Summer Exhibition Assistant
Salary: £10.55 per hour (London Living Wage)
Location: Piccadilly, London
Level: N/A
Deadline: 27/10/2019 23:59
Hours: 40.00
Benefits: Generous company pension and other attractive benefits
Job Type: Temporary
About the Royal Academy of Arts
The Royal Academy of Arts is one of the UK’s foremost arts institutions and our vision is to be a clear, strong voice for art and artists. We are an innovative, forward-looking and commercially astute organisation that receives no government operating subsidy. It is a particularly exciting time in our history after having redeveloped our 2.5-acre campus in Mayfair, uniting our two buildings and providing refurbished galleries for the display of art and architecture, a state-of-the-art auditorium, a new learning centre and a dedicated Collections gallery in Burlington Gardens, and enabling greater public visibility of the art school at the heart of the Academy.
About this position
An essential part of the London art calendar, our Summer Exhibition is the largest open contemporary art exhibition in the world, drawing together a wide range of new and recent work by established, unknown and emerging artists. In preparation for the Summer Exhibition 2020, we are searching for temporary summer exhibition assistants to join our small but dynamic team.
An all-encompassing role, your tasks will see you assist artists’ in the entry process through to sale and collection of artworks, supporting the digital judging process by regularly updating our sales database and processing delivery packs, cataloguing the exhibition, and many other exciting duties.
Please note, this is a fixed-term contract from January 2020 until August 2020.
About you
You will have a strong and demonstratable background in front-facing customer service. A team player, genuinely friendly and helpful, you will have strong communication skills, and a flexible ‘can-do’ approach. You must be computer literate, with knowledge of databases and an exceptional eye for detail. You will possess first class customer service skills, ideally gained from a reputable retailer. Previous experience of selling artworks would also be advantageous.
You must also be able to demonstrate a genuine interest in the visual arts and have a sound knowledge of the Summer Exhibition and the ethos of the Royal Academy, in order to answer customer queries and be able to refer them to the appropriate senior colleague.
What benefits do we offer?
- We offer a very generous pension scheme, contributing up to 10% of your salary into a defined contribution scheme.
- In addition to 25 days’ holiday and 8 public holidays each year, we close between Christmas Eve and New Year, allowing staff further paid leave.
- We encourage staff to attend free History of Art and life drawing classes on site. We also have a staff choir, staff gallery and running and craft clubs.
- Best of all, we have reciprocal agreements with many leading museums and art galleries in London and New York, enabling you to enter for free with your staff pass.
