Opportunity to direct a vibrant AAM-accredited art museum in the wide-open high plains of the Southwest. The Ellen Noël Art Museum (“the Museum”), http://www.noelartmuseum.org celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2016, has an expanding collection of 800 works of American art from 1850 to contemporary. With a purpose-built facility, highly professional approach, and energetic, well-trained staff of 12, this museum provides an opportunity to lead a $1M-annual-budget art museum and to try new ideas for a receptive Board, creative staff, and diverse visiting public. The West Texas Triangle consortium of five AAM-accredited museums in the region provides opportunities for collaboration. The Board is open to candidates who direct a smaller museum or Kunsthalle or who are deputy directors, chief curators, curators with administrative experience, or education/engagement directors or other department heads with an art background and fundraising experience. Live in sunny climate in a friendly community in Texas oil country, where community leaders support the arts and expect the same high-quality exhibitions as the big-city museums. As a Smithsonian Affiliate, the Museum can borrow important artworks and traveling exhibitions, and the Museum also produces its own exhibitions, often with loans from private collections, national artists, and other museums. Free admission, educational programs for schoolchildren and lively events for young professionals and adults round out the program. The Museum also features a notable Sculpture & Sensory Garden for people with visual impairments (http://www.noelartmuseum.org/visit/sensory-garden. OPPORTUNITIES OF THE POSITION 1. Lead a financially healthy, growing museum with a positive, can-do organizational culture and an eagerness to try new things and engage new audiences. 2. Provide a strategic vision for the Museum as it enters its fourth decade. 3. Bring to fruition a proposed expansion of the museum that is now in the discussion phase. 4. Be a mentor for a talented young staff of professionals. 5. Collaborate with civic and cultural leaders on Imagine Arts, a cultural master plan for Odessa. 6. Be a member of the West Texas Triangle, an innovative consortium of five museums that share ideas, exhibits, and promotional opportunities. 7. Make a mark and leave a legacy within five years at a museum constantly trying new ideas. 8. Work, live, and engage in Odessa, a friendly community, a city with a small-town feel, passionate arts supporters, and an affordable cost of living. SUMMARY JOB DESCRIPTION The Executive Director provides administrative leadership and oversight, including leading and empowering a talented team of 12 professional staff and 40 volunteers to execute operations, enhancing the quality of programs and collections, cultivating donors, and growing financial resources. Reporting to the President of the Board of Directors and working in partnership with the staff, the Executive Director is responsible for the intellectual and programmatic direction of the Museum and collaborates with staff, community leaders, donors, collectors, industry contacts and others to implement a vision aligned with the mission and priorities. Responsibilities include oversight of external and community relations, audience development and participation, fund development, strategic planning, and overall internal operational, financial, and administrative responsibilities. He/she maintains a positive, team-spirited, respectful institutional culture, which balances the diversity and vibrancy of the West Texas community and the museum’s exhibitions and programs with the efficacy of best practices, fiscal accountability, and institutional impact. He/she oversees the assets and budget to achieve an appropriate balance among all sources of revenue, earned and philanthropic. He/she thinks creatively and strategically to cultivate and develop new sources of revenue while maintaining and increasing the support of existing donors. Primary Responsibilities are in these 5 areas: 1. Institutional advancement, including fundraising and marketing 2. Education, outreach and community relations 3. Collections stewardship, exhibition and program planning 4. Operational and strategic planning 5. Governance and financial management Competitive compensation, commensurate with experience, and a standard benefits package including health insurance and a retirement matching feature. REQUIRED KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES 1. Minimum of four years’ museum experience in a director, deputy director, senior curator, or management position. 2. Experience managing staff, especially energetic, creative professionals. Track record of hiring, mentoring, and retaining staff, and of welcoming volunteers. 3. MA in art history, museum studies, or related field. Broad knowledge of American art helpful. 4. Big-picture mentality to advance a whole museum and to participate in cultural planning for a city. Future-oriented leader who will take risks and try new things to enlarge membership and attract new audiences, and empower staff to do the same. Good listener, open to new ideas. 5. Fundraising experience, preferably including individual and corporate gifts, grants, and events. Understanding of membership programs, annual funds, and capital gifts is desirable. Ability to attract new members and donors and to steward current relationships is essential. 6. Inspirational and motivational leader, a civic booster who will embrace the Museum, city, and region and serve as the public face of the Museum in the community. Friendly down-to-earth personality with no airs. 7. Ability to talk in an engaging and persuasive manner about art, wide-ranging exhibitions and programs, and the value of museums to varied constituencies including collectors, civic officials, foundations, members, and a diverse public. 8. Knowledge of museum standards, best practices, and trends to maintain the Museum’s AAM accreditation, oversee an active exhibition program, and keep the museum moving forward. 9. Expertise, skills, and desire to engage a broader, more diverse audience, beyond the Museum’s traditional audiences, to better reflect the population profile of the region. 10. Desire to increase educational opportunities for people of the region who have little other access to art. Believes in keeping the Museum a welcoming place. 11. Capability to reach out to the Hispanic community, which makes up about 50% of the city’s population and 71% of the public school population. Spanish language ability is a plus. 12. Ability to analyze monthly financial reports and strategically use them to monitor and balance the annual budget. 13. Willingness to wear many hats, do whatever is needed to get the job done. Experience in small to mid-size museum desirable. Experience at a museum with free admission a plus. 14. Desire to live in a hospitable, friendly small city in the Southwest. Person who enjoys a small-town feel, where you run into people you know. 15. Plans to stay in the position for at least five years. Position offers the chance to make a major impact in 4-5 years and to maintain excitement over a longer tenure as well. SELECTION CRITERIA The Executive Director will bring an optimistic, pragmatic, and entrepreneurial perspective to maintain an effective management team and organizational culture that best serves the Museum’s mission, vision, and goals. A confident but open-minded manager, he/she will have a proven track record and possess exceptional teamwork, communication, revenue-enhancement, and leadership skills. He/she will have an appreciation of the values, history, and traditions of the Museum and the West Texas community it serves. HOW TO APPLY: Nominations welcome. Apply in confidence: Email cover letter, résumé (Word document preferred), salary requirement, and names of 3 references with contact information by August 17, 2014 to retained search firm: Marilyn Hoffman, Museum Search & Reference, SearchandRef@museum-search.com. EOE. References will not be contacted without prior permission of the applicant. MORE ABOUT THE MUSEUM Known for its nationally and regionally significant exhibitions and for its outstanding educational programming for all ages, the Museum opened in 1985 and expanded in 1998 to its current 22,000 square feet of gallery space, with 3 major galleries, offices, 2 classrooms, library, state-of-the-art collections storage, and an enclosed garden. An independent nonprofit, the Museum is governed by a 24-member board and has a $9M endowment. The Museum concentrates its collecting primarily on American art from 1850 to the present with nearly 400 artists represented by 800 works in all media, from outdoor sculpture to sound art. Exhibitions have ranged from “Russian Icons,” “British Paintings 1550-1800,” “American Art Glass, 1880-1940” and 19th-century landscapes to contemporary photography, painting, and crafts. An exhibition of a contemporary sculptor is curated annually with the West Texas Triangle consortium. See: http://www.westtexastriangle.com/. Programs and events include school-group visits, gallery walks, art history and creative studio art classes and workshops for pre-school children through adults, as well as the Teen Artist Residency Program and a summer art camp. The ArtHaus, a hands-on area for families, features story hours and make-and-take art activities. The 3D Printing Studio includes three MakerBot Replicator 2s as well as a MakerBot scanner. Forty volunteers help ensure year-round dynamic programming. The celebrated George and Milly Rhodus Sculpture and Sensory Garden is accessible and user-friendly to visually and physically challenged visitors, of which there are an estimated 11,000 in the Permian Basin region. The Garden offers fragrant and tactile plants and bronze and stone sculptures which can be touched. Braille brochures, raised floorplan charts, and audio tours are provided, and docents give sight-assisted tours. The garden also provides a shady location for relaxation and special events for all. Special events are held throughout the year, some to support the museum and others to attract new visitors. ABOUT ODESSA AND THE REGION In 2014, Forbes magazine ranked Odessa as the third fastest-growing small city in the United States. Located 4.5 hours west of Dallas/Fort Worth or Austin, 6 hours from Santa Fe, and 3 hours from the art scene in Marfa, TX, the Midland-Odessa metropolitan area has a population of 280,000. With the airport within 15 minutes, air travel to any major city is a connection away. Odessa and nearby Midland are home to a variety of cultural organizations and performance venues, including the Wagner Noel Performing Arts Center, opened in 2011, which hosts musical concerts, ballet, and symphonic performances bringing some of the biggest names in entertainment. The Globe Theater presents classical and modern plays using a replica of Shakespeare’s Elizabethan stage. The Permian Playhouse hosts community theater performances and offers classes and summer camps. Lovers of symphony and opera can enjoy performances of the Midland-Odessa Symphony and Chorale and the Midland Opera Theater. Annual events in Odessa range from a Blues festival to a Shakespeare festival, Cinco de Mayo 3-day fiesta, Juneteenth celebration, and the Firecracker Fandango on July 4. For more cultural events, visit: http://www.odessaarts.org/. Odessa is also home to the University of Texas Permian Basin and Odessa College. Nearby Midland has 6 museums, including the Museum of the Southwest with its art gallery, planetarium, and children’s museum; and the interactive Petroleum Museum, plus antique centers, the George W. Bush Childhood Home, and events from SeptemberFest to the Nutcracker. Odessa/Midland is also Texas’s #2 “Top Bookish Destination;” see: http://www.lonestarliterary.com/. Sports enthusiasts can enjoy an Odessa Jackalopes hockey game or Midland Rockhounds minor league baseball game or follow the annual Sandhills Horse Show and Rodeo.Outdoor and nature lovers can visit the Odessa Meteor Crater and its Museum and Visitor Center and enjoy hiking and birding at Odessa’s Comanche Trails Park and I-20 Wildlife Preserve in Midland. Big Bend National Park or Carlsbad Caverns can be explored over a weekend visit, and in winter skiers can head to the mountains of eastern New Mexico 5 hours away. For more, visit City of Odessa: http://www.odessa-tx.gov/. Odessa Convention and Visitors Bureau: www.odessacvb.com Odessa Chamber of Commerce: http://odessachamber.com/ Odessa Hispanic Chamber of Commerce: http://www.odessahcc.org/