Deputy Director

The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Fitzwilliam Museum is reinventing itself.  As the principal museum of the University of Cambridge and one of the largest cultural venues in the region, the Fitzwilliam aims to be a crucial bridge between the University, the city and the rest of the world, with an international reputation for extraordinary research, world class exhibitions, sector-leading public engagement and over half a million artefacts and works of art spanning centuries and cultures. The Museum’s conservation centre, the Hamilton Kerr Institute is one of the world’s leading centres for teaching and research in the conservation of easel paintings.

This is an exciting time at the Fitzwilliam Museum as we enter a period of transformational change and capital development.  A crucial priority is now to develop and strengthen the Museum’s strategic leadership team. We are therefore recruiting two senior positions to play major roles in making this change happen and helping to take the Museum’s activity and standing to a new level, reinforcing and reshaping the Fitzwilliam not as the University’s leading visitor attraction in Cambridge, but as an international resource.

These are our primary aims:

–             to provide a place, physical and virtual, which gives all audiences the space to think and create

–             to promote open and honest conversations around works of art and material culture

–             to explore and develop our collections collaboratively and inclusively

–             to build, preserve and document its outstanding collections

Deputy Director, Collections & Research

This role will provide strategic and practical leadership for the Collections Division and for Research and Teaching in the Museum, as well as providing a curatorial vision that creates and drives forward the Museum’s new research strategy. As Chief Curator, this role will be responsible for the management of all the Fitzwilliam’s curators, who have recently moved to academic contracts, and thus officially become part of the research family of the University of Cambridge.

This role will ensure academic access to the collection and will be responsible for the development and management of all research projects, working with a wide and diverse community of scholars and other experts in Cambridge and beyond, right across the humanities and the sciences. Our aim is for the Fitzwilliam to become a fulcrum for national and international interdisciplinary research partnerships. This research will underpin all the Museum’s exhibitions, displays, publications and digital outputs.

Deputy Director, Masterplan, Exhibitions & Major Display Projects

This role will provide strategic and practical leadership for a new Directorate of Gallery Projects, the Museum’s distinctive exhibition programme and, ultimately, the delivery of the Museum’s ambitious Masterplan.  The post-holder will have responsibility for all the Fitzwilliam’s collection displays, and the timetable, budgeting and project management of its public-facing works, providing a welcoming and inclusive environment as well as infrastructure to support the highest standard of visitor experience, maximized through the collective and collaborative work of designers, architects and museum experts (internal and external). The Museum now wishes to introduce a robust and effective project management culture, and this post holder will be responsible for leading this programme within this Directorate.

The Fitzwilliam’s Masterplan and the projects within it aim to transform the building and displays to ensure it functions as a great new inclusive social space for the region, as an innovative cultural and research asset for the University of Cambridge and its great collections, and an even more extraordinary place to critically interact with art and history. The post holder will set the standard for display design across the Fitzwilliam Museum, balancing the needs of the building, galleries and collections with those of our visitors. They will also play the leading role in the creation of new displays, and enhancement of existing public galleries, creating a dynamic balance between the historical buildings and the new.