Seeking Director
The Parc Saint Léger Contemporary Art Center is located in a former spa complex two hours from Paris. The center’s activities revolve around several fundamental aims, from providing support to artists, hosting residencies, and producing works of art, to organizing exhibitions, publishing, and offering a framework for artistic research. What sets Parc Saint Léger apart, however, is its artist residencies and its extramural program of events and activities covering the whole of the département of Nièvre.
Standing in a forested park, the Parc Saint Léger complex occupies a beautiful 19th-century building that was refurbished in 1998 and now houses the center’s exhibition space and offices, and living quarters for resident artists. The 460-square-meter exhibition space, spread over two floors, is located in the former spa’s bottling plant. On site the center programs both monographic and group shows combined with Q&As and special events to encourage the general public to discover for themselves the national and international contemporary art scene. Parc Saint Léger ensures its commitment to artists through two specialized programs, Résidences secondaires and La Grande Ourse, an artistic research laboratory that is coproduced with three advanced art schools, the Écoles Nationales Supérieures d’art of Bourges, Cergy, and Dijon, and a graphic design outpost in Chaumont, the Pôle Graphisme of Chaumont. Furthermore, in dialogue with the local community and its actors, Parc Saint Léger has been pursuing a decentralized program of activities throughout Nièvre. The program includes producing artworks with artists and putting together exhibitions, as well as organizing specialized events, all done in a spirit of exchange with the partnering institutions, whether museum, historic site, school, community center, or association. Thanks to this context, the program is able to offer artists venues in which to experiment while giving the broader public the opportunity to see for themselves contemporary art in surroundings that are sometimes fairly isolated from the cultural practices of the art world.
Parc Saint Léger is a member of the French association d.c.a., association for the development of art centers.
The center’s main financial partners are the General Council of Nièvre (the owner of the site), which originally launched the project with DRAC (Regional Direction of Cultural Affairs); the Ministry of Culture and Communication/DRAC Burgundy; the Burgundy Regional Council; and the City of Pougues-les-Eaux.
Description of the post
The Board of Directors of Parc Saint Léger is eager to see the hiring of a new director for the center as a chance to deepen the experimental dimension of the site and its ability to invent new formats and new modalities in terms of how the public receives works of art in a specific context. Artistic projects must therefore take into account the following:
–A specific context, that of a rural area that is moving towards a future under the banner Nouvelles ruralités, or New Ruralities.
–The center’s main focus, that is the artist residencies, on-site programing, extramural programing, and its strong ties with art schools.
–The cultural policy being implemented locally by the center’s public partners, notably in the fields of education, the development of art practices, and regional development.
–The confines of the Pougues-les-Eaux park.
In this context then, the future management of Parc Saint Léger will be responsible for carrying out a mission that involves the following:
–Defining and implementing an ambitious, innovative artistic and cultural plan that will promote the site locally, nationally and internationally
–Designing and developing an artistic program that focuses on experimentation and production while taking into account the plan’s main areas of concentration (residencies/on-site programing/extramural programing/ties with art schools)
–Managing personnel and local, national and international partnerships; ensuring sound management of the association’s administrative and financial aspects, particularly in terms of cultivating additional funding sources
–Developing a logic of partnerships and co-productions on a local, national and international scale
–Integrating in the center’s artistic plan a significant commitment to both art education and raising the public’s awareness of art at every level of society
Candidate’s profile and required skills
–Advanced degree, a deep knowledge and appreciation of contemporary art, its regional networks and international concerns
–Proven work experience in art-related undertakings
–Established work experience in managing a staff, budget, schedule
–Interpersonal skills, an ability to create and build networks, and an aptitude for managing and supervising a team
–An established network in the art field both nationally and internationally
–Fluent in written and spoken French
–A thorough command of English is essential
Candidates must send a cover letter and CV before Tuesday, 23 September to:
Régis Bertrand
Président du Parc Saint Léger
By email only: regis.bertrand@parcsaintleger.fr
Upon completion of this initial step, short-listed candidates will be asked to draw up an artistic plan based on the internal documents sent to them.
For further information, candidates can contact Thibault Lambert, administrator at the art center, by telephone at +33 (0) 3 86 90 96 60, or by email at thibault.lambert@parcsaintleger.fr.
