MISSION
The Oakland Museum of California’s mission is to inspire all Californians to create a more vibrant future for themselves and their communities. As a community gathering place, we strive to create a sense of welcome and belonging for visitors – to build trust, connection, and understanding between communities and people. As a museum, we engage with our communities in telling the untold and undertold stories of California utilizing OMCA’s collection of more than 1.9 million objects that include seminal art works, historical artifacts, ethnographic objects, natural specimens, and photographs. Our exhibitions and programs explore and reveal the factors that shape California’s character and identity, from its extraordinary natural landscapes, to successive waves of migration, to its unique culture of creativity and innovation.
BACKGROUND & CONTEXT
OMCA opened its doors more than fifty years ago in 1969, bringing together three civic museums of art, history and natural sciences that dated back to the early 20th century. This progressive multidisciplinary approach allowed its visitors to celebrate the many facets of California through a more immersive and holistic sensory experience, housed within a landmark building and seven-acre campus and framed as the “museum of the people.” A dozen years ago, OMCA undertook a major renovation and transformed its collection galleries in order to build upon the Museum’s original multidisciplinary and civic-minded intent by improving integration of OMCA's collections and programs, strengthening its role as a public forum, and creating new opportunities for visitor participation. The collection galleries are animated by innovative interpretive tools and interactive features, and gathering spaces and program areas engage visitors and encourage them to share their own perspectives, questions, and stories. OMCA has just completed another phase of its campus renovation with the transformation of its roof-top terraces and gardens and creation of two new entries that connect the campus with the surrounding neighborhood.
As the only museum in California dedicated explicitly and exclusively to the state’s natural, cultural and artist history, the Museum’s collections extend throughout the state and have strength in both contemporary and historic art, material culture, and natural specimens. OMCA identifies three primary uses for our collections: Bridging, Bonding, and Self-Knowledge. OMCA’s collections preserve, document and exemplify the past for the future, catalyzing discussion and debate on urgent and compelling issues in California with the goal of creating a shared understanding. OMCA is a place of social connection, and collections provide opportunities for diverse communities to see themselves at the museum, tell their stories, and connect with others. OMCA’s collections also build personal experiences by evoking and provoking extraordinary emotional and intellectual responses.
OMCA nurtures its deep ties to the community by offering many educational and public programs. OMCA welcomes schools, scholars, local audiences, and all visitors to participate in its events and activities and to discover their place in California's past, present, and future. In the most recent year prior to its closing in March 2020 due to the pandemic, more than 25,000 K-12 students experienced OMCA’s programs and more than 350,000 people visited the museum, 30% of whom were first-time visitors and 56% of whom are people of color.
THE OPPORTUNITY
In Spring 2021, OMCA undertook a staff organizational redesign that places equity, inclusion and anti-racism at the center of its organizational structure. The organizational design includes three broad functional units or “circles” (Advancement and Engagement, Content and Experience, and Organizational Effectiveness/Shared Resources) as well as self-directed cross-functional teams designed to support equity, innovation, collaboration, and leadership development at every level of the organization. Within this structure, OMCA fosters a practice of distributed leadership and collaborative decision-making, with senior leadership positions serving as coaches, mentors, and facilitators. This position co-leads the Content and Experience circle that includes the Curatorial, Collections, Production, and Learning, Experience, and Programming Departments.
The Senior Director of Curatorial Affairs position at OMCA provides an opportunity to help lead an institution that is exploring what it means to be a museum in true service to its community and centering equity, justice, and inclusion. The Museum has achieved major goals over the past several years in placing community and visitors at the center of its multidisciplinary programming, taking on urgent and compelling issues in its exhibition topics, exploring new approaches to collecting and collection access, and positioning itself as a vital town square. As a result of its programmatic development, its recent campus renovation, and the organizational design based on “north stars” of anti-racism, innovation, collaboration, and leadership development, OMCA now announces itself as a museum, a garden and gathering place -- a space that functions as both a steward and interpreter of California’s cultural and environmental heritage, and a civic anchor for Oakland. As the institution weathers and emerges from the pandemic, we are looking ahead to our next phase of development, how we advance our mission and values, and how we hold ourselves accountable to the diverse community that is Oakland, the Bay Area, and California.
OMCA will be launching a new strategic planning initiative in fall 2022 and the position will play a central role - partnering with the Board, members of the Senior Directors Council, and the broader staff and community - in shaping the vision, priorities and strategy for the institution, particularly in the areas of exhibitions, content development, and collection presentation and access. The position collaborates with a directors’ council that shares responsibility for overall institutional direction in a structure that fosters innovation and experimentation, and with a team that is both highly skilled and experienced, and committed to learning and risk-taking. The Museum’s Board of Trustees is fully aligned with the institutional commitment to anti-racism and equity, and OMCA is situated in a community of great diversity and fierce community pride, known for its social movements, its environmental activism, and its creativity. The position offers the opportunity for both bold action and inspiring growth.
THE POSITION
The Senior Director of Curatorial Affairs is responsible for the overarching vision and strategy that bring together exhibitions, collection gallery installations, and collection initiatives that support OMCA’s brand as a museum, garden and gathering place and that advance its social impact of building trust, understanding, and connection between people and communities. Working closely with the Executive Director and other team leaders, the position leads the development of a comprehensive content calendar for the Museum’s temporary exhibitions and collection installations that showcase the breadth of OMCA’s interdisciplinary collections, center equity and community voice, engage multiple constituencies, and tell the unique and compelling stories of Oakland and California. The position also co-leads the Content and Experience “circle” comprising departments that collaborate to create a dynamic and integrated set of programs that align with the Museum’s mission and achieve OMCA’s audience, social impact, and financial sustainability goals. As a member of the Senior Directors Council, the position shares in overall leadership for the Museum including responsibility for strategic planning and policy-making, and acts as coach, leader and supervisor to the collections, curatorial, and production teams.
Executive Responsibilities
Leadership and Strategy
Curatorial and Exhibitions Oversight and Execution
Collections Care and Management
CANDIDATE PROFILE
Strong candidates for this position will embody the following professional and personal qualities, skills, and characteristics:
Strategic Leadership
Possessing seasoned leadership skills with a minimum of seven years of management experience in a museum or collecting-based cultural institution, the Senior Director will also have a growth mindset and will be eager to learn about OMCA, the Oakland community, and broader trends in the field for organizations committed to human-centered, equitable organizational cultures. The Museum is seeking an approach to leadership that deploys management practices, cultural attributes, and intentional actions that invite people into content development and decision-making processes. Ideal candidates will have a demonstrated track record of fostering collaboration within and between teams, inspiring trust in colleagues, and creating the conditions for team and institutional success. The ideal candidate will have led major institutional initiatives and be able to move fluidly between big picture strategic thinking and pragmatic delivery against deadlines and outcomes. Successful candidates will also be outstanding communicators and have a high level of cultural competence, emotional intelligence and empathy.
Curatorial, Collections, and Production Experience
The Senior Director of Curatorial Affairs will have deep background within the museum field with experience applying community-engaged practices to exhibitions and collection care, access, and presentation. Experience within a multidisciplinary institution is highly desirable and a commitment to exploring interdisciplinary connections and working across disciplines is essential. Strong candidates will be able to articulate a process for creating a programmatic vision that both achieves OMCA’s social impact and meets community needs, and advances the institution’s financial sustainability and audience development goals. The successful candidate will also have the capacity to create a strategic and cohesive throughline between and with exhibitions and other programming that projects a distinctive voice and offers a perspective that is uniquely OMCA.
Key Qualifications
Apply on our career site: https://museumca.org/careers