Curatorial Assistant- Guelph Civic Museum

When you join the City of Guelph, you join a team of 2000 full and part-time employees who deliver services the community relies on every day. Together, we are bringing to life Guelph’s vision of an inclusive, connected, and prosperous city where we look after each other and our environment.

As a regional top employer, the City of Guelph values its employees and offers competitive salaries, excellent benefit packages, opportunities for professional development, a healthy work-life balance, and many roles with flexible work options. Our corporate values are integrity, service, inclusion, wellness, and learning. Guelph is consistently ranked as one of the best places in Canada to live, work, and play—all good reasons to consider a career in this beautiful city.

The Curatorial Assistant will work with Guelph Museums’ fine art (hanging storage) collection. Guelph Museums holds a dedicated collection of art works, which represent stories that inform and illuminate understandings of the past and present. Art works are uniquely expressive heritage objects that require specific care, custodianship, and interpretation. The fine art collection contains 250 hanging art works and 112 empty frames.

Your Role

• Contribute to the preservation and scholarship of the fine art collection by:
  • identifying condition issues and candidates for deaccession among hanging artworks and frames;
  • assessing quality of photo-documentation of art works
  • assessing collection records for quality of scholarly research;
  • update collection records to current cataloguing standards;
  • and optimize use of hanging space to increase storage for future acquisitions of art.
• Gain specific, best practice and skills-based experience through three core objectives:
  • assess condition, photography, research, and catalogue records for 250 art works;
  • prepare rehanging plan to optimize space on rolling racks, move art works, and enter new locations in collection records;
  • and examine 112 empty frames to identify those that are connected to art works in the collection, complete condition reports on all frames, and deaccession reports on rogue frames.
• Acquire valuable work experience in a specific museum environment and skills that are broadly transferable across Canada’s museum sector, including
  • collection management (artifact handling, safe storage practices
  • preventative conservation, and condition/deaccession analysis and protocols),
  • training and experience with PastPerfect (CMS),
  • multi-tasking and personal time management, and critical thinking, analysis, and research.

Qualifications

• Enrollment in one of the following post-secondary programs of study: History, Art History, Studio Art, or Other Humanities/Social Sciences (3rd or 4th year undergraduate-level), Collections Conservation and Management (1st year college-level), or Applied Museum Studies (1st or 2nd year college-level)
• Strong organizational skills, good computer skills, and some experience in research.
• Data entry skills and experience with PastPerfect (or other data management systems) are considered assets.
• Excellent communication (verbal and written) and interpersonal skills.
  

Rate

Up to $17.90 per hour

How to Apply

Interested candidates can submit their resume and cover letter by April 14, 2023, to https://young-canada-works.canada.ca/

For more information, please contact: [email protected] (subject line: Curatorial Assistant – YCW)

The City of Guelph is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity in the workplace. We are therefore happy to accommodate any individual needs in keeping with the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. If you require an accommodation in order to participate in the hiring process, please contact us to make your needs known in advance.

Personal information collected through the recruitment process will be used solely to determine eligibility for employment. We thank all candidates in advance; however, only those being considered for an interview will be contacted.