Chief Curator

Deadline: September 4, 2017

The Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art is the capstone of a planned “arts district” at UC Davis’ new front door alongside Interstate 80. The museum is dedicated to education and serves a primary audience of faculty and students as the lens through which it engages a broader audience. The museum’s program is steeped in the University’s legacy of making, its physical presence in the Central Valley, and its role as a progenitor of conceptual art in California. 

Reporting to the Founding Director, and working closely with the museum’s leadership boards, the Chief Curator will contribute to making the Manetti Shrem Museum a dynamic site for a program of contemporary art that engages different time periods and cultures to investigate issues of broad contemporary relevance.

The incumbent will join an energetic start-up team in defining the purpose, mission and impact of a new museum at a top-ten public research university, which is also the repository of an important art historical legacy.

The Chief Curator will lead the Curatorial & Collections department, and will be responsible for oversight, management and growth of the museum’s collections. (The Fine Arts Collection at UC Davis contains more than 5,000 objects. Founded as a collection of Old Master prints, it is now encyclopedic in scope, including notable holdings of antiquities, works on paper and ceramics central to the history of UC Davis.) The incumbent must possess a progressive vision for curatorial and collections activities, a vision in keeping with the innovative and irreverent history of the university. As a public practice artist, or a curator indebted to collaborative praxis, the Chief Curator will develop and implement interdisciplinary projects.

The museum is an engaged partner in the intellectual work of the campus, involving students, faculty and staff as initiators, partners, and subjects in the research and development of all aspects of its artistic program. The Chief Curator will increase the museum’s integration into the university curriculum and engage more of the campus intellectual assets.

The Chief Curator will represent the establishment of the Manetti Shrem Museum Museum locally at UC Davis and to national and international audiences. 

For more information and to apply, please visit: https://www.employment.ucdavis.edu/applicants/jsp/shared/position/JobDetails_css.jsp

Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, UC Davis
One Shields Avenue, Davis,
CA 95616. USA
https://manettishremmuseum.ucdavis.edu