Job Posting: Mellon Fellowship – Menil Collection (Houston, TX)

The Menil Collection and the Whitney Museum of American Art are pleased to offer an advanced training fellowship in conjunction with the Artists Documentation Program (ADP) supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The term of the fellowship is one year with the possibility of renewal for a second year. The ADP Fellowship will be based at one of the partner institutions with travel funds permitting on-site research, collection access, and interview preparation and processing at both institutions. The fellowship will provide an opportunity for the successful candidate to participate in all ADP activities. The ADP Fellow will work closely with the ADP directors during the research and preparation phase for an artist interview as well as additional conservation, archive, collection management and digital content staff following the interview to ensure the information disclosed is both imbedded within the institutional records and published for wide dissemination via the ADP Archive website. Additionally, the ADP Fellow will undertake and publish a significant research project utilizing the ADP Archive as part of the ADP Resound project.
ADP Fellow Resound Project
The ADP Fellow will undertake a significant high-level research project for publication manifested in a variety of possible formats: a single 20-30 minute high production quality video or a series of shorter duration video projects, blogs or more conventional written output. The research should be drawn from the content of the ADP Archive interviews, past or current, and serve to demonstrate the rich potential of the archive for research while providing the ADP Fellow with the opportunity to carry out recorded interviews themselves with fabricators, artists, scholars, and writers as part of the project.
ADP Interview-related activities

    1. Create bibliographies and exhibition histories relevant to the artist/artwork under discussion, research other interviews the artist has given, review conservation and accession files relevant to the artwork under discussion, and create a preliminary list of interview questions and topics for discussion with the interviewer. Schedule interview with artist/studio and videographer and work with ADP partner institution staff to arrange for the movement of artwork as needed.
    2. Work with the ADP Program Directors to create the edit decision list (EDL) for each interview, including caption suggestions, recommendations for incorporating B-roll into an interview, identification of proper names of people and materials mentioned during interview, and titles/dates of all exhibitions and artworks.
    3. Research the historic photographic records of key artworks and other archival materials mentioned during interview, collaborate with the Rights and Reproductions departments of the partner institutions to request images and use permissions from outside sources, and prepare the materials for inclusion in video.
    4. Work with conservation and collections management staff to ensure that information disclosed in the interview and/or in the course of the preparatory research is referenced in the conservation files and collections management systems of the appropriate partner institution.
    5. Collaborate with ADP Program Directors and archivist to evaluate the extent to which the ADP Archive website and resources are responsive to researchers’ needs to continually improve the Archive’s research potential and anticipate trends in content discoverability, access, and presentation.
    6. Work with ADP Program Directors, archivist, and the communications/digital media managers at the partner institutions to foster an understanding of and promote the ADP Archive’s methodology among curators, conservators, university professors and their students, administrators, and the general public.

Applicants should submit a curriculum vitae and statement of interest, not to exceed 500 words, by August 1, 2016, to: Director of Human Resources, The Menil Collection, 1511 Branard Street, Houston, Texas 77006. Application materials may also be emailed to: smmaloch@menil.org.