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PEM’s Chinese Art collection, the oldest in the United States, offers comprehensive coverage of a broad range of arts and objects from the region and spans the last three hundred years. Areas of strength include textiles (clothing is a specific area of strength), ceramics, decorative arts, paintings (including two significant imperial portraits), prints, calligraphy and sculptures. The collection also includes examples of contemporary Chinese art and works that manifest influences from American and European cultures.

Of unique importance to the Museum is Yin Yu Tang, a 220-year-old Qing dynasty merchant’s home from Anhui Province that was transported to the museum in its entirety. Yin Yu Tang—translated as “Hall of Plentiful Shelter”—was home to the Huang family for nearly two hundred years. Representing Chinese culture from around 1800 to the late twentieth century, Yin Yu Tang reveals the Huizhou region’s unique architectural style as well as diverse cultural changes that occurred in China throughout the home’s occupancy. Moved from its original location in China to Massachusetts, the house was transformed from a multigenerational family residence into an historic-house experience in a museum setting at PEM, opening to the public in 2003.

The recent gift of more than 1,600 modern and contemporary photographs from the Joy of Giving Something Foundation has made PEM one of the leading institutions for Asian photography in the world. The Phillips Library’s collection of ships’ logs, diaries, cargo lists, commercial papers, firsthand accounts, and rare books and maps document the United States’ early ties to China. Specifically, the Frederick Townsend Ward Collection at the Phillips Library is one of the world’s outstanding collections of Western-language books, pamphlets, periodicals and rare maps and prints on the history of China, while the Library’s Herbert Offen Research Collection emphasizes Chinese architecture, furniture and gardens. PEM’s Chinese art collection is richly complemented by the museum’s collections of art from other areas of East and South Asia as well as its collections of Asian export art, textiles, maritime art and culture, photography and library holdings. The museum’s photography collection includes over 2,500 photographs of nineteenth-century China, many of them distinctive or exceedingly rare.

THE POSITION
PEM is committed to generating fresh interpretations and new appreciation for historic and contemporary Chinese art and cultural expressions, including those from diverse diasporic communities. The museum seeks a creative and innovative curator with specific experience working with Chinese vernacular art, architecture, and history, and a strong commitment to PEM’s forward-thinking interpretation and programming goals. The Curator of Chinese Art and Culture will be an innovative storyteller who will bring bold, imaginative thinking to PEM’s cross-departmental programs and exhibitions, and will be able to confidently engage diverse audiences with exhibitions and programs that compel new thinking about human creativity, material culture, social history and the contemporary relevance of historical objects. The curator will be an enterprising team player with an exploratory mind who, in addition to re-thinking the interpretive approach and design of PEM’s Yin Yu Tang gallery, will also organize collections-based and traveling exhibitions and participate in a robust set of programs, organized collaboratively with staff in other departments.

PEM’s culture is collaborative, and curators regularly work across collections and departments, celebrating intersections and discovery, to create immersive, out-of-the-box visitor experiences. The curator will work closely with the entire PEM curatorial team, particularly the Curators of Maritime Art and History, Photography, and Asian Export Art, and across all museum departments, but specifically with Exhibition Planning and Design, Learning and Civic Engagement, Collection Services, and Marketing and Communications, to ensure that the program achieves the highest professional standards of creativity, innovation, quality, relevance and visitor engagement.

RESPONSIBILITIES

EXHIBITIONS:

• Lead the project team to develop and realize an innovative new interpretive gallery and associated programming for Yin Yu Tang
• Organize exhibitions and collection installations that consistently:
  • Reflect and advance trends in the field
  • Deliver original, dynamic, and interdisciplinary concepts that create broadly appealing experiences
  • Explore connections between the historical and the contemporary
  • Enhance PEM’s reputation, patronage, and relationships with other museums and cultural and community partners
  • Attract positive critical attention
• Build and sustain partnerships with peers and other museums to:
  • Secure or co-organize traveling exhibitions that match the above profile
  • Oversee the installation, production, and generate programming for incoming traveling exhibitions
  • Ensure that PEM has a slate of quality exhibition options from which to choose to create a balanced, highly appealing, impactful and cost-effective exhibition program
  • Place PEM exhibitions in strategic venues
• Collaborate with relevant departments to develop public and patron programs that appeal broadly to audiences regionally, nationally, internationally and online

CULTIVATION:

• Cultivate and secure direct support for museum-wide initiatives and specific projects on an annual basis from individuals, patron groups such as visiting committees, foundations, corporations, and government agencies
• Collaborate with other curators, executive leadership, development staff, and trustees to accomplish fundraising goals.

THE COLLECTION & ACQUISITIONS:

• Ensure the ability of the collection to support PEM strategic goals far into the future
• Develop collecting goals and an action plan that address a five-year horizon; identify and justify specific key areas and examples; estimate overall value or costs associated with goals; identify ways to secure new sources of support for acquisitions, and enhance the Visiting Committee’s membership, activities, support and understanding of the museum’s acquisition goals
• Secure works of superlative quality to strengthen the museum’s ability to display and interpret the collection, attract visitors and patrons, and make strategic loans to other museums’ exhibitions
• Promote the collection as an intellectual, learning, and research resource for the benefit of the public
• Strategically add works to the collection to expand its scope and build on existing strengths
• PEM holds as one of its core values the commitment to stewarding its collection for current and future generations of people in Massachusetts, the United States, and the world. PEM is committed to the ideals of diversity, equity, inclusion and access, and this curator must steward and expand a collection that represents these values
• Welcome audiences of all backgrounds, races, ethnicities, religious affiliations, sexual orientations and gender identifications to the museum by collecting and acquiring works that reflect and represent these diverse constituencies
• Periodically reassess collecting priorities
• Ensure appropriate access to the collection and related information for PEM staff, the museum community, scholars, collectors, and the public, including the differently abled and those with sensory sensitivities
• Provide adequate and expansive documentation of the collection

LEADERSHIP AND COLLABORATION:

• Create new approaches and build awareness and support for Chinese art and culture at PEM
• Identify and implement strategies for interdisciplinary and intra-collection experiences and connections between the historical and contemporary
• Write and lecture for PEM and for strategic high-profile and peer-review outlets in ways that recognize both the museum and the curator as leaders in the field
• Lead or serve on teams and task forces to plan and implement specific projects and museum-wide initiatives that align with PEM’s strategic planning
• Collaborate with the Curatorial Team and across the museum, especially with Exhibition Planning and Design, Learning and Civic Engagement, Collection Services, Development, and Marketing and Communications, on a variety of projects
• Develop and administer realistic budgets, work plans, and schedules, and practice accountability

QUALIFICATIONS

• 7 years or more of curatorial practice or comparable experience, preferably in a museum or other cultural institution. An MA is required; PhD degree in Art History or related Humanities preferred. Fluency in English and Chinese, specifically written, spoken, and reading fluency in both languages

ESSENTIAL EXPERIENCE AND ABILITIES

• Well-developed connoisseurship and recognized expertise in Chinese art, architecture, history and material culture
• A robust, well-developed professional network of peers in the field
• Enthusiasm for new forms of engagement in curatorial practice and multidisciplinary thinking
• Resourcefulness and nimbleness; ability to work independently, self-direct, and adjust to changing priorities
• Passion for collaboration and team-oriented work style, ability to build team spirit
• A good listener, will recognize and reward the contribution of others
• Enthusiasm and desire to engage with the community of Salem and the greater Metro-Boston area
• Excellent writing, research, speaking, and interpersonal communication skills
• Time management and multitasking skills
• Initiative in identifying and fulfilling needs and implementing new administrative systems

HOW TO APPLY
Nominations and inquiries welcome. To apply email cover letter, résumé and the
names of 3 references with contact information by June 9, 2023 to Connie Rosemont, Senior Search Consultant at searchandref@museum-search.com. Applicants are encouraged to apply early as candidates will be considered on a rolling basis. References will not be contacted
without prior authorization.

The Peabody Essex Museum is committed to diversity among its employees and encourages qualified candidates from all backgrounds to apply.

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