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Curator of Art - The University of Texas - Harry Ransom Center, Austin, TX

The Harry Ransom Center seeks collaborative, creative, and service-oriented candidates with a commitment to diversity for the position of Curator of Art. The Ransom Center is an internationally renowned humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin. Its holdings include 42 million manuscripts, one million books, five million photographs, and over 100,000 works of art. The Ransom Center hosts more than 60,000 visitors annually, including undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, and members of the public. It has a full-time staff of 90, with five curators. Curators collaborate with colleagues in the Center’s Library, Preservation & Conservation, Education & Exhibitions, and Scholarly Programs divisions to support the Center’s mission to encourage discovery, inspire creativity, and advance understanding of the humanities for broad and diverse audiences through the preservation and sharing of its collections.

The Curator of Art provides curatorial support for the Center’s art collection, which includes drawings, paintings, sculpture, and prints from the fifteenth through the twenty-first centuries. Collection strengths include prominent American, British, French, and Mexican artists’ works on paper and exceptional examples of literary portraiture and art created by writers and poets, complementing the Ransom Center’s extensive rare book, archival, and photography collections. Other notable art and archival collections include the Eric Gill collection, the Carlton Lake collection of modern French art, the Nickolas Muray collection of Mexican art, and the Ed Ruscha papers and art collection. With materials ranging from caricatures and cartoons, book illustration artwork and fine press works, to twentieth-century French and Latin American art, prints, posters, broadsides, and artist’s books, the Center’s art collections are broad and hold numerous opportunities for research and study.

The Curator of Art will participate in a variety of interpretive activities (such as developing exhibitions and displays, outreach, writing, speaking, and teaching) that promote a greater understanding and appreciation of the Ransom Center’s art collections. He or she will encourage research and teaching with the collections by engaging with scholars and research fellows, providing specialized reference support, contributing to the annual review of research fellowship applications, and encouraging faculty to teach with the collections. The Curator will support collection management activities by collaborating with Preservation & Conservation staff to establish housing and treatment priorities and with Description & Access and Digital Collections staff to promote enhanced access to the collections by consulting on cataloging and access initiatives. He or she will work actively with Description & Access staff to prioritize and support continued cataloging backlog reduction and retrospective conversion of collection descriptions. The Curator will collaborate with the Center’s Registrar on the loan of art materials to other institutions. He or she will refine the development of the Center’s art collections, growing the collections primarily through donations until sustained collection development resources for art materials are established. The curator will contribute to the broader institutional mission and work of the Ransom Center by participating in regular meetings with the Center’s curatorial group, serving on Ransom Center committees, and collaborating with colleagues across the Center. He or she will represent the Ransom Center within professional and scholarly communities and serve as a liaison with relevant faculty and museum and library colleagues at The University of Texas at Austin.

Required qualifications: Master's degree in art history or a related field. Three years of experience working with art collections in a museum or library setting. Demonstrated strength in research abilities. Demonstrated ability to work closely with public and instructional services staff, cataloging and conservation staff, professors, other curators, and the public at large. Excellent written and oral communication skills. Demonstrated experience giving presentations to scholarly audiences, classes, and other diverse, public audiences.

Preferred Qualifications: Ph.D. in art, art history, or related field; or equivalent experience. At least five years of experience working with art collections in a college or university museum or library setting. Experience with acquisition, conservation, interpretation, cataloging, and exhibition of artwork. Experience curating exhibitions and associated events and publications. Proven ability to carry out art historical, collection-oriented, and provenance research. Track record of scholarly publication and professional service. Experience with library or museum cataloging, content management, or digitization systems. Reading knowledge of at least one European language, French preferred. Experience with fundraising, grant writing, and donor cultivation.

For further information and to apply for the position, please see job posting number 17-03-14-01-0606: https://utdirect.utexas.edu/apps/hr/jobs/nlogon/170314010606.

The University of Texas at Austin is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer with a commitment to diversity at all levels. Security sensitive position; conviction verification will be conducted on applicant selected.