Tag: African American Artists

JOB: Associate Curator, Postwar African American Art @ Getty Research Institute

Associate Curator for Modern and Contemporary Collections, Specializing in Postwar African American Collections

Job Summary

Reporting to the Head of Modern and Contemporary Collections in the Getty Research Institute’s Curatorial Department, develops special collections and general library collections for research on 20th-21st century American art history, working in the context of present GRI collections as well as local holdings and other related collections on American art and artists.  Within modern and contemporary, primary attention will be devoted to developing African American collections.  Requires experience and demonstrated expertise in modern and contemporary history, with particular expertise in African Amerian art history; knowledge of recent research, publications, and exhibitions in both African American and in contemporary art is essential.  Makes recommendations for single works and collections for acquisition: researching, examing, and drafting proposals; similarly, assesses donations and large collections for research value, authenticity, and condition (including proenance); drafts and negotiates contracts and appropriate permissions and licenses; works collegially, and often collaboratively, with curators in the department, archivists, librarians, bibliographers, and other colleagues at the GRI and across the Getty.  Utilizes scholarly background and expertise interpreting the collections in the preparation of exhibitions, publications, lectures, online/digital resources, and public programs.  Brings a network of relationships with artists, galleries, museums, and dealers.  Responds to queries concerning the collections, assists with processing decisions, evaluates items requested for loan by other institutions, and recommends conservation treatments.

Major Job Responsibilities

  • Applies advanced knowledge of art history and art education to complex curatorial assignments
  • Performs complex scholarly research to support the institutional mission
  • Organizes significant exhibitions, major publications, or major acquisitions
  • Cultivates connections nationally and internationally with scholars and museum colleagues
  • Actively participates in acquisitions and collection development
  • Publishes and lectures in area of specialization
  • Assesses conservation needs of the collections; participates in digitization; assesses loan requests
  • Collaborates in and may lead research projects; shares collections and/or serves as a resource to scholars, visitors and staff

Qualifications

  • M.A. or Ph.D. in art history or related area in the humanities
  • 5 years related experience
  • Skilled in all curatorial functions

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

  • Demonstrated ability to build long-term relationships, collaborate and direct teams across disciplines
  • Competent with collection management and digital asset management tools
  • Accomplished in art historical research and writing
  • Ability to communicate and distill information for a specialized audience or the general public
  • Ability to adapt written material for a variety of audiences online or in print
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CFP: “A Way/s From Home: Blackness Across Nations” @ CAA2018

The following session is for the 2018 College Art Association Annual Conference in Los Angeles, February, 21 – 24, 2018. Proposals from ACRAH members most welcome.

A Way/s from Home: Blackness across Nations
Chair(s): Julie L. McGee, University of Delaware, mcgee@udel.edu

In 1964, African American writer and artist Allen Polite, living then in Stockholm, organized “10 American Negro Artist[s] Living and Working in Europe” for Copenhagen’s Den Frie, one of the oldest venues for contemporary art in Denmark. Polite included work by Harvey Cropper, Beauford Delaney, Herbert Gentry, Arthur Hardie, Clifford Jackson, Sam Middleton, Earl Miller, Norma Morgan, Larry Potter, and Walter Williams. Polite’s justification for the grouping was poetic if not opaque: “In short, apart from their distinguishing racial features these exhibitors have only this in common: they are all living in Europe at present. And that is natural enough when one considers the unwritten tradition in art history that makes the artist a wanderer, an observer and digestor [sic] of cultures; a restless soul in search of the images and symbols.” Many black artists took up residence in Europe after WWII to study or to live on a semi-permanent basis. Many found both camaraderie and exhibition opportunities with other African American artists living abroad. To what extent they escaped racial discrimination or exchanged one kind for another is debatable: personal, conceptual, and artistic freedoms and external perceptions of blackness are codependent. Disputes over artistic freedom and both real and hypothetical homefront responsibilities haunt this history and artistic practice. Europe’s inconsistent place within a “freedom narrative” illuminates the complexity of blackness and artistic agency on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. This session encourages presentations that revisit, revise, or otherwise creatively engage the problematic of the “expat.”

Please send 250-word proposals, a completed session participation proposal form, and a short academic CV to Julie McGee mcgee@udel.edu by 14 August 2017.

Please consult the guidelines at the end of the CAA Call for Participation (http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/call-for-participation.pdf) for further details.

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