Associate Media Conservator – SFMOMA
Listing Start Date: March 17, 2025Expires: May 17, 2025n
Schedule: Full Time, 35 hours/week, approximately five days working onsite
Pay Range: $87,418 – $96,913 annually
Responsibilities & Duties
- Contribute to the care, maintenance, handling, storage study of San Francisco Museum of Art’s time-based media art holdings
- Examine and assess the condition of works being considered for acquisitions, loans, exhibitions, rotations, deaccession, and imaging.
- Perform treatment on media artworks in accordance with SFMOMA Conservation Department policies and the American Institute of Conservation Code of Ethics.
- Document all aspects of artwork through written and photographic records.
- Engage with artists, their studio assistants, or estates to foster relationships that underpin the long-term care and display of their work in the collection.
- Work with living artists to explore and document their practices in ways that contribute to shared stewardship of the museum’s collection.
- Provide recommendations for display, loan, and storage of works of the collection coherent with the highest standard of preservation.
- Contribute to review and refinement of current conservation procedures for acquisitions, exhibitions, loans out, storage and collections care.
- Maintain and continue to develop work areas in both the Conservation Studio and Conservation Media Suite, including researching and ordering necessary equipment, and maintenance of obsolete equipment and software.
- Advise curators and other staff on preservation and care issues related to collections and potential acquisitions.
- Working with Head of Collections, facilitate monthly Team Media meetings when needed and work with the team to identify topics, set the agenda, and host the meeting.
- Work on museum exhibitions as a Conservation point as assigned by Director of Conservation. Examine, prepare and maintain artwork in gallery spaces, including troubleshooting, dusting and monitoring of ongoing and new condition issues.
- Observe museum standards for monitoring, handling, storage, installation, and documentation of artworks and provide input to improve current practices.
- Work with colleagues in IT, Registration, and Archives and Art Resources to develop preservation protocols in care of digital artwork files in the digital art server.
- Advise on handling, transit, and installation procedures for complex, obsolete or fragile media artworks.
- Conduct surveys of the media and digital works in the museum collection, share findings, and develop preservation strategies to care for the collections.
- Serve in the role of courier (including performing virtual oversight) as needed.
- Participate in professional networks, workshops, and programs to stay current with relevant practices, methods, and technologies; share new knowledge base with the department and Collections colleagues.
- May participate in training and supervision of the Fellow in the Conservation of Contemporary Art and interns.
- Travel for museum business and off-site conservation work or study as needed.
Requirements
Required
- Masters degree in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation/Art Restoration/Conservation or related field (or foreign equivalent degree) plus 3 years experience or Bachelors plus 5 years experience.
- Experience must include at least 1 year in museum environment.
- Travel 3-4 weeks per year, domestic and/or international
Apply on the museum’s website.