Director of Education

About the Education Department

As one of the Queens Museum’s three major program divisions, the education department plays a vital role in advancing the Museum’s mission. The Department offers a range of free and low-cost award-winning learning experiences that connect people across the lifespan with the Museum’s acclaimed exhibitions, collections, artist projects, and public programs. They take place at the Museum and at community partner sites across the borough of Queens, a county of 2.3 million people and one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse places in the world. This community work includes long-term partnerships with over 30 New York City public schools (all in Queens), various Queens Library branches, hospitals, social service agencies, adult rehabilitation centers and much more.

About the Position

The Queens Museum seeks a passionate, creative and empathetic leader and educator for this position. The successful candidate will have a strong record of success in the arts, as an educator, administrator, and leader. The Director of Education is a member of the Museum’s senior leadership team and reports directly to a Deputy Director and works closely with the Museum’s Director. The Director of Education directly supervises four full-time program managers (School Programs, ArtAccess programs, Out-of-School and Family programs Manager, and New New Yorkers, an arts and literacy initiative for and with adult immigrants) and is responsible for a total of eight full-time staff (including the four aforementioned direct reports), a roster of over 40 freelance educators and teaching artists and supporting 15+visitor experience agents in Queens Museum’s visitor experience program.

Three major multi-year initiatives the Director will play a leadership role in are 1) the Museum’s long-term program partnership with the Queens Library which will lead to the eventual opening of Queens Library Queens Museum, what will be the first circulating public library physically housed in an art museum in the country and 2) a reinvention of the way the Queens Museum thinks about and implements interpretive materials and information, and 3) an effort to integrate greater educational programming into the larger ecology of museum offerings.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities: 

Programmatic

• Work closely with other major Museum departments and Museum leadership, serve as primary point person in Education for other members of the museum, promote cross-departments communication to ensure alignment between education programs and the overall goals of our Museum;
• Provide leadership to a full-time staff of eight program managers and coordinators and well over 40 freelance teaching artists and museum educators. Support over 15 part-time visitor experience agents;
• Directly manage a team of four education program managers including ongoing coaching, mentoring, and supervision and long-term planning and conducting regular performance reviews;
• Developing programs, initiatives, and projects around a shared set of values and approaches that are relevant and responsive to the Museum’s diverse audiences with an emphasis on the diverse and dynamic communities of Queens;
• Responsible for professional development training of museum educators and teaching artists;
• Serve as spokesperson for the Museum’s educational programs, including but not limited to presenting at conferences, participating in panels, steering committees, writing and publishing, and speaking with representatives from the media as necessary;
• Work closely with the Museum’s Visitor Experience Agent (VEA) program to coordinate and develop hiring, orientation and ongoing professional and career development opportunities for the Museum’s team of VEAs who greet museum visitors, act as gallery guards and interact with the public;
• In collaboration with the Exhibitions, Public Programs & Community Engagement, and External Affairs, implement interpretive plans and approaches inclusive of diverse communities.

Administrative

• Fundraising, support grant writing, collaboratively develop funding proposals, budgets and grant reporting. Work with development and executive team on stewardship, cultivation, and engagement of diverse philanthropic supporters of arts education;
• Work with education program managers, development department and the director of finance to oversee a one-million dollar annual project divided across multiple programs and projects and including many restricted grant and contract sources;
• Work with External Affairs to promote and market the Museum’s educational programs through the web, social media, and print;
• Manage various education-related funding grants, contracts, and budgets;

Qualifications:

• Commitment to the Queens Museum’s institutional values of openness, inclusion, and community partnership and role of art, artists, and artistic processes in positive social and cultural transformation;
• Strong cultural competencies and sensitivities, consciousness of cultural identities and difference, committed to intersectional thinking and practice;
• A strong knowledge of diverse pedagogical approaches relevant to art museum education and contemporary art including, but not limited to, critical pedagogy, inquiry based learning, object-based teaching, universal design for learning, project-based learning, visual literacy, social justice, anti-oppression curricula;
• Strong systematic and logistical thinking, able to troubleshoot, examine problems from multiple angles;
• Confident and engaging public presenter and public speaker;
• Strong facilitative leadership skills, ability to lead inclusive and generative processes, to promote cooperation and collaboration among various stakeholders and constituents;
• Familiarity with a wide variety of evaluation, research, assessment and documentation approaches in arts, cultural and education work.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree required, preferably in an arts, culture, or education related field. Master’s degree preferred, in arts, culture, education related fields with at least five years of management experience in education in arts and culture, preferably in art museums and community-based settings
• Demonstrated management, budgeting, and collaborative skills.
• Demonstrated success and experience working and thriving in culturally diverse settings
• Excellent oral and written communication skills

Please send resume and cover letter to: HR@queensmuseum.org

Queens Museum
New York City Building
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Queens, NY 11368
www.queensmuseum.org