postdoctoral curatorial fellow

Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow

The Art Institute’s collection of Southeast Asian art is one of the departments of Arts of Asia’s most distinctive collections, presenting a rich opportunity for new research, interpretation, and display. The Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship builds on a series of collection-based curatorial projects currently underway in the department of Arts of Asia and complements the museum’s Curatorial Documentation and Research initiative, which centralizes provenance research as a scholarly inquiry across the museum.

We are seeking a postdoctoral fellow to serve as a thought partner with the department, collaborating on research and collection activity under the supervision of the Alsdorf Associate Curator of Indian, Southeast Asian, and Himalayan Art. The fellow will cultivate research resources and maintain a portfolio of ongoing projects in their primary area of focus, lending their unique skills and building their expertise to support the museum’s approach to the interpretation and documentation of the permanent collection.

Duties and Responsibilities: -Perform provenance and documentation review of the collection and collaborate with curators to set a research and cataloging agenda for targeted collecting categories. -Document findings in the museum’s collection database, author object entries, and contribute to other relevant museum publications. -Conduct primary and secondary research to propose new narratives and curatorial directions for these collections in gallery rotations and accompanying interpretation. -Play an active role in the Arts of Asia provenance working group to discuss findings and strategize research on relevant questions. -Participate in ongoing discussions on research methods and findings across the museum. While the Fellow’s home base will be the departments of Arts of Asia and -Curatorial Documentation and Research, duties will be performed in collaboration with many other departments at the museum, including Conservation and Science, Imaging, Publishing, Learning, and Public Engagement, and the Research Center.