Curatorial Fellow in Photography, supported by The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation

Duration: 2 years
Hours/FTE: 36 hours per week
Salary: £27,000 per annum
Division: Collections Division
Location: South Kensington
Benefits: Group Personal Pension, Life Assurance Scheme, and other great benefits

The V&A is the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance. The V&A’s Collections Division comprises six curatorial, research, and conservation and collections care & access teams. The curatorial departments are arranged as Decorative Art and Sculpture; Performance, Furniture, Textiles & Fashion; Art, Architecture, Photography & Design; and Asia. The staff in these teams are at the heart of the founding purpose of the museum: to care for, research and develop the collections, to exhibit them to the public, to make them available for study and research, and to broaden access to the collections.

This is an externally funded Curatorial Fellowship sitting in the Photography Section of the Art, Architecture, Photography and Design (AAPD) department.

The purpose of the Curatorial Fellowship is to further develop expertise in the history of photography by researching the collections of the V&A, while gaining vital curatorial experience working in a museum. The Curatorial Fellow will divide their time between key curatorial duties (including cataloguing, collections care, display, exhibition and publication preparation and researching potential acquisitions) and pursuing an independent research project based on the V&A’s photography collection, which will culminate in a tangible output such as a conference, publication and/or web project.

The research project will be based on the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) Collection, which was transferred to the V&A in 2017, and may relate to portraiture, colour photography or photographic processes, all areas of interest to the American photographer Bern Schwartz and The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation. The topic and scope of the project will be agreed at the start of the Curatorial Fellowship, depending on the Fellow’s expertise and the priorities of the Photography Section.

To apply, please submit your application online by 13 June 2022.

To apply please visit the website of Victoria and Albert museum.