Culture Curator

Are you looking to be part of an innovative team of professionals dedicated to telling South Carolina's diverse stories? As the storytellers of South Carolina, the South Carolina State Museum (SCSM) strives to share the rich natural and cultural diversity of the state through its permanent collections, programs, and exhibitions. The SCSM is the largest museum in South Carolina, stewarding over 1.1 million objects and specimens and welcoming 5 million+ visitors over its 37-year history.

The museum has embarked on a renovation of 150,000 square feet of its exhibition, programmatic and collection storage spaces occupying four floors of a historic 1890s textile mill on the National Register of Historic Places. Come be a part of our team “reimagining” what the South Carolina State Museum can be for our next generation of visitors, students, and scholars.

The South Carolina State Museum seeks a creative individual with a working knowledge of 20th century popular culture, particularly related to the history and practices connected to South Carolina from the 1950’s to the present. This new position will be working directly with the SCSM’s Curatorial Affairs Department, reflecting the modern history and innovative stories related to the popular culture of our state including sports, music, and other aspects of the entertainment industry as they relate to South Carolina.

This position will look at major cultural contributions including sports, entertainment and music, and will be working directly on new permanent gallery renovations. Through this major renovation project, the first focusing on the permanent galleries since the museum opened in 1988, we are expanding the voices and stories that are told, as well as expanding the timeframe that is represented. The project also will explore sports history in collaboration with the South Carolina Sports Hall of Fame and other partners, while focusing on both past and recent cultural trends that have had impacts in South Carolina.

This position will play a major role in these efforts.

South Carolina is home to many cultural innovations, many of which are represented in our permanent collection, which focuses on a wide range of objects and artifacts that were made, used and/or connected to the state throughout history to the present including the 1920’s Anderson Car, James Brown’s red sequined jumpsuit, a civil rights era voting booth, among many other items that tell the story of South Carolina.

South Carolina continues to be a growing and evolving state. The individual in this position will be poised to connect with recent and current cultural trends that have emerged in South Carolina, to tell those relevant stories through exhibitions and programs, reflecting the state’s history as we connect our past to the present.

• Oversees curatorial management of objects within this subject area including researching, future acquisition, and conservation recommendations.
• Serves as a member of the museums’ Exhibitions Committee, proposing changing exhibitions and assisting with the exhibition research and development of changing exhibitions. Develops exhibition and interpretive concepts, researches objects, develops content, writes label copy, and incorporates collections where appropriate.
• Acts as the curatorial liaison with the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame and other partners on collaborative projects such as exhibitions, public programs and object acquisitions and consults with cultural organizations around the state and beyond regarding museum planning while strengthening and building relationships with community leaders, scholars, and collectors.
• Serves on the Reimagine the Experience Team as we reevaluate and reimagine the…