« Back to all jobs Curator of Collections and Exhibitions
- Employer: The Baltimore Museum of Industry, Baltimore, MD
- Salary: $60,000-$70,000 per year
- Posting Closes: December 31, 2021
Description:
The Baltimore Museum of Industry seeks an inventive and resourceful person to fill the role of Curator of Collections & Exhibitions. As a member of the museum’s senior management team, the Curator serves as the head of the Collections and Exhibitions department and leads the effort to build, care for, and preserve the museum’s collections and oversees the museum’s exhibitions program. The ideal candidate will enjoy working cooperatively with colleagues and members of the public. The BMI expects the Curator to stretch the boundaries of traditional museum interpretation and pioneer new ways of using the museum’s extensive collections to tell compelling and timely stories of Maryland industry.
Key Responsibilities:
- Exhibitions: Recommend and implement long-range exhibition plans that further institutional goals and expand the public’s understanding of Maryland’s industrial history and the role of workers; curate or co-curate annual temporary exhibitions and other exhibition projects; oversee exhibition development process including identifying and engaging designers, fabricators, and other contractors, and managing exhibition budgets and schedules; develop and maintain exhibition calendar
- Interpretation: Working with the Executive Director, the Director of Interpretation, and other
colleagues devise new interpretative and design strategies for the museum’s permanent and temporary exhibition galleries to improve the visitor experience; actively contribute to rethinking presentations and understandings of the Museum’s collections to incorporate community voices and perspectives - Collections: Oversee the documentation, care, preservation, presentation, storage, and exhibition of the museum’s collections of objects, archival documents, photographs, and library materials; develop and oversee collections management policies and departmental procedures relating to acquisition and care of the museum’s collections; develop strategies for overall collections growth; evaluate new gift offers and incoming and outgoing loan requests in coordination with the Board Collections Committee; use the collections to proactively investigate enduring questions through exhibitions, programs, and digital initiatives
- Collaboration: Practice collaboration, working closely with the Director of Interpretation and other museum colleagues to ensure that the exhibition program supports the museum’s strategic objectives and responds to audience needs; in tandem with Director of Interpretation, initiate, develop, and collaborate to deliver front end, formative, and summative evaluation of exhibitions and projects for and with the public on a regular basis to better understand and address community interests and goals
- Communities: Engage community partners in the exhibition development process and project a strong voice in shaping and communicating the direction of the Museum as an open, welcoming, invested, and active community partner; ensure that community voices are heard and included, not just in a single exhibition, scholarly project, or program, but as part of sustained collaborations
- Scholarship: Make regular contributions to, and keep abreast of current scholarship and museum practices; publish articles and essays in relevant outlets; represent the museum at conferences and with the media, serving as an advocate for the museum’s collections and the stories they tell
- Resource Development: Collaborate with Development department staff on creation of grant
proposals to support the work of the Collections department, preservation of the collections, and the development of exhibitions; serve as project lead for collections- and exhibitions-related grant funded activities; cultivate and steward relationships with individuals and organizations that donate original materials to the museum’s collections - Leadership: Supervise and mentor staff and volunteers in the Collections department, including the Collections Manager, Archives & Library Manager, volunteers, and interns; administer the volunteer and internship program for the department Administration: Create and administer department budget; prepare and submit monthly and annual statistical and narrative reports, noting both quantitative and qualitative milestones and progress toward goals; serve as staff lead for the board level Collections Committee, working with committee members to establish and update collecting policies and to seek and evaluate donation offers for the collections
