THE OPPORTUNITY
The Program Officer will be responsible for shaping and managing program strategies, activities, and grantmaking in alignment with the ACC’s vision and goals. Reporting to the Director of Programs, the Program Officer will play a key front-facing role in leading the ACC’s grant programs and collaborate with the affiliate offices in Hong Kong, Manila, Taipei, and Tokyo to ensure that all efforts address ACC’s mission and regional programmatic priorities.

With members of the Programs Department, the Program Officer will help manage grant records, budgets, payments, and reports, and will oversee compliance throughout the grants administration process. They will actively develop partnerships and external networks with leaders in the arts and cultural sector to maintain and support ACC grantee and alumni relations across the 4 affiliate offices in Asia.

Position Duties and Responsibilities
Grantmaking

• Work with Director of Programs to design, plan, and implement ACC grant programs and strategy to advance the mission and maximize program impact.
• Manage the annual grantmaking and fellowship award process and recommend and implement improvements as needed.
• Responsibilities include, but not limited to:
  • identifying and driving the desired impact of ACC grants to meet overall ACC mission and objectives.
  • designing grant application guidelines.
  • conducting feasibility due diligence of select grant proposals.
  • reviewing grant applications for eligibility criteria and requirements.
  • developing selection criteria for panelists.
  • convening and organizing panel selection process for each grant cycle.
• Prepare and/or draft docket materials that summarize grant recommendations and budgets for consideration by the Director of Programs, Executive Director, and Board of Trustees.
• Partner with the Grants Administrator to maintain the grants management system (Akoya Go), process and track grant progress, and provide timely reports.
• Develop program matrix. Analyze data and adjust grant program/portfolio as appropriate.

Grantee/Alumni Relationships and Partnerships

• Serve as the primary point of contact for grantees.
• Effectively manage grantee relationships in collaboration with 4 affiliate offices. (approximately 40 grantees per year across 5 ACC offices). Serve as an internal and external point of contact for grant-related matters.
• Organize and lead orientation meetings for New York based grantees and develop local programs to provide ACC Fellowship program services. Program services provide grantees access and connections to institutions, alumni, and others in their respective fields to help maximize their grant experiences.
• Build and foster relationships with peer organizations for potential collaboration opportunities and act as a connector between grantees and partners.
• Work with the Grants Administrator to supply grantees’ J-1 visas, health insurance, and travel- related needs as required and necessary.
• Continuously engage and cultivate current grantees and ACC alumni.

Other Responsibilities

• Collaborate with the Marketing and Communications Department in its efforts to increase the visibility of ACC and to promote ACC’s grant programs, including call for applications, announcement, grantee/alumni activities, etc.
• Special projects and administrative responsibilities as assigned by the Director of Programs.
• Occasional evening and weekend attendance required for grantee/alumni activities.

Position Qualifications
Skills and Abilities

• Proven experience with and knowledge of a variety of grantmaking approaches.
• Organizational and project management skills with ability to independently lead projects.
• Experience with strategic planning/process optimization.
• Experience with managing data for the grantmaking system (e.g., Akoya Go), and analyzing and interpreting data to improve the effectiveness of grant programs.
• Skills in customer services and people management for diverse constituencies.
• Excellent writing and communication skills, strong oral presentation/storytelling skills.
• Strong aptitude for learning new technologies.
• Curiosity about a variety of arts disciplines and ability to connect and engage in a personable way with people from different cultures and backgrounds.
• Ability to work in a team-oriented environment to solve complex and unexpected challenges.

Education, Experience, and Knowledge

• Bachelor’s degree with 3-5 years of grantmaking experience.
• Experience in the arts and cultural field or with international organizations is a plus.
• Knowledge of Asia and language skills are helpful.

More here. 

NAGPRA Coordinator

Develops tribal relationships that acknowledge and respect a Tribe’s sovereignty, cultural protocols, and cultural and religious practices and knowledge. Works across the University of Connecticut’s departments and units to achieve the University’s goals around the timely and respectful return of Native American ancestors and cultural items. Ensures the University is compliant with all aspects of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and state-level policy and is responsible for the implementation of NAGPRA and related repatriation activities at UConn. This includes working with departments and other units to compile and maintain inventories of collections that fall under NAGPRA. Identify Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, or objects of cultural patrimony, prepare reports of findings, and present findings to tribal representatives for consultation as required by the NAGPRA regulatory process. Submit collections summaries and inventories to the National NAGPRA. Works with existing Curators and Collections managers of Archeological and Cultural Collections to review Native American Collections across departments and units to meet NAGPRA compliance requirements. Seeks grant funds to support repatriation and collaborative community projects.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• NAGPRA Coordinator Actions (70%):
  • Work with University departments and other units to inventory and create summaries of all human remains and associated/unassociated funerary objects on campus and complete a regular campus-wide audit.
  • Develop and implement outreach strategies to proactively engage Native American, Native Alaskan, and Native Hawaiian communities in NAGPRA consultations.
  • Oversee all aspects of NAGPRA tribal outreach involving complex external relations programs, projects, and events, including coordinating special programs, and overseeing the production of audio/visual or written and visual materials with Native American, Native Alaskan, and Native Hawaiian communities.
  • Advise, educate, and train the University and its counterparts in the procedures of NAGPRA repatriations as applicable.
  • Advise University personnel about repatriation best practices.
  • Address all repatriation requests made to the University.
  • Using institutional knowledge and awareness of constituency perception, assist with designing, developing, and implementing short and long-term strategic plans, programs, events, and activities.
  • Travel to relevant semi-annual meetings and conferences to research best practices in the field and/or to publicly present University NAGPRA activities where appropriate.
  • Identify and assist with preparing applications for grants to support campus and tribal NAGPRA efforts.
  • Quickly and appropriately identify, address/escalate, and mitigate unforeseen and/or rapidly unfolding events that may negatively impact relationships between the campus and tribal constituencies, keeping senior management appropriately advised and notified.
  • Support and coordinate regular meetings with the UConn Repatriation Committee.
• Curatorial (20%)
  • Collaborate with Native American Tribes and community members to create exhibitions and educational opportunities that support contemporary Native American interests.
  • Coordinate with the Office of State Archaeology (OSA) and the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History (CSMNH) to conduct collections rehabilitation and curation work with descendent communities and tribes to care for Native American collections at UConn.
  • Coordinate with the CSMNH and other relevant entities in the design, evaluation, and implementation of educational programs related to Native American cultures.
  • Carry out repatriation preparations including packing ancestors and belongings for return as needed.
• Administrative Work (10%)
  • Develop a curation plan for the University regarding Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, or objects of cultural patrimony.
  • Meet regularly with the Provost’s Office to ensure campus compliance with state and federal regulations as well as adequate funding and staffing.
  • Represent the University to the campus community and public in matters related to the Native American collections and UConn repatriation efforts.

More here. 

This Institute for Higher Education Faculty funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities brings together faculty and advanced graduate students in the humanities whose research addresses traumatic and/or controversial memories and histories and relies on archival or museum collections to interpret them. We will host 25 participants and an interdisciplinary faculty team for a three-week residential program at Indiana University Bloomington, providing participants the opportunity to utilize campus and local community collections. Institute participants will learn ways to honor and respect identities and issues that have often been suppressed and misrepresented in collections. Most importantly, they will learn and develop practices to engage and sustain contact with traumatic and controversial collections without becoming overwhelmed or debilitated, so that they may share what they have learned with each other, their students, and the communities that they serve.

By the end of the institute, participants will develop techniques for engaging collections as sites for learning, healing, and growth despite painful encounters, to benefit themselves, community members, and their students. For their culminating project, participants will prepare a plan for trauma mitigation, care for self and others, and healing as connected to engagements with one or more of the collections they have identified. The institute will help form an interdisciplinary network of humanities scholars who can share materials, seek advice, collaborate, and provide mutual support, operating as a dispersed community of practice.

Higher education faculty members (tenured, tenure track, or non-tenured, including staff in university and college archives, museums, and libraries) and advanced graduate students who have reached candidacy in a PhD program or are in the final year of another terminal degree program are invited to apply.

More here. 

Apply here. 

Via The New York Times, 4 February 2024

“What if museums give back so much art that they have nothing left to display?” As a scholar of the debates about returning cultural objects to the countries from which they were stolen, I have, over the years, heard many variations of that question. “Museums have lots and lots of stuff,” I usually answer, fighting the urge to roll my eyes. “It’s not like they’re just going to shut down.”

But in December, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced it would return a substantial proportion of its Khmer-era works to Cambodia, which is claiming still more, including nearly all the museum’s major Cambodian pieces. Last month, the American Museum of Natural History indefinitely closed two of its halls in response to new federal regulations about the display of Native American sacred and burial artifacts. Now Manhattan’s Rubin Museum of Art, which features art from the Himalayas, has announced that it will close later this year. The museum says the decision is unrelated to issues of cultural repatriation, but it comes after the museum faced many accusations of cultural theft and returned some prized pieces.

Clearly, I need to change my answer.

When stolen artifacts go back to their rightful owners, it is now clear, some display cases will indeed empty out, some galleries will shut their doors, and entire museums may even close. But it’s worth it. Repatriating these precious items is still the right thing to do, no matter the cost.

Why? Museums are supposed to educate us about other ways of being in the world. But looted artifacts alone — removed from their original context, quarantined in an antiseptic display case — cannot do this. Unlike, say, Impressionist paintings or Pop Art sculptures, ritual objects were not meant to be seen in a gallery at a time of the viewer’s choosing. Used alongside music, scents and tastes, these holy relics are tools to help participants in rituals achieve a transcendent experience. Imagine looking at a glow stick necklace and thinking it could teach you what it’s like to greet the sunrise dancing ecstatically with hundreds of strangers.

• Care about a vibrant and diverse museum anthropology?
• Enjoy working in small teams and getting sh*t done?
• Wish you could promote great working happening in your field?
• Value mentorship and opportunities to connect across generations?

Anne Ray Internship

The School for Advanced Research, Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) offers two nine-month internships (September 1–May 31) to individuals who are recent college graduates, current graduate students, or junior museum professionals interested in furthering their professional museum experience and enhancing their intellectual capacity for contributing to the expanding field and discourse of museum studies. The internships include a semi-monthly salary, free housing and utilities, a book allowance, the cost of one professional conference, and reimbursable travel to and from SAR. One internship is open to an Indigenous individual from the U.S. or Canada, and one internship is open to any U.S. or Canadian citizen meeting the application requirements.

Interns devote their time to working on IARC educational programming, research and writing activities, and collections management and registration. Other requirements include making one public presentation; attending a professional conference; assisting with IARC seminars, symposia, and collection tours; and working on outreach initiatives to local Native communities. Interns will also participate in interviews, photo sessions, video recordings, and exit interviews to document their experience.

For more information, please visit our online application portal or download the Anne Ray Internship Application. The deadline to apply is March 1st.

More here. 

Project Coordinator, Rethinking Relationships

Grade 6: £32,332 – £38,205

Full-time, fixed term for 33 months

Rethinking Relationships is a collaboration to develop and adapt museum practice to build trust with communities and improve access to collections from Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda. It aims to respond to questions all museums must face about how they interpret, record, and acquire collections. You will be based at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford but will work across the four partner museums which are the Pitt Rivers Museum, Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Horniman Museum and Gardens and the World Museum Liverpool.

This is an essential role for the successful delivery and achievement of this ambitious project. You will be a central, focal contact point who understands the aims and outcomes of the work. You will be key to the successful development of the network of communities, co-ordination with partner organisation as well as the drawing together of toolkits, guidance, and digital outputs. You will work closely with the two part-time Relationship Managers and relevant staff from the four museums.

Closing date: 25 January 2024

Via The New York Times, 9 January 2024

Watch the film here.

The idea for this film began when a friend was planning an exhibition featuring Congolese artwork. She was considering including the documentary “Under the Black Mask” (1958), by the Belgian filmmaker Paul Haesaerts, but was unsure how to present the piece, which contains voice-over and images that stereotype and exoticize Congolese culture. How could we adequately contextualize a work by a filmmaker from Belgium created in the final years of that country’s decades-long, brutal colonial occupation of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo?

Even if the original film were presented with commentary, such critique typically appears offscreen, only available to those who choose to or are able to seek it out. I suggested that we instead create a new film that would reframe the original imagery.

I began by selecting images from “Under the Black Mask” that gave me the feeling that the masks faced me directly, allowing them to momentarily escape Haesaerts’ frame. What would these images have said if they had a voice? We decided to replace the narration with excerpts from Aimé Césaire’s seminal work “Discourse on Colonialism,” which argued that colonization dehumanizes the colonizer and was published less than a decade before the original film was made. It was a text I had carried close to my heart for many years.

More here. 

Information Sessions on Internships: Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC/USA

January 9, 2023, 12:00 – 1:30 pm EST/11:00 am – 12:30 pm CST/9:00 am – 10:30 pm PST

January 11, 2023, 3:00 – 4:30 pm EST/2:00 – 3:30 pm CST/12:00 – 1:30 pm PST

Looking for an internship in 2024? We’re hiring interns to support the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, celebrating “Indigenous Voices of the Americas” and the 20th anniversary of Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian opening on the National Mall.

Our interns are involved in all aspects of Festival planning and production, including event organization, social media,  graphic design, foodways, curatorial research, accessibility, participant and volunteer coordination, video production, administration, and more! Internships are open to undergraduate, graduate, and upper-level high-school students, as well as non-students. For the 2024 program, individuals from Native and Indigenous communities are encouraged to apply.

If you’re interested in learning more about Smithsonian internships, register for one of our info sessions: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/4eb53fe8da5a4441ab1e0ca678e427e3

• Fellowships and Internships: https://www.si.edu/ofi
• Internships at the National Museum of the American Indian: https://internships.si.edu/opportunity/internships-national-museum-american-indian
• Fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution: https://fellowships.si.edu/

Email Contacts: https://www.si.edu/contacts

Collections Assistant Intern

Department: Museum Programs
Location: Petersen Center, Mackinaw City
Start Date/End Date: early June through August
Pay Rate: $2,000 stipend upon successful completion of the internship; Free Housing

Accepting applications for the 2024 season.

Scope of Duties:
The intern position in Mackinaw City will be responsible for inventorying, cataloging and other general collections work. Duties may also include organization and cataloging of historic photograph or archival collections material and assisting in conservation treatments and research. Based on the individual’s interests and skills, the intern may also have opportunities to participate in costumed interpretation or visitor evaluation. May also have other duties as assigned.

Housing:
Mackinac State Historic Parks (MSHP) will offer free housing in Mackinaw City to the selected individual in return for 32 hours per week of internship duties. Housing is dormitory-style with kitchen facilities available. We will also attempt to find a paid position within our organization for up to 15 hours per week to assist with spending money.

General Information:
The workstation for this position is the Petersen Center in Mackinaw City. The intern may be assigned duties at other MSHP sites on Mackinac Island and in Mackinaw City as park needs dictate. The work schedule may vary according to park needs and may include occasional weekend and evening work. Generally, this is a 32-hour per week internship working Monday through Thursday.

Position Requirements:
-Must be 18 years or older as of first date of internship.
-Must be pursuing or have graduated with a degree in History, Museum Studies, Library Science or related field.
-Education and experience in basic museum practices.
-Knowledge of collections management, policies and procedures.
-Knowledge of computers and good word processing skills.
-The successful candidate should have experience in museum inventorying, artifact handling, marking and cataloging.

Physical Requirements:
Stretching and bending are moves commonly made throughout the day by interns in this position. The intern must have the ability to do the following activities, with or without reasonable accommodation: frequent lifting, carrying, transporting, loading and unloading of up to 35 pounds, walking long distances and up steep inclines in all weather conditions, frequent twisting, bending, stooping, reaching and grasping, sitting and/or standing for long periods of time, and the ability to utilize ferry boat transportation to and from Mackinac Island. This position also requires the individual to walk over uneven terrain and up steep inclines.

Length of Internship:
Position interns for 12 weeks starting in early June through late August. The start and end dates of the internship may be adjusted if the applicant’s school schedule requires it. The individual must indicate on their employment application their dates of availability.

Contact:
If you have specific questions regarding this position, please contact Brian Jaeschke, Curator of Collections, 231-436-4100, extension 107.

Due to the high volume of applications, only those applicants invited to interview will be contacted.

Application Information and Deadline:
Click here to fill out an application online.

More here.