Curator of American Art

Newfields is a distinctive cultural campus where art, nature, and people come together. Located on 152 acres in the Crown Hill neighborhood of Indianapolis, Newfields is home to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the historic Lilly House, and The Virginia

B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park and the Miller House in Columbus, IN. Newfields provides exceptional experiences with art and nature that enrich lives and build community, offering a dynamic year-round calendar of exhibitions, festivals, performances, and public programs. The institution has an annual operating budget of nearly $40 million and welcomes over 600,000 visitors each year.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields (IMA) is one of the oldest and largest encyclopedic art museums in the United States, nationally significant for its historic legacy, the quality and breadth of its collections, and its innovative blending of art, architecture, and landscape. Founded in 1883 as the Art Association of Indianapolis, the Museum has grown from a civic art initiative into a leading cultural institution with a global reach.

Newfields expansive and diverse collection encompasses more than 40,000 works, spanning 4,000 years and a broad spectrum of cultures and media. The Museum’s American Art collection—long a cornerstone of its holdings—encompasses nearly1,000 paintings and sculptures and access to an additional 2,000 American art objects spanning prints, photography, contemporary art, decorative arts, fashion, and design that are available for ongoing contextual study regarding the artistic heritage of the United States.

The collection features paintings and sculpture representing a wide range of artistic movements and historical periods in American art. Highlights include important works by Gilbert Stuart, Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Horace Pippin, William Merritt Chase, and Grant Wood, among others, as well as significant holdings in 19th-century landscape painting and early American modernism.

Newfields is actively engaged in reimagining its role as a civic and cultural institution in the 21st century. In recent years, the institution has launched bold initiatives to expand community engagement, deepen its commitment to inclusion, and explore the intersections of art and the environment. Examples include community engagement initiatives that bring underrepresented voices into the Museum's planning and programming processes, and Winterlights, a seasonal nighttime experience that integrates contemporary art installations with immersive light displays in the gardens.

The Museum presents approximately ten to fifteen exhibitions each year, ranging from its Bret Waller Community Gallery programs to major traveling shows to original exhibitions organized by its curators. Recent American art exhibitions have included Work in Progress:
Conversations About American Art (2023), which provided new context to how artists, critics, and the public approached American art for over 200 years, and Edward Hopper and the American Hotel (2020). The next curator is expected to reimagine the gallery space over the coming years.

Curators at Newfields enjoy the collaboration of a dedicated team of registrars, conservators, exhibition specialists, educators, and scholars, as well as access to outstanding collections and facilities. The Museum’s ongoing investment in research, conservation, and interpretation creates rich opportunities for curators to advance scholarship, organize ambitious exhibitions, and shape the narratives that define the institution’s relationship with its diverse audiences.

The Curator of American Art will join Newfields at a pivotal moment of institutional renewal and curatorial reinvention. As the Museum reimagines its exhibitions, public programs, and interpretive strategies, this role offers a unique chance to shape the future of a significant American art collection within a forward-thinking and collaborative environment. Key opportunities include:

• Strategic Leadership:
  Contribute leadership to the reimagining and strategic planning of the Museum’s curatorial department.
• Gallery Transformation:
  Lead the deinstallation and…