Description

To apply, please visit: https://www.usajobs.gov/job/864902200 by 05/13/2026 11:59 PM EDT

The Opportunity

 The National Gallery of Art serves the nation, welcoming all people to explore and experience art, creativity, and our shared humanity.  In 2025 the National Gallery redoubled its efforts to serve the nation by adopting an exciting new strategic plan that commits to making the museum accessible, relevant, and thriving (ART).  Explicit in the plan is that the National Gallery’s collections must reflect the nation and be deployed in such a way that they surprise, delight, and inspire our visitors.  Our collection of modern and contemporary art plays a vital role in fulfilling this commitment to national service. Practically success begins with the hiring of an exceptional curator who is prepared to lead the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art in an ambitious, new direction.  The new Senior Curator and Head of Department will be entrusted with solidifying the National Gallery as the preeminent place for the study and display of art, 1920-present.

 The opportunity comes at a propitious moment.  This year the National Gallery commemorates the nation’s two-hundredth-and-fiftieth anniversary, which will thrust our American collections into the national spotlight as never before. The new Senior Curator and Head of Department will be in a privileged position to promote the collections, as well as the central role imagined for them in the future.  Some of that future is tied to work already underway to rethink how our historic collections of European and American art are displayed in the West Building.  A comprehensive reinstallation of the West Building is envisioned for 2029-30—the first since the doors of the museum opened in 1941.  The new Senior Curator and Head of Department will play a decisive role in determining how the historic collection of American and European art presents itself as one for the twenty-first century and the role of modern and contemporary art in that presentation.  New acquisitions will be expected, especially when they help to tell a more complex story of art in its global context.

 The new Senior Curator and Head of Department will also join the National Gallery at a moment when we have already made major moves to prepare for rethinking our approach to modern and contemporary art.  In recent years we have hired curators of Native American art, African American art, and Latinx art to ensure we represent a more complete and complex view of art history. The new Head of Department will be at the center of a robust exchange of ideas aimed at reconceiving how the National Gallery’s collections are made relevant to its audiences.  Support will also come from the National Gallery’s digital experience teams, which have developed multiple channels of experimental content targeting our virtual visitors.  With the right dynamic Head of Department in place, we feel poised to launch a new age of appreciation for modern and contemporary art.

Role of the Head of Modern and Contemporary Art

 The incumbent plays a vital leadership role at the National Gallery and is one of four senior curators reporting to the Chief Curatorial and Conservation Officer (CCCO). The new Senior Curator and Head of Department will galvanize and direct the activities of the Modern and Contemporary art department to conceive and implement innovative and forward-thinking and audience-centered curatorial strategies, scholarship, and public service. The incumbent will be committed to access and inclusion as they impact scholarship, collections development, staff management, and audience engagement.

The incumbent will be a seasoned curator and respected scholar in modern and contemporary art with a strong track record of creativity and innovation in the field.  The selected candidate will have experience working in institutions with distinguished collections of modern and contemporary art.  They will have a record of achievement in art museum management, art acquisition by gift and purchase, donor development, collection care and development, research, publications, exhibitions, interpretation, and programs.  The new Senior Curator and Head of Department will have demonstrated a breadth of curatorial experience in creating dialogues across collection areas with experience in reinstallation projects and audience-centered strategies.   

 The incumbent should welcome working cross-departmentally to develop effective means of sharing scholarly information with diverse audiences. In serving the museum’s audiences, the Senior Curator and Head of Department works closely with the Gallery’s conservation, education, interpretation, brand content, and digital experience teams. Curators work closely with the Gallery’s conservation team to preserve and study the collection; many collaborative research efforts are ultimately featured in Gallery’s conservation journal Facture. The Modern and Contemporary Department also collaborates with the National Gallery’s Center for the Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (The Center) to initiate scholarly projects and programs that dovetail with The Center’s interests and priorities. 

Requirements

Major Duties and Responsibilities

• Conceives and organizes important and noteworthy scholarly exhibitions in their area of expertise that expands knowledge of a significant artist or subject in the history of art. Prepares first major exhibition expected within the first five years of employment.

• Undertakes and oversees major art historical research projects based on observation, critical analysis, hypothesis, investigation, evidence, and conclusions, utilizing established art historical approaches as well as broader methodologies that illuminate new perspectives. 

• Helps shape future exhibitions and permanent collection displays for the department of Modern and Contemporary Art to ensure relevance to current curatorial practice, audience centered strategies, and commitment to scholarship. 

• Cultivates close and cooperative long-term relationships with donors, collectors, scholars, and art dealers to attract and secure single objects, collections, purchase funds, or other types of gifts. 

• Works collaboratively and cross departmentally to implement interpretive, brand content, and programmatic strategies that serve the museum’s multiple publics. 

• Fosters and develops an acquisitions program that enables the National Gallery to continue to embrace artistic excellence and serve diverse and contemporary audiences through collections that connect to the lived experiences of these audiences and to relevant topics of our time, with a particular emphasis on works of art that enhance the National Gallery’s holdings of underrepresented artists and subject matter. 

• Manages staff, which includes hiring employees; assigning, monitoring, reviewing, and providing constructive feedback to the work of subordinates; prepares position descriptions, performance standards, and annual evaluations of staff; recruits and retains a diverse, high-quality workforce. In addition to the senior curator, the department includes seven-full time permanent curators across several areas of expertise in modern and contemporary art, including positions devoted to modern art, contemporary art, African American and Afro-Diasporic and Latinx art. The department has four curatorial support staff.

• The incumbent leads the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art and is responsible for formulating and implementing its strategic plan in consultation with the Chief Curator and Conservation Officer. Manages the departmental budget and personnel matters. Participates in Gallery-wide activities and meetings related to curatorial or administrative matters of concern to the department or the Gallery at large. As a Senior Curator, the incumbent assists the Chief Curator and Curatorial Officer in management duties beyond the departmental level, as assigned. Participates in Gallery-wide advisory, curatorial, and management committee.

• In cooperation with related departments and staff, the incumbent oversees the installation, maintenance, conservation, restoration, upkeep, and interpretation of the collections of modern and contemporary art. Deals with research, acquisitions, conservation issues, and production of scholarly work for the permanent collection, loans, and exhibitions, meeting the goals of both the curatorial strategic plan and the objectives of the Department’s strategic plan.

• Proposes acquisitions as gifts or purchases to ensure the growth and expansion of the collection. Performs and/or delegates scholarly work on the collection as well as potential acquisitions to ensure proper authentication and documentation of modern and contemporary belonging to the Gallery or proposed as gifts or purchases. Writes and/or directs others to write proposals for acquisition and ensures that changes of attribution are reviewed by the Chief Curator and Conservation Officer and the Director for consideration by the Board of Trustees.

• Maintains liaison with the Collectors Committee and is responsible for proposing acquisitions of modern and contemporary art, taking part in the curatorial presentation program and publication of the interpretive materials related to modern and contemporary art for the Committee's annual meeting.

• Ensures timely and accurate maintenance of entries of departmental collections in the collection management system (The Museum System, TMS), as well as the department's files and all related correspondence. 

• Directs, schedules, and coordinates the in-house activities of the department and supervises associate and adjunct curators as well as research associates, collection managers, curatorial coordinator, and interns working in the department. Reviews and critiques work of subordinates. Prepares annual performance standards and evaluations of staff.

• In collaboration with the conservation department, ensures that the collections of modern and contemporary art are in sound and presentable condition. Recognizes any object in need of scientific analysis or conservation treatment, makes proposals to the analytic and conservation staff, and consults with conservators throughout their procedures. Treatments are proposed in consultation with conservators and the Chief Curator and Conservation Officer.

• Serves as weekend-duty curator on a periodic basis (approximately two or three times each year), as assigned by the Chief Curator and Conservation Officer.

• Develops concepts and themes for special exhibitions and temporary installations of modern and contemporary art collection and supervises special exhibitions and temporary installations organized by curators in the department. Is responsible for supervising curatorial aspects of exhibitions, collaborating with other Gallery offices as well as lenders, consultants, authors, curators, and artist representatives. Writes or consults on the preparation of brochures, leaflets, wall texts, essays, catalogue entries, films, and other interpretations concerning the works of art.

• The incumbent tracks the international art market regularly to bring important acquisition opportunities to the attention of fellow curators, the Chief Curator and Conservation Officer, and the Director.

• Writes proposals in support of the acquisition of modern and contemporary art for their review and for consideration by the Board of Trustees. Cultivates cooperative relationships with collectors, artists, and scholars in the field for purposes of selecting exhibition material and attracting single objects or collections to the National Gallery as gifts.

• Responds, or directs staff to respond, to public, scholarly and other professional inquiries about the collection and/or general questions pertaining to modern and contemporary art. Responses are in the form of correspondence, conversation, or reports.

• The incumbent applies talents to assignments, as directed by management or on own initiative, which contribute to fulfilment of the National Gallery’s mission.