Director and Senior Curator

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Syracuse University seeks a dynamic and experienced art professional for the position of Director and Senior Curator of the Syracuse University Art Galleries. SUArt Galleries is the University’s fine arts museum, offering the university community and the general public a dynamic schedule of engaging and thought-provoking exhibitions, all of them enriched by public programs. With its emphasis on American art and interpretation, and a focus on exploring art in its historical, cultural, and social contexts, the SUArt Galleries serves as a museum-laboratory for our students and university community, with free admission for all. The SUArt Galleries, in addition to the main campus gallery, extends the arts in public buildings and grounds on the Syracuse University campus, and in the Palitz Gallery at the University’s Lubin House facility in New York City.An instrumental leader on campus, the Director reports to the Executive Director of the Coalition of Museum and Art Center, and works closely with the Acquisition and Exhibitions Committee.

SUArt is part of the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers (CMAC) that includes several other visual art centers across campus including Light Work, Special Collections Research Center at Bird Library, The Community Folk Art Center, Point of Contact Gallery, the Photography and Literacy Project, and the Urban Video Project. Syracuse University has a long history of support for the visual arts and was the first University in the United States to award a BFA degree in the visual arts. Many important visual artists have graduated from SU including Sol LeWitt, Bill Viola, Marilyn Minter, and LaToya Ruby Frazier, as well as many important museum professionals including Paul Schimmel, Ned Rifkin, Mary Schmidt Campbell, and David Ross among many others.

SUArt Galleries is the steward of the University Art Collection, which is comprised of a diverse and encyclopedic group of over 45,000 fine art and ethnographic objects by international makers. A major strength of the collection is works on paper, specifically prints ranging from the 15th through 20th-century, featuring complete graphic outputs of the printmakers Karl Schrag and Seong Moy. Additional important collections include 20th-century American paintings and prints, including works by Reginald Marsh and Winslow Homer, 20th-century American photography, caring for over 800 Berenice Abbott photographs, 19th-century European painting with works by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, over 400 pieces of tribal and court art from western Africa , Pre-Columbian ceramics and fabrics, and folk art from the subcontinent India.

SUArt Galleries engages the community with the presentation of 15-20 exhibitions per academic year at the main campus galleries. These exhibitions vary from projects curated from the university’s encyclopedic permanent collection by curatorial staff, faculty, or students, to temporary exhibitions from outside collections examining a broad spectrum of visual arts themes, subjects and time periods. Recent exhibitions include Michelangelo: The Man and the Myth (2008), William Kentridge: Nose and other Subjects (2014), Margaret Bourke-White: Moments in History (2014), Kiki Smith and Paper: The Body, The Muse, and the Sprit (2018), Rodin: The Human Experience (2018), and Dox Thrash, Black Life, and the Carborundum Mezzotint, as well as the annual spring Master of Fine Arts Thesis exhibition.

In addition to the main campus programs, SUArt Galleries manages the Louise and Bernard Palitz Gallery at Syracuse University Lubin House in New York City. The Palitz Gallery presents 5-6 exhibitions annually that highlight a wide array of themes and includes exhibitions curated by CMAC venues; work by accomplished and emerging artists, faculty, alumni; and the presentation of the annual Wynn Newhouse Awards exhibition featuring a diverse array of contemporary artists who happen to have disabilities. SUArt Galleries also manages an active outgoing loan program and a Traveling Exhibition program that allows the collections and scholarship of the department to reach national and international audiences.

Qualifications
• Master’s degree in art history or related field, PhD or equivalent preferred, with significant (5-10 years) museum experience (or equivalent combination of education and experience), including curatorial practice and exhibition planning, education programming, operations, fundraising, public relations and/or marketing, and budget management.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.