Assistant Director for Gallery and Exhibition Planning

By working at Harvard University, you join a vibrant community that advances Harvard's world-changing mission in meaningful ways, inspires innovation and collaboration, and builds skills and expertise. We are dedicated to creating a diverse and welcoming environment where everyone can thrive.

Harvard University's Central Administration (CADM) is a 5,000+ employee organization that supports the university's overall excellence by understanding and serving the needs of its schools, students, faculty, staff, alumni, and surrounding communities. Through dynamic and collaborative partnerships, CADM provides high-quality and efficient services to the schools to help them achieve their goals.

Ever since their founding, the Harvard Art Museums—the Fogg Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum and Arthur M. Sackler Museum—have been dedicated to advancing and supporting learning at Harvard University, in the local community, and around the world. Displayed in galleries that mix not only media but schools of art, the collection at Harvard is celebrated and interrogated within a larger story of artistic expression and historical and contemporary issues.

The diverse collection is among the largest in the United States. Through research, teaching, professional training, and public education the museums strive to advance the understanding and appreciation of art.

The Assistant Director Gallery and Exhibition Planning works across museum teams to realize temporary exhibitions, presentations in the collection galleries, and related spaces from initiation through closure. With the Director, they shape and guide the development and realization of exhibitions and collection displays that create meaningful encounters with works of art of varying media and from diverse regions, time periods, and areas of human experience.

This position also supports the reach of the collection through traveling and partnered exhibitions. Leads planning process for establishing the schedule of exhibitions; develops and manages short- and long-term budgets for the exhibition program and oversees administration of all temporary exhibitions and collection displays; serves on the Directors’ team and other institutional teams as assigned.

• In collaboration with the museums’ leadership, defines projects, coordinates planning and scheduling with contributing departments, manages execution, and tracks progress. With leadership, develops a strategy, defines and sets the concept goals, and ensures a balance of divisional representation, media, etc.
• In all matters works closely with related staff in Curatorial, Collections Management, Editorial and Design Services, Institutional Advancement and Finance. Provides guidance and direction, as needed, and maintains active communication.
• Drafts, develops, and manages exhibition budgets. Works closely with Curatorial, Finance, and Institutional Advancement to identify funding sources and to complete and submit the working budgets. Under the general direction of the museum’s Director, monitors expenditures, its impact on funding and provides approval as appropriate. Reconciles deviations or unanticipated expenses.
• Drafts, develops, and manages contracts and relationships with external partners and contributors, including artists and institutions related to commissions and traveling exhibitions.
• Sets institutional review process, from proposal to approval; develops and communicates strategies and processes to stakeholders and project teams. Continuously reviews and revises for effectiveness and relevance, consulting with stakeholders as appropriate.
• Forms cross-departmental exhibition project teams and manages toward timely completion; sets milestones within the project plan, assigns activities and timelines. Sets project team meeting schedules, directs agendas, and facilitates discussions.
• Other duties as assigned.

This position is conducted in an office setting.

• Minimum of seven years of exhibition project management experience in an art museum or other cultural properties…