« Back to all jobs Director of Collections
- Employer: Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY
Description:
The Museum of the City of New York seeks an experienced and visionary leader to strategize and
implement long-term goals and manage daily operations of the Museum’s Collections Department.
The Director of Collections will have the responsibility for overseeing a diverse collection with
respect to accessibility, stewardship, and strategic planning, and for shaping a department to
implement those goals. This person will lead by example on issues of diversity, equity,
accessibility and inclusion and will align the Department’s strategy with the Museum’s
commitment to fostering understanding of the manifold diversity of New York City.
Responsibilities:
The Director of Collections has primary oversight of areas of museum registration, object installation, contracts, exhibition coordination and implementation, and collections care and digitization. The Director will oversee collection management of all works in the MCNY collection, and on loan, including safe handling, care, conservation, accurate record keeping, accessioning, cataloging, insurance, storage, providing access, deaccessions, and coordinating loans to other institutions. The Director will also oversee exhibition installation coordination, including the safe packing and shipping of art works, installations practices, negotiating contracts, customs, and the management of traveling exhibitions.
Reporting to the Chief Curator, the Director of Collections will be a member of the MCNY senior leadership team, planning our strategic priorities and implementing programs in the context of overall institutional objectives. As a Department Head, the Director will have responsibility for the management, direction, long-range planning, projects, operations, and budget of a department including conservators, registrars, art handlers, and administrative professionals—together they have strengths in collections stewardship, description and access, collections digitization, exhibitions installation, rights and reproductions, incoming and outgoing object loans, management of satellite collections facility, oversight of institutional archives and records retention, and marketing and securing traveling exhibition venues both nationally and internationally.
Additional responsibilities include:
- Direct the intellectual and physical oversight of an approximately 750,000 object
collection stored in two separate locations according to best practices. - Identify and prioritize projects consistent with institutional priorities and newly adopted strategic plan that further collections stewardship and access; seek out appropriate funding opportunities for said projects; and author grant applications in conjunction with other Museum staff, including the development of budget, work plan, and schedule of completion; administer project work plans and project budgets; and provide materials for report to funding agency.
- Support the Manager of Collections Licensing and Digital Assets in the longstanding digitization project and collections Rights and Reproductions, including interdepartmental requests for digitization services, such as photography and printing for exhibition and retail.
- Provide oversight for ongoing collections assessments, following and updating Board-approved collecting plans in each collecting area.
- In conjunction with Collections department staff, develop and maintain a number of operational documents, including but not limited to: emergency response procedures, cataloging manual, accessions and deaccessions forms, outgoing and incoming loan contracts, collections insurance documents, and digital asset preservation modules.
- Support the use of Museum collections in exhibitions programming; oversee installation and deinstallation processes and surrounding activities such as loans and conservation.
- Oversee traveling exhibitions program and staff who research venues, track contacts and correspondence, develop prospectus packages, and negotiate contracts.
- Oversee the continued development of an Institutional Archives Program.
- Work closely and in cooperation with the President and Director, Chief Curator, CFO, and COO in planning, organizing and controlling collections budgets, including a number of restricted short-term projects.
- Working under the direction of the Museum’s President and Director and the Chief Curator, serve as staff liaison to the Collections and Storage Committees of the Board of Trustees, including coordination and preparation of reports, documentation, and presentations; represent the Collections Department at selected Executive Committee and Board of Trustee meetings.
- Support the Manager of Collections Licensing and Digital Assets in overseeing the collections management system and online Collections Portal software, and manage vendor relationships.
- Hire, train, and onboard new staff.
- Additional duties as assigned.
