Director of Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator

The Director of Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator is the Columbia Museum of Art’s senior curatorial leader and a key member of the Museum Leadership Team.

Reporting directly to the Executive Director, the position provides vision, strategic direction,scholarship, and administrative leadership for the museum’s curatorial program and works inclose partnership with the Executive Director to shape the artistic and intellectual direction ofthe CMA. The Director leads an ambitious and forward-looking program of exhibitions,permanent collection installations, acquisitions, commissions, loans, research, publications, and interpretation. The position ensures that the museum’s artistic program advances the CMA’smission, strategic priorities, and commitment to access, inclusion, multiple perspectives, and meaningful engagement with broad audiences.

This is both a senior leadership and practicing curatorial role. The Director is expected to maintain an active program of research, scholarship, acquisitions, exhibition development, writing, lecturing, and curatorial work while providing strong leadership and mentorship to the curatorial team. The position currently also oversees collections management and art operations. These responsibilities are presented as a distinct section to clearly define this portfolio within the museum’s current organizational structure.

• Serve as a member of the Museum Leadership Team, contributing to institutional strategy, multiyear and annual planning, budgeting, policy development, and assessment.

• Establish and implement a cohesive curatorial vision that advances the CMA’s mission and strengthens its local, regional, national, and international relevance. Provide informed recommendations on exhibitions, acquisitions, deaccessions, collection priorities, scholarship, partnerships, and other matters affecting the museum’s artistic program.
• Establish departmental priorities, goals, work plans, and performance measures while fostering a culture of excellence, collaboration, accountability, intellectual curiosity, and creativity.
• Contribute curatorial expertise to museum policies, accreditation, professional ethics, risk management, and institutional best practices.
• Attend Board of Trustees and Executive Committee meetings when invited and provide presentations, reports, and recommendations as requested by the Executive Director.

• Lead the development and implementation of an ambitious multiyear exhibition calendar encompassing CMA-organized and traveling exhibitions, permanent collection installations and rotations, artist projects and commissions, and significant loans.
• Develop a balanced exhibition portfolio that reflects the breadth of the CMA’s collections and mission while introducing compelling artists, ideas, cultures, histories, and perspectives.
• Oversee the research, development, scheduling, budgeting, contracting, interpretation, installation, and evaluation of exhibitions and related curatorial projects.
• Originate, research, and curate or co-curate exhibitions and permanent collection presentations, maintaining an active scholarly and curatorial practice.
• Cultivate original CMA projects and collaborations with artists, guest curators, scholars, lenders, museums, universities, and other partners, including opportunities for traveling exhibitions, publications, lectures, symposia, and broader scholarly engagement.
• Ensure rigorous and accessible interpretation across exhibitions and collection galleries, including gallery texts, labels, publications, programs, and digital content.
• Work in tandem with Learning & Engagement from the earliest stages of exhibition and…