Category: museums
A curator’s mission: Keep art exhibits at East Harlem’s El Museo del Barrio informative and interest
JOB: Curator for African Art @ Baltimore Museum of Art
Curator for African Art
OVERVIEW
The BMA is seeking a dynamic and innovative Curator and Department Head for African Art to join an 11-member curatorial team in an institution with both an impressive collection of African objects and a strong record of scholarship and major African art exhibitions. Directing the Department for Arts of Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific Islands, the curator will oversee the BMA’s extensive collection of over 2,000 African objects including textiles. The curator reports to the Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs. The Department is supported by a Curatorial Assistant, a part-time Associate Curator for the Arts of Asia, plus work study students, and interns. The Museum supports the engagement of consulting scholars to offer Museum staff expertise in overseeing all the collections that make up this department.
The curator’s first assignment represents a major opportunity, the formulation of plans for a new installation of the African collection, part of a current project for reinstallation of several major collections. This project is collaborative including colleagues in education as well as exhibition design and installation. The objective is to develop new approaches for display and interpretation based on the commitment of delivering memorable and inspiring experiences with works of art to a broad and diverse public.
S/he will work with a dedicated group of collectors, including the support group, The Friends of the Arts of Africa, The Pacific, and the Americas. Through exhibitions, public programs, and publications of scholarly significance, this curator will enhance a long tradition of commitment to the appreciation and study of African Art. S/he will build new and more diverse audiences and help connect the BMA to other arts and academic institutions in Baltimore.
REQUIREMENTS
This position requires an advanced degree with a specialty in African Art, a record of scholarship, and a minimum of 5 years of curatorial experience. The Curator will work collaboratively both inside and outside the institution and known for demonstrating leadership. S/he will have excellent interpersonal and communication skills, including writing and public speaking skills. The candidate will be creative, innovative, and influential. S/he will be skilled in diplomacy, negotiation, planning, and organization.
BENEFITS
The BMA is an equal opportunity employer and a drug free workplace. We offer a competitive salary and a generous benefits package. For this exempt position we offer medical, dental, vision, prescription, pension plan, 403b retirement plan, long term disability, flexible spending account, flexible and condensed scheduling, museum and restaurant discount, and reduced fee gym membership. We also offer 4 weeks of accrued vacation, 9 holidays, 3 personal days, a floating holiday, and 12 sick days.
TO APPLY
Curatorial title and salary will be commensurate with background and level of museum experience. Please send cover letter, resume, record of scholarship, and salary requirements via email to HR@artbma.org with “Curator of African Art-AAAPI Search” in the subject line. No phone calls please.
The application review process will begin on February 13, 2012.
Totem Pole Art Preserves Native American Culture
2011 Annual General Meeting of the Museums Association of the Caribbean
As I mentioned in my post on Thinking About the Country House, there has been a great deal of interest in this subject area over the last two years or so. Present excitement is reflected in television shows like Downton Abbey which portray upstairs/downstairs divides and socio-economic themes of Britain in the early twentieth century. Such is public interest in these elements of country house living, that many houses open to the public feel the need to show their ‘secret’ rooms and dark domestic quarters for a short time each year.
There has also been a flourish of interest in the grander apartments, perhaps to counterbalance the austere or the uncharacteristic calm of the kitchens, pantries and nurseries. Restored pieces of furniture are celebrated and entire rooms have been in receipt of funding in order to return them to a key moment in their history. This sort of activity has eventually led a few British academic institutions to consider the thought processes of country house owners in creating their homes. This has in turn prompted debate on the wider position of the country house, in Britain particularly, through themes of trade, politics and even military presence.
The University of Warwick’s three year project on The East India Company at Home, 1757-1857 is one of these resulting debates. The main purpose of the project is to explore the significance of the country house in an imperial and global context by uniting relevant houses, families, and material culture by means of one detailed study. Funded by the Leverhulme Trust and led by Professor Margot Finn, in the Department of History at Warwick, the project ‘seeks to work in collaboration with family and local historians, curators, academics and other researchers to illuminate Britain’s global material culture from the eighteenth century to the present.’
It has become quite a large undertaking, and so far the project team have amassed a great deal of material to present on their website. Arguably, some of it is rather more general country house reference material, but nonetheless, for anyone interested in British country houses, this is a must-see.
The project has five main objectives:
i) to produce a series of interlinked case studies,
ii) to situate the Asian goods that furnished Georgian and Victorian homes,
iii) to illuminate the ways in which material culture helped to mediate wider historical processes,
iv) to assess the ways in which Asian luxuries incorporated within British country houses expressed regional, national and global identities,
v) and to integrate academic and museum-based research on the global genealogies of British country house interiors.
It does sound very long-winded for anyone outside academic study, or with a general interest. What the website for the project can do, however, is provide a platform for further reading. For example, over the term of the project there will be a series of published studies on individual houses. The first ‘went live’ this week – Swallowfield Park, Berkshire. With separate sections to leaf through, and a full PDF of the case study to download, there is plenty to get into. Crucially, the study is comprehensive enough to include histories of architecture, family, design, and fine art. There are several pages to navigate through, and the illustrations are wonderful! Especially as the house is now owned by Sunley Heritage, a company which converts country houses into luxury apartments.
Clearly there are a lot of minds working on this project, and a lot of thought has gone into making this fully accessible. It may be academic, but this has not made it exclusive or entirely high-brow. I would even suggest that many more academic institutions could take heed of this method of promoting similar research, as it would definitely benefit those hungry to discover more about specialist areas of heritage study.
Links:
East India Company at Home (full link) http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/ghcc/research/eicah/about/
The East India Company today http://www.theeastindiacompany.com/
Swallowfield Park on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swallowfield_Park
Sunley Heritage – Swallowfield Park http://www.sunleyheritage.co.uk/SP_index.cfm
Geffrye Museum, London. The Histories of Home and the Warwick project http://historiesofhomessn.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/the-east-india-company-at-home-1757-1857/
ACRAH 