Agnes is hiring! Collections and Care Manager

Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University is seeking a dynamic and motivated culture-leader to fill a role of Collections and Care Manager. This position plays a sector-defining and influential role that reimagines collection care within both a public and an academic setting. This is a full-time, continuing position.

Join us at this pivotal and transformational moment in Agnes’s future! Thanks to the incredible lead gifts from Bader Philanthropies, Inc., we have been presented with the very rare opportunity to entirely rethink an arts facility (and museological practice!), from the ground up. Led by Agnes’s Director and Curator, Emelie Chhangur, Agnes Reimagined amplifies our capacity to foster and relay intersectional connections across the disciplines and communities that converge when a public, university-affiliated art institution is both civically minded and pedagogically driven.

Come work with us!

See competition #J0223-0894 at Queen’s University CareerQ site for full job details.

Salary: starting at $56,227/year + benefits

Closing Date: 8 May 2023

JOB SUMMARY:

Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Agnes) houses and cares for a collection of over 17,000 works in the public trust. Collections are integral to Agnes’s dual mandate as a leading, internationally recognized public art gallery and as an active pedagogical resource at Queen’s University. By commissioning, researching, stewarding, acquiring and engaging with works of art, and by exhibiting and interpreting visual culture through an intersectional lens, Agnes creates opportunities for participation and exchange across communities, cultures, histories and geographies. The stature of Agnes’s collections and professional expertise is such that works from the collection are regularly solicited for projects with artists, for exhibitions across Canada and abroad, and for reproduction in scholarly and artistic publications. Agnes cares for contemporary art, historical Indigenous, Canadian, European and African art, textile and material culture, and historicized Indigenous ancestors and cultural belongings.

Under the supervision of the Chief Curator, the Collections and Care Manager has primary responsibility to ensure the physical and ethical care, record keeping, and accessibility of the collection at Agnes in support of safe museum practices and diverse cultural care protocols, in the exercise of collecting, research, exhibiting, programming, commissioning, stewarding and digitization mandates. Adhering to evolving museum standards and current trends in community-engaged collecting practices, this position plays a sector-defining and leading role that reimagines collection care within both a public and an academic setting. The Collections and Care Manager also engages with students and faculty across the community of Queen’s University and with the wider public, offering periodic talks, seminars and tours, engaging in shared collection-research initiatives, and supervising internships.

The Collections and Care Manager has and maintains awareness of key developments and advancements in decolonial museum work and fosters long-term relationships with artists, scholars, specialists, knowledge keepers, Elders, community members and peers in the field of collections and works in collaboration with Agnes’s Indigenous Advisory Circle (IAC). Supported through innovations in museum architecture, Agnes Reimagined will host Agnes’s first ever spaces for the proper care of and access by Indigenous communities to historicized ancestors and cultural materials currently held in our care, including spaces for ceremony, gathering and sacred fire. The Collections and Care Manager is an integral part of a team inspired by paradigm shifts in the future of museum practice in this country.

Employment Equity and Accessibility Statement
The University invites applications from all qualified individuals. Queen’s is committed to employment equity and diversity in the workplace and welcomes applications from women, visible minorities, Aboriginal Peoples, persons with disabilities, and persons of any sexual orientation or gender identity. In accordance with Canadian Immigration requirements, priority will be given to Canadian citizens and permanent residents.

The University provides support in its recruitment processes to applicants with disabilities, including accommodation that takes into account an applicant’s accessibility needs. Candidates requiring accommodation during the recruitment process are asked to contact Human Resources at hradmin@queensu.ca.

Agnes Etherington Art Centre
Situated within territories of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre is a curatorially-driven and research-intensive professional art centre that proudly serves a dual mandate as a leading, internationally recognized public art gallery and as an active pedagogical resource at Queen’s University in Kingston. By commissioning, researching, collecting and stewarding works of art, and by exhibiting and interpreting visual culture through an intersectional lens, Agnes creates opportunities for participation and exchange across communities, cultures, histories and geographies.

Agnes is committed to anti-racism. We work to eradicate institutional biases and develop accountable programs that centre the artistic expression and lived experience of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour. Agnes promotes 2SLGBTQIAP+ positive spaces.

36 University Avenue
Kingston, ON K7L 3N6
agnes.queensu.ca

Agnes is an accessible venue.

Facebook: @aeartcentre
Twitter: @aeartcentre
Instagram: @aeartcentre

Images:
1. Curator Qanita Lilla works with the Agnes team to move African Art.
2. Curator Alicia Boutilier (left) and Alysha Strongman (right) look at prints in Agnes’s collection in preparation for an exhibition.
3. Agnes’s collections include contemporary art, historical Indigenous, Canadian, European and African art, textile and material culture, and historicized Indigenous ancestors and cultural belongings.