Ruth Gordon Shapiro '37 Director of the Davis Museum

**At Wellesley, our mission is to deliver an outstanding liberal arts education to women who will make a difference in the world. Our collaborative community, comprising of faculty, students, staff, and alumnae, is guided by our shared commitment to educational excellence. Join us in this transformative journey!****Application Instructions:****When submitting your application, please adhere to the following requirements:*** **Carefully review all job details prior to applying.*** **Enter your legal name exactly as it appears on your government-issued identification.*** **Upload a comprehensive résumé/CV and cover letter in either PDF (.pdf) or Word (.doc) format.****Current Wellesley College employees must submit applications through the internal Workday portal by searching “browse jobs.”****Job Posting Title**Ruth Gordon Shapiro '37 Director of the Davis Museum**Job Description Summary**Admin Exempt**Job Description****The Davis Museum**The Davis Museum is one of Wellesley College’s great assets, providing for the care and inventive display of distinguished permanent collections and for the presentation of a rich and varied schedule of temporary exhibitions and programs. A teaching museum, the Davis Museum is a critical resource that is used not only to teach art and art history but also to engage Wellesley College students from across the disciplines in exploring the intersections between art and other fields. The Davis Museum seeks to be a leading academic museum on a liberal arts college campus for the 21st century.Wellesley College began collecting original works of art upon its founding in 1875 and opened the Farnsworth Art Museum in 1889. The museum moved to the Jewett Arts Center in 1958, and to its current home in the Davis Museum in 1993. The study of original art objects has been integral to teaching across the disciplines at Wellesley since the College’s founding. Notably, Wellesley introduced the teaching of art history in 1885 and distinguished itself as one of the first American colleges to offer the subject. The College’s collections have served as the foundation for Wellesley’s renown in the field of art history since Alice Van Vechten Brown introduced what became known as “the Wellesley Method” in the late nineteenth-century: an art history pedagogy that intertwined the study of original works of art with art-making, lectures, and reading.Since the 1990s, the Davis has continued its leadership in the field of academic museums with innovative crossdisciplinary education through the visual arts, expanding far beyond its original remit as an extension of the Art Department. Today, the Davis Museum stewards approximately 15,500 works of art and hosts over 100 class visits from departments across Wellesley each academic year. Widely recognized for its adventurous exhibitions and dynamic programming, the Davis attracts diverse audiences from on and off campus and provides unique learning opportunities for Wellesley students.The Davis Museum was the first building in North America to have been designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rafael Moneo, whose notion of the museum as a “treasury” or “treasure chamber” informs its design. Adjacent to the Academic Quad and connected by enclosed bridge to the Jewett Arts Center, the Davis is at the heart of the arts on the Wellesley campus. As a resource for academic research and study, and a source of innovative programming, the Davis occupies a prominent space at the center of the intellectual and aesthetic life of the College community. The Davis’s facilities for the display and study of art include four floors of galleries; a print study room; a seminar room linked by elevator to permanent collection storage areas; collection care areas, staff workspaces and offices. The complex also houses the Collins Cinema, a 168 seat lecture theater fully equipped for presenting film and electronic media, and the Collins Café.The Davis Museum stewards a long-term collection of 15,500 artworks, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, photographs, and more. Strengths of the collection include photography, works on paper, ancient Mediterranean art, African art, Asian ceramics, European paintings, arts of the Americas, and contemporary art. Intertwined with the College’s curriculum, the Museum’s galleries reflect the scholarship produced by students, staff, and faculty. The Davis offers unique opportunities to learn about history and our present moment. The stories in the galleries emphasize crosscultural encounters and artists’ innovative responses to the world as it changes around them. Students learn at the Museum in classes from departments across Wellesley. They also learn by doing: greeting and giving tours to visitors, working with museum staff, and advising on exhibitions and programming. The Davis’s interdisciplinary approach prepares students for creative achievement in every field.The Wellesley College Art Department has a close relationship with the Davis, making extensive use of their collection to teach in the direct presence of art objects. Curators and staff at the Davis provide lectures and tours. Art Department faculty also give public lectures in the museum galleries. The Davis works with Studio Art faculty on occasional faculty art exhibitions, giving the College community an opportunity to fully experience the work of its artist professors. Wellesley College students may engage with the Davis as visitors, as student workers/docents, as summer interns, and as members of the Davis Museum Student Advisory Committee (DMSAC). The Davis Museum has an annual budget of approximately $3.2 million and a team of 17 FTEs when fully staffed. Nearly 50 students work at the museum throughout the year as well.To learn more about The Davis, please visit https://www1.wellesley.edu/davismuseum**Wellesley College**Wellesley College is one of the most academically rigorous institutions of higher education in the country, and is widely acknowledged as the top women’s college in the world. The College’s mission is to provide “an excellent liberal arts education for women who will make a difference in the world.” For nearly 150 years, Wellesley graduates have been a powerful force for good in the world—pioneering scientists, environmental revolutionaries, U.S. secretaries of state, civil rights activists, investment trailblazers, network news producers, and genre-defying artists. Today, Wellesley has an undergraduate enrollment of approximately 2,300 students from all over the world.The College recently launched the “Wellesley In The World” (WITW) initiative to highlight and amplify the impact of the College’s students and faculty, faculty, and alumnae in the world. The Davis Museum is an important part of this initiative given its dual focus on internal and external audiences, and the museum frequently works in partnership with other centers on campus. These include the Wagner Centers for WITW – which encompasses the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute, the Hillary Rodham Clinton Center for Citizenship, Leadership, and Democracy, and the Wellesley Centers for Women – as well as several more internally focused centers: the Knapp Social Science Center, the Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities, the Camila Frost Chandler ‘47 Center for the Environment, the Botanic Gardens, and the Science Complex.The arts facilities at Wellesley include the Davis Museum, the Jewett Arts Center, the newly renovated Pendleton West (which houses some studio art and music facilities), and Alumnae Hall (which includes the Diana Chapman Walsh Auditorium and Ruth Nagel Jones Black Box Theatre). The College is poised for a transformative renovation of Jewett and the reimagination of its arts facilities into a new Arts Complex. This is an opportunity to ensure that the College’s arts program is future-forward and that arts are a vibrant center of life, energy, ideas, and experimentation #J-18808-Ljbffr