate / Nebraska History Museum (Lincoln, NE)
Communications Director / Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, OH)
Development Director, Membership / The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO)
Director of Exhibitions / Missouri Historical Society (St. Louis, MO)
President and CEO / Terra Foundation for American Art (Chicago, IL)
Assistant Educator / Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum (St. Louis, MO)
Director and Curator of Exhibitions and University Collections / DePauw University (Greencastle, IN)
Jim Crow Museum Education Coordinator (Temporary, Full-Time) / Ferris State University (Big Rapids, MI)
Curator of Academic Programs / Sheldon Museum of Art (Lincoln, NE)

South Central

Public Historian / The Alamo (San Antonio, TX)
President and CEO / Oklahoma City Museum of Art (Oklahoma City, OK)
Director of Education / Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX)
Exhibition and Program Manager / Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University (Houston, TX)

West

Development Assistant / Millicent Rogers Museum (Taos, NM)
Museum without Walls Collection Strategist / Los Altos History Museum (Los Altos, CA)
President and CEO / The Amerind Foundation (Dragoon, AZ)
Executive Director / Pratt Museum (Homer, AK)
Head of Publications / Asian Art Museum (San Francisco, CA)
Senior Manager of Membership and Visitor Experience / Bay Area Discovery Museum (Sausalito, CA)
Education and Engagement Manager / Whatcom Museum (Bellingham, WA)
Associate Registrar / Santa Barbara Museum of Art (Santa Barbara, CA)
Director of Philanthropy / The High Desert Museum (Bend, OR)
Executive Director / New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe, NM)
Curator of Education and Interpretation / Museum of Glass (Tacoma, WA)
Curator-At-Large / Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art (Davis, CA)
Curator of Contemporary Art / Santa Barbara Musuem of Art (Santa Barbara, CA)
Managing Director of Education / The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (Los Angeles, CA)

Internship Posting at the Harvard Art Museums

From the Harvard Art Museums
32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Fall 2019 Registrar’s Office Internship
Collections Management, Harvard Art Museums

The Harvard Art Museums’ Department of Collections Management is accepting applications for an Intern to assist with a variety of projects in the Registrar’s Office.

About the Harvard Art Museums:

The Harvard Art Museums, ranked among the world’s leading art institutions, is comprised of three museums (Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler) and four research centers (Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art, the Harvard Art Museums Archives, and the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis). The museums have played a leading role in the development of art history, conservation, and conservation science, and in the evolution of the art museum as an institution. Through research, teaching, professional training, and public education, the museums strive to advance the understanding and appreciation of art. Integral to Harvard University and the wider community, the museums and research centers serve as resources for students, scholars, and the public.

Description:

This internship will provide an introduction to the practical aspect of managing fine art collections in a major museum and introduce the successful candidate to the museums’ cataloguing and temporary loan processes. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to:

  • Work alongside Registrars for the Collection – Katie Press and Karoline Mansur – to assist with the management, archiving and possible digitization of collections management records.
  • Work closely with the Registrars to archive temporary loan records, re-house original museum documents for safer access, and assist with other ongoing projects as needed.
  • Gain experience tracking museum objects through research into original collection files and the electronic collection database The Museums System (TMS).
  • Please note that this internship is unpaid.

Term:

  • September – December 2019 with flexible start and end dates.
  • 8-16 hours (1-2 full days) a week between 9am – 5pm (Mon., Thurs and Friday are preferred)

Location:

This internship would take place at our Somerville Research Facility, 200 Inner Belt Rd., Somerville, MA. There is free parking onsite as well as a complimentary shuttle that leaves from the Museums in Cambridge every hour. More details are available here.

Qualifications:

  • The student must receive credit for this internship in order to be eligible.
  • The internship is open to graduate or undergraduate students.
  • Comfortable working in Excel, Word, and with data entry. Training in TMS will be provided.
  • A willingness to learn, ask questions, and accept feedback is essential.

How to Apply:

Please forward a letter of interest and resume to Claire Burns, Collections Management Coordinator at claire_burns@harvard.edu

Application Deadline: August 27, 2019

Weekly Jobs Round-Up

We’ve got a long list for you today – here are the job listings from the last week and a half. Happy hunting!

Northeast:

Senior Manager, Board Relations and Artistic Planning / Handel and Haydn Society (Boston, MA)
Sanctuary Director: Nantucket Sanctuaries / Mass Audobon (Lincoln, MA)
Human Resources Business Partner, Hiring and Compensation / The Trustees of Reservations (Boston, MA)
Leadership & Planned Giving Coordinator / Museum of Science (Boston, MA)
Brain Building Together (BBT) Explorer / Discovery Museum (Acton, MA)
Director of Education & Volunteer Programs / Zoo New England (Boston, MA)
Adult Learning Fellow / The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA)
Education Associate I, Live Presentations / Museum of Science (Boston, MA)
Teaching Artists – Workshops Winter/Spring 2020 / Fuller Craft Museum (Brockton, MA)
Education Associate / Old South Meeting House (Boston, MA)
Civics Education and Visitor Experience Internship / Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate (Boston, MA)
Development Assistant II / Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, MA)
Program Coordinator / Hancock Shaker Village (Pittsfield, MA)
Program Officer: Community Initiative / Mass Cultural Council (Boston, MA)
Educator / Old North Church & Historic Site (Boston, MA)
Old North (Clough House) Costumed Educators / Old North Church & Historic Site (Boston, MA)
Executive Director / Bennington Museum (Bennington, VT)
Director of Collections / Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA)
Kemper Assistant/Associate Curator of Academic Affairs and Exhibitions / Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA)

Mid-Atlantic:

Curator / US Navy Memorial Visitor Center (Washington D.C.)
Museum Exhibit Technician / Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, D.C.)
Marketing and Public Relations Director / Biggs Museum of American Art (Dover, DE)
Collections Database Administrator / Penn Museum: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Philadelphia, PA)
Development Officer for Education Programs / The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY)
Senior Managing Editor for Public Programs and Creative Practive / The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY)
Associate Curator (Programs) / Rutgers University – Express Newark (Newark, NJ)
Development Associate, Corporate Relations / American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY)
Kress Interpretive Fellowship / Smithsonian Art Museum (Washington, D.C.)
Vice President, Education and Engagement / Museum of the City of New York (New York, NY)
Associate Curator of Media Arts / Museum of the Moving Image (New York, NY)
Community Engagement Coordinator / Senator John Heinz History Center (Pittsburgh, PA)
Associate Registrar / Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY)
Deputy Director and Gail Engelberg Director of Education and Public Engagement / Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum & Foundation (New York, NY)
Curator of Jewish Culture/Judaica / The Jewish Museum (New York, NY)

South:

Development Director / The Fort Smith Regional Art Museum (Fort Smith, AR)
Membership Manager / Sarasota Art Museum – Ringling College of Art + Design (Sarasota, FL)
History Museum Curator / City of El Paso, El Paso Museum of History (El Paso, TX)
Museum Membership & Outreach Coordinator / City of El Paso, El Paso Museum of History (El Paso, TX)
Chickasaw Heritage Center Museum Director / The Chickasaw Nation (Tupelo, MS)
Collections Manager / The Hermitage (Hermitage, TN)
Exhibit Manager / The Corpus Christi Museum (Corpus Christi, TX)
Director / North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (Raleigh, NC)
Deputy Director of Operations / George Mason’s Gunston Hall (Mason Neck, VA)
Curator / College of Visual Arts and Design: University of North Texas (Denton, TX)
Director of Education and Outreach / The Bryan Museum (Galveston, TX)
Director of Development / Nauticus Foundation (Norfolk, VA)
The Nancy and Tim Hanley Associate Curator of Contemporary Art / Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, TX)
The Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art / Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, TX)
President & CEO / Exploration Place, Inc. (Wichita, KS)
Exhibits Researcher / Space Center Houston (Houston, TX)
Assistant Curator / Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas (Pine Bluff, AR)
Director of Development / Hermitage Museum & Gardens (Norfolk, VA)

Midwest:

President & CEO / DuPage Children’s Museum (DCM) (Naperville, IL)
Museum Manager / 21c Museum Hotel (Chicago, IL)
Preparation and Security Assistant / Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum (St. Louis, MO)
Exhibit Developer / Indianapolis Children’s Museum (Indianapolis, IN)
Director of Marketing & Communications / United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum (Colorado Springs, CO)
Director of Guest Services / United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum (Colorado Springs, CO)
Director of Content Strategy / Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, IL)
Membership Representative / Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum (Cleveland, OH)
Director, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland, OH)
Assistant Curator of Public Programs and Engagement / Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis, MS)
Paper Care Specialist / Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, MI)
Facilities Manager, History Center / Minnesota Historical Society (MN)
Senior Curator / Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, IL)
President, Director, and CEO / Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, OH)
President and CEO / Terra Foundation for American Art (Chicago, IL)
Archivist / Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum (Colorado Springs, CO)

West:

Executive Director / New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe, NM)
Programming and Outreach Assistant / Zócalo Public Square (Los Angeles, CA)
Database Manager, Senior / Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona (Tucson, Arizona)
Exhibit Project Manager / California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco, CA)
Development Director / National Hot Rod Association (Glendora, CA)
Asian Art Curatorial Research Fellow / Santa Barbara Museum of Art (Santa Barbara, CA)
Museum Educator / IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe, NM)
Associate Director of Visitor Experience / Oakland Museum of California (Oakland, CA)
Manager of Family Engagement / Oakland Museum of California (Oakland, CA)
Associate Registrar or Registrar / Santa Barbara Museum of Art (Santa Barbara, CA)
Director of Philanthropy / The High Desert Museum (Bend, OR)
Ahmanson Curator of Native American History and Culture / Autry Museum of the American West (Los Angeles, CA)
Curator of Western History / Autry Museum of the American West (Los Angeles, CA)
Associate Editor / Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (San Francisco, CA)
Executive Director / San Bernardino County Museum Association (Redlands, CA)

What is a museum – and what goes in it?

As students and museum professionals, we are constantly revisiting the question of, “What is a museum?” We ask it of ourselves and of the visitors we serve – a quick search on Youtube, for example, yields such entertaining videos as What is a Museum? from The Brain Scoop and Ask the Kids: What is a Museum? from The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.

I gathered a few more answers to the question this week as I taught summer camp at the Dallas Museum of Art. Titled The Museum of ME!, this camp introduced children ages 6-8 to different museum jobs and how exhibitions are created (thanks for the inspiration, Tufts course on Exhibition Planning!). By the end of the week, campers took on the roles of curator, designer, conservator, registrar, preparator, and educator as they developed and fabricated their own mini museums.

To start us off right, our very first activity was a big camp brainstorm to come up with a collective understanding of, “What is a museum?” Each camper and teacher drew a picture of something they believed “goes” in a museum, which we then taped to a big butcher paper drawing of an imaginary museum. You can see some of the responses below – each is a tiny representation of our museum interests and priorities. A few might even make you laugh.

Unsurprisingly, my contribution was… summer camp!

What might you add to our museum? What is a museum to you?

Moves Toward Transformative Climate Change at the MFA

Transformation creates opportunities and problems that call for collective interpretation: What are we about? Who are we? What is important? What are our priorities?

(Eckel & Kezar, 2003a)

In May of 2019, a story of racist behavior directed at students of color at the MFA Boston broke on news sites across the internet. Seventh graders from Helen Y. Davis Leadership Academy, a charter middle school in Dorchester, MA, reported being targeted by racist speech from MFA staff and visitors and racial profiling by security. In the weeks since, the MFA has conducted investigations into the events, banned the visitors who made racist comments, opened discourse between museum and Davis Academy leadership, and organized community roundtables to begin the healing process.

Toward a More Inclusive MFA details the MFA’s responses to the Davis Academy visit and updates regarding MFA efforts regarding inclusion in the institution at large. Such transformation takes time and needs certain elements to foster change among individuals and at the institutional level. The five elements needed for transformative climate change as identified by Eckel & Kezar (2003b) are senior administrative support, collaborative leadership, flexible vision, faculty/staff development, and visible action. How have MFA efforts aligned with these five elements?

1. Senior Administrative Support

MFA leadership has been involved in these efforts from the beginning. Matthew Teitelbaum, director of the MFA, has been quoted often in stories from news sites. Museum-issued statements have come jointly from the chiefs of each department at the MFA. Makeeba McCreary, Chief of Learning and Community Engagement at the MFA, reached out to Davis Academy leadership herself to start the reparative process and has organized a series of roundtables on inclusion and race among educational and non-profit leaders in the Boston area.

2. Collaborative Leadership

As all information regarding this process is coming from MFA leadership, it appears that all of these measures are mandated by MFA leadership. Whether staff at different levels have had or will have input into the process is unknown. However, MFA leadership has openly collaborated with the community on this issue. They have been engaged with Davis Academy leadership since the incident and have opened discourse with community members regarding inclusion and racial equity.

3. Flexible Vision

Because museums serve the public at large, it behooves them to leave the specifics of “who for” and “how” open-ended. This way, museums can (theoretically) respond to trends with greater agility. The MFA does not have a clearly defined vision statement; instead, the mission is supplemented with statements in the MFA 2020 strategic plan and inclusion statements in Toward a More Inclusive MFA. In this time of action, MFA leadership should consider revisiting the mission. It was written in 1991 and, while flexible, it is old and places primary emphasis on caring for the collection. The idea is not to bring the focus so far away from collections, as Chet Orloff warns against in “Should Museums Change Our Mission and Become Agencies of Social Justice?” (Orloff, 2017); rather, it is to explicitly express that visitors are as valued as the objects within the museum’s walls.

4. Faculty/Staff Development

Among the first measures announced by the MFA were staff trainings on conflict resolution and unconscious bias. Trainings were scheduled for June and July and some have already been completed. Similar volunteer trainings are being scheduled, but the timeline there is unknown. Information on follow-up sessions is unavailable, but the MFA has also noted that they contracted external consultants to “expedite and evolve” ongoing training in which all staff is required to participate. (“Toward a More Inclusive MFA,” 2019)

Before the Davis Academy visit, the MFA had already been working toward diversifying its staff through new recruitment methods, including adding paid teen internships and mentorship programs. Further steps toward enabling individuals from diverse backgrounds to earn a meaningful, sustainable living at the MFA include raising wages, adding full-time entry-level positions (and therefore benefits), and changing the requirements of and language in job descriptions. The Design Museum Foundation offers an excellent example of inclusive language in a job posting:

We know there are great candidates who may not fit into what we’ve described above, or who have skills we haven’t thought of. If that’s you, don’t hesitate to apply and tell us about yourself. We are committed to diversity and building an inclusive environment for people of all backgrounds and ages. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities.

(“Marketing Manager – Foundation,” n.d.)

5. Visible Action

Towards a More Inclusive MFA is updated weekly with notes on completed trainings, results from investigations, and responses to news stories. People can also subscribe to the MFA email list to receive notice of updates as they happen. Some change can already be seen and heard in the museum more staff has been added to the galleries and school groups entrance. They have also changed the greeting used for school groups to be more welcoming and to avoid confusion with hurtful speech.

It goes without saying that the road toward healing and toward a more inclusive MFA will be long and challenging. The efforts so far are promising in terms of meeting the recommended elements for transformative climate change, though there is always room for improvement.

What are your thoughts on the matter?


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