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Author: Lillia McEnaney

Position Announcement: Executive Director for the Museum of International Folk Art

The New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs is seeking an Executive Director for the Museum of International Folk Art. This position is open until filled.  Review of applications will begin on October 1st. 2022.

Please send the following for consideration in PDF format to Executive.search@state.nm.us

  • A one- or two-page letter of intent.
  • A resumé including 5 references with contact information.

The Museum of International Folk Art (MOIFA) seeks an exceptional individual to fill the position of Executive Director. MOIFA is a unique institution dedicated to shaping a humane world by connecting people through creative expression and artistic tradition. It is a division of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), which relies upon its guiding principles to inform every aspect of its work. The museum is committed to being a good steward of the collection and sharing its cultural resources with the local community, the people of New Mexico, and a worldwide audience. MOIFA is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.

The Executive Director is an appointee of the DCA Cabinet Secretary, with the consent of the Governor of New Mexico. The position requires a seasoned administrator with a record of successful leadership of a multifaceted museum organization, oversight of professional staff, and an ability to successfully collaborate with the other DCA divisions, Museum of New Mexico Board of Regents,  International Folk Art Foundation, and Museum of New Mexico Foundation, including Friends of Folk Art. The director supervises a dedicated staff of curators, educators, and other museum professionals who are responsible for the preservation, protection, and presentation of the museum’s collection. The director supervises a staff of 28 and oversees a facility that includes the museum, library, auditorium, and outdoor event spaces. Additionally, the director oversees a robust volunteer program, docents, and a group of dedicated research associates. The museum’s annual operating budget is approximately $2.37 million. The specific powers and duties of the position are set forth in New Mexico statute. Salary is $94,000 a year, with an attractive benefits package.

Council for Museum Anthropology Student Travel Award

The CMA Student Travel Awards are designed to support graduate student travel to the annual AAA meeting to present papers and/or posters. Students and recent graduate degree recipients (those who have defended within the year of the award) are eligible to apply. Each year, CMA will award two prizes of $1000 each.

Application packets (maximum 5 pages) must include: a brief letter indicating the applicant’s student status and explaining how this project reflects the student’s graduate work; a copy of the abstract for the proposed paper or poster (and for the session in which they will be presenting, if known); and a letter of endorsement from an academic advisor at the student’s most recent institution of study.

Evaluation Criteria: 1) Creativity: Is the paper or poster a unique and novel contribution to museum anthropology? 2) Commitment: Does the student demonstrate a commitment to the field of museum anthropology 3) Impact: Does the paper or poster have the potential to develop into a work that could more broadly impact the field of museum anthropology?

Student Travel Award recipients will be presented with a check for $1000 and a certificate of the award.

To submit to 2022 Student Travel Award competition, email the application to: council.museumanth@gmail.com

Fellowship Opportunities: Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery

The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and its Renwick Gallery invite applications to its premier fellowship program, the oldest and largest in American art. Scholars from any discipline who are researching the art, craft, and visual culture of the United States are encouraged to apply. Fellowships are residential and support full-time research in the Smithsonian collections. SAAM seeks a diverse pool of applicants and especially welcomes candidates with an understanding of the experiences of groups historically underrepresented in the field of American art.

The museum hosts a number of fellows each year through the Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program (SIFP), and also awards its own named fellowships to candidates from this general pool. All candidates should apply to the SIFP. The deadline is November 1, 2022.

More here.

Reminder: Upcoming Association of Black Anthropologists and Council for the Museum Anthropology Event

The Association of Black Anthropologists and the Council for the Museum Anthropology are pleased to offer this online conversation on Black museum anthropology, hosted by Dr. Deborah Johnson-Simon, Chief Executive Officer of the African Diaspora Museology Institute. Registration and an event flyer will be released soon.

This event is free and open to the public. AAA membership is not required.
Register here: https://bit.ly/3bup2WY

Getty Museum to send stolen terracotta statues back to Italy

Via The Guardian, August 12, 2022

The Getty Museum in Los Angeles is returning a group of lifesize terracotta statues, dating back to between 350 and 300BC, and four other objects to Rome after an investigation concluded the relics had been stolen and smuggled out of Italy.

The three statues, known as Orpheus and the Sirens, have been removed from display at the museum and are being prepared for transport back to Rome in September.

The set of statues, which depict a seated man and two mythical sirens, was bought by John Paul Getty from a now defunct private bank in Switzerland in 1976.

They are believed to have originated from the Taranto area in the southern Italian region of Puglia, and since 2006 have been on a list of stolen artefacts that Italy has been seeking to reclaim possession of.

More here.

Fellowship Announcement: Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Natural History Exhibition Fellowship

The American Philosophical Society’s Library & Museum (APS) invites applications for a one year Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Natural History Exhibition Fellowship. The APS seeks applications from recent humanities Ph.D.s interested in exploring career paths in libraries, museums, and cultural heritage institutions. The Fellowship, based in the APS’s Library & Museum, will be a year-long research fellowship for our forthcoming natural history exhibition opening in the spring of 2024. The fellow will also be provided the opportunity to pursue an independent research project, preferably one related to the collections or programs of the Society’s Library & Museum.

Primary responsibilities will include:

  • Conducting research in the APS’s Library & Museum collections in preparation for an exhibition on natural history, that will highlight the five James Audubon elephant folios of Birds of America from the APS’s collection;
  • Providing reports on thematic narratives that exist within our collections about natural history;
  • Compiling a selection of objects drawn from the APS collections that will be considered for inclusion in the exhibition;
  • Depending on the Fellow’s interests and the Library & Museum’s needs, they may also participate in public programming, museum education, collections management, and website development.

The Fellow will be fully integrated into the APS’s Library & Museum staff and 20 percent of the Fellow’s time will be reserved for their own independent research, ideally using resources at the APS or kindred regional institutions. The Fellow will also be expected to participate in the vibrant intellectual community at the Society, including biannual symposia for the elected Members of the APS, monthly lunches at the Library with visiting scholars, daytime workshops and programming with other residential fellows, and evening programs with specialists in a wide range of fields.

This one-year Fellowship begins by September 15, 2022 and ends one year after start date, 2023. Compensation will be $50,000 plus benefits.  The Fellowship may not be held concurrently with any other fellowship or grant.

US museums and Indigenous tribes receive $2m grant to boost repatriation efforts

Via The Art Newspaper, August 12, 2022

The National Park Service (NPS) has awarded 20 American museums and nine Indigenous tribes grants totaling $2.1m to assist in the consultation, cataloguing and repatriation of ancestral remains and cultural objects in an effort to increase enforcement of the National American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).

The 1990 statute requires federally-funded institutions to inventory their holdings of Indigenous human remains and burial objects to facilitate their return. But adherance and enforcement have been points of contention for several US museums since it was enacted due to logistic hurdles regarding tribal affiliation and compliance.

Among the grantees, the Logan Museum of Anthropology at Beloit College in Wisconsin has received around $12,000 that will facilitate the repatriation of the remains of five individuals and 25 burial objects that were removed from Ventura County in California sometime between 1875 and 1889 by an archaeologist and later sold to the museum.

And the council of the Tlingit and Haida tribes has received nearly $100,000, which will fund consultation and documentation of sacred ceremonial objects that are currently held in the collections of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, the Rhode Island School of Design and the Museum of Us in San Diego, California.

More here.

Imagine the Smithsonian is under attack. This ‘army’ is ready.

Via The Washington Post, August 11, 2022

The Smithsonia Museum in the (fictional) country of Pinelandia was about to be attacked by (pretend) enemy forces. Pinelandia’s president asked the cultural heritage specialists at the (also made-up) joint military task force to assist the museum staff in evacuating the museum’s priceless (!) collection.

Wearing neon-yellow vests over their Army combat uniforms, 21 specialists who are actually Army reservists packed up the artifacts (a motley assortment of thrift store vases, paintings and tchotchkes) for transport to a safe location three kilometers away (really at the edge of the museum’s entrance plaza). As the mission progressed, a soldier (not) accidentally stepped through a painting, ripping it from its frame, and the reservists were forced to use pieces of the museum’s (not-so-precious) textile collection when they ran out of protective wrap. Meanwhile, word arrived that (nonexistent) townspeople were alarmed that American soldiers were looting the museum. Work stopped to quell those (imaginary) fears.

For five hours on Wednesday in a large conference room at the National Museum of the U.S. Army in Fort Belvoir, Va., the reservists — who in their civilian lives are archivists, art historians, archaeologists and professors — completed a tense role-playing exercise to train for the evacuation of priceless artifacts from a museum under threat. The drill was the centerpiece of the 10-day Army Monuments Officer Training program, a new partnership between the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative and the U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command that aims to boost the ranks of the Army’s corps of cultural heritage specialists, the modern-day version of the famous World War II Monuments Men. The partnership was formalized in October 2019, and the first session was scheduled for March 2020. The pandemic delayed it until this week.

More here.

Penn Museum to Bury Skulls of Enslaved People

Via The New York Times, August 9, 2022

More than 175 years after his death, a man named John Voorhees may finally have a proper burial.

Mr. Voorhees died of consumption, or tuberculosis, at a Philadelphia hospital for the poor in 1846, when he was 35 years old. But, after his death and without his consent or knowledge, his remains ended up in the hands of Samuel George Morton, a 19th-century physician and anatomist known for his influential racist theories on intellect.

Mr. Voorhees is one of 13 Black Philadelphians whose skulls were part of Mr. Morton’s collection. Come fall, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, known as the Penn Museum, is hoping to give them a traditional burial ceremony that it said was long overdue. Students had for years called for the remains to be returned to descendants.

More here.