Curator, Collections and Art in Public Spaces

Date Posted: 10/17/2022
Req ID: 27930
Faculty/Division: University College
Department: UC: Art Centre
Campus: St. George (Downtown Toronto)
Position Number: 00051116

Description:

About us:

The Art Museum is an internationally renowned centre for contemporary art and interdisciplinary inquiry located on the University of Toronto’s downtown campus, in Canada’s largest and most diverse city. With its two distinct gallery spaces (the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at Hart House and the University of Toronto Art Centre at University College), the Art Museum offers intensive cycles of programming dedicated to artistic and curatorial experimentation. Featuring works in a wide array of traditional and contemporary media, the Art Museum’s exhibitions are further complemented by energetic offsite projects, digitally accessible programs, and research engaging with the University of Toronto’s extensive contemporary and historical collections.

Working with artists and curators of diverse backgrounds, embodiment and cultural contexts, the program emphasizes the intersectional potential of the visual arts and cultural practices, their ability to undo existing and model new identities, creating other ways of knowing and belonging. This includes an emphasis on critical engagements with local histories, attention to their complex embeddedness in local and global relations, and the development of other, possible stories.

An integral part of all our programs are the in-depth and wide-ranging experiential opportunities for students and faculty, emerging and established scholars, visitors and communities alike – with mentorships, academic and co-curricular engagement, co-productions, partnerships, and other participatory involvement — to catalyze the possibility of transdisciplinary knowledge and greater awareness of the worlds we share.

Above all, the Art Museum aspires to be a welcoming meeting point to bring into conversation the university community and broader publics. Creating multi-faceted opportunities for dialogue, our program fosters deeper knowledge of the visual arts, and especially their unique contribution to ways of seeing, hearing, sensing, and thinking about what is happening at present, and what is urgent in our time.

Your opportunity:

The Art Museum is currently seeking a Curator of Collections and Art in Public Spaces. Reporting to the Executive Director, and working with the team of the Art Museum, their mandate is to critically assess the care and development of the University of Toronto’s collection, including its role and the role of art in public spaces on the downtown campus. Thinking through the nature of collecting and its associated practices, against the background of its locally specific histories, the curator will reimagine the relation between art and place, between visual culture and place-making, and the role that artistic and curatorial practice can play in relation to multi-faceted spaces, communities and publics.

The curator will ask: how does art live in public space on campus? can we revision the role of the collection, including its forms of presentation? How do we address the existing paradigms of collecting in our time – and innovatively respond to the call for ecological, racial, cultural equity, and its attendant forms in art? How do artistic works, in the form of images, objects, collaborations, and actions, contribute to a given place, and what are the forms of engagement that art may make possible amongst its publics, within and beyond the University community?

Overseeing the work of the Collections Manager, the Curator of Collections and Art in Public Spaces will develop initiatives and partnerships that advance strategic objectives of the portfolio. Working with multiple stakeholders, they will build support for artistic projects toward overall programming enhancement, with consideration of the academic mission of the university and the educational and public role of the Art Museum.

Their work will be to develop policy with multiple partners within and beyond the University, establishing best practices and new protocols for building the collection, and develop projects and exhibitions for presentation and circulation on and beyond the University’s downtown campus.

They will bring to all their work embodied experience and proactive attention to sustainable exhibition production practices (toward reduction of waste and ecological impact, as well as the re-use and sharing of resources), and, together with the team of the art museum, ensures the implementation of anti-racist, anti-harassment, and non-discriminatory processes that enable and provide a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere throughout their own work and all the museum’s relations.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Curating exhibitions and gallery installations
• Implement plans and process improvements for program and service activities
• Implementing plans and process improvements for collections administration
• Fostering cooperative working relationships with a wide variety of internal and external contacts
• Liaising with creative professionals and vendors to generate and deliver creative concepts
• Coordinating selection and acquisitioning process
• Creating and/or editing original, published content and materials
• Developing and implementing community engagement strategies and plans

Essential Qualifications:

• Master’s Degree (Curatorial Studies) and/or equivalent education and experience curating art in public spaces, curating with collections, collection management, policy development and implementation.
• Minimum three years of related experience.
• Curatorial innovation developing art in public spaces.
• Curatorial innovation working with collections
• Deep familiarity and demonstrated abilities producing contemporary art in all media in non-traditional spaces
• Coordinating exhibitions as well as public art projects related to the collection and temporary (off-site) programming
• Implementing plans and process improvements for program and service activities
• Working with multiple stakeholders to develop policy around public art
• Ability to multi-task and efficient implementation of projects
• Excellent familiarity and working experience with all administrative tasks related to collections (including coordinating acquisitions, handling art works, CCPERB applications, donor relations)
• Fostering and maintaining positive relationships
• Ability to make effective presentations in visual and didactic form
• Ability to work cooperatively toward common goal
• Excellent communication skills (verbal and in writing)
• Researchand writing grant applications
• Thorough working knowledge of MS Office, including Powerpoint, Excel, Word, Office 365.
• Embodied and proactive experience and demonstrated commitments to anti-racist equity, across age, culture, genders, identity and complex embodiment.

Assets (Nonessential):

• Familiarity with TMS platform

To be successful in this role you will be:

• Achievement oriented
• Insightful
• Organized
• Possess a positive attitude
• Proactive
• Resourceful

Closing Date: 11/21/2022, 11:59PM ET
Employee Group: USW
Appointment Type: Budget – Continuing
Schedule: Full-Time Monday to Friday 8:45am – 5:00pm, with overtime on weekdays and occasional overtime on weekends.
Pay Scale Group & Hiring Zone:
USW Pay Band 13 — $76,284 with an annual step progression to a maximum of $97,556. Pay scale and job class assignment is subject to determination pursuant to the Job Evaluation/Pay Equity Maintenance Protocol.
Job Category: Arts & Culture
Recruiter: Maggie Ng

Lived Experience Statement
Candidates who are members of Indigenous, Black, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, persons with disabilities, and other equity deserving groups are encouraged to apply, and their lived experience shall be taken into consideration as applicable to the posted position.