Peabody Essex Museum (PEM)
Curator of South Asian Art
The Peabody Essex Museum seeks a curatorial leader with deep experience in South Asian art, and a
track record developing engaging exhibitions. The Curator of South Asian Art will be active in
global circles, well versed in current developments in the field, and adept at teasing out
connections between diverseSouth Asianartforms andcultural traditions and with broader
historical and contemporary art and culture.
Recently, the Peabody Essex Museum embarked on a dramatic paradigm-shifting
transformation and expansion, in keeping with its ambition and promise as a museum that
values creativity, innovation, change, and the unexpected. The museum’s internationally
distinctive strengths in South Asian, East Asian, and Asian Export art and culture, already
central to this mission, will play an even greater role in this next, highly aspirational chapter.
PEM’s curatorial team is adventurous and generates fresh interpretation, appreciation, and
thought leadership related to art, culture, and creative expression, especially in the context of
an increasingly interconnected and global dialogue. To this end, the museum seeks an
innovative curator with experience in South Asian, especially Indian, art and a strong
commitment to interpretation and programming.
Museum Atrium, PEM, 2003, detail
BACKGROUND
Founded in 1799 in Salem, Massachusetts, 15 miles from Boston, the Peabody Essex Museum
is the oldest continuously operating museum in the United States. Now among the top 8% of
American art museums, PEM is also one of the nation’s fastest growing art museums, and
operates on a global stage in terms of networks, partners, and patronage.
PEM has achieved a singular record of growth over the last decades. In 2003, PEM completed
one of the most striking museum transformations in American history, including exponential
growth of the operating budget, and the addition of over 250,000 square feet of new and
renovated gallery and public spaces. This includes 26,000 square feet of changing exhibition
galleries and 55,000 square feet of galleries devoted to collection installations. In 2011, the
museum announced a comprehensive and singular advancement campaign for $650M. The
campaign focuses on increasing an already healthy endowment to support an expanded
exhibition program; programmatic initiatives ranging from the interpretive to the digital and
educational; global leadership initiatives; and an institutional culture of creativity, all in
concert with fiscal stability and sound management, based on an annual budget of $31 million.
PEM is adding a 40,000 square-foot wing scheduled to open in summer 2019. It will include
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15,000 square feet of galleries for collection installations and additional public and educational
spaces. The museum is also developing a 110,000 square-foot offsite collection center for the
care and study of the museum’s collection of more than 1 million works. Between 2017 and
2022, PEM will develop new collection installations museum-wide, based on innovative
experience, interpretation, and design strategies that reflect the museum’s commitment to
drawing on multiple fields of inquiry, including neuroscience.
East India Hall and PEM planned expansion
The museum's many collection areas are among the finest of their kind, showcasing American,
Asian and Asian export, African, contemporary, maritime, Native American, and Oceanic art,
as well as photography, fashion and textiles, and architecture and design. The museum
presents a vibrant schedule of changing exhibitions, many organized by PEM teams and guest
curators and circulated nationally and internationally, and others organized by leading
museums in North America, Europe, and Asia. Annually, the museum welcomes some 250,000
people. It employs 250 staff and engages over 100 docents in support of PEM’s educational
mission.
CURATORIAL PROFILE
The Peabody Essex Museum has the highest visitor satisfaction ratings among 75 major
museums in the United States, and PEM’s curatorial program is a key reason for this success.
PEM’s curatorial approach emphasizes innovation, crisp execution, and close partnership
across departments and with external, leading-edge thinkers in a range of fields. This provides
significant opportunities for curators to leverage team resources and access to current trends
and new developments in various fields. Nine full curators and five Exhibition & Research
assistant and associate curators comprise PEM’s curatorial team. This team is the purview of
the Deputy Director, who functions as Chief Curator and oversees Collection Services,
Exhibition Planning, and Exhibition Design in concert with her executive and fundraising
responsibilities.
INDIAN and SOUTH ASIAN COLLECTION
The first American museum to collect art from India, PEM counts among its earliest
acquisitions historic works from India. These works are a manifestation of the museum
founders’ global purview, a sensibility and historical context that continues to inform PEM’s
curatorial work.
Unlike other American museums that emphasize India’s classical art traditions, PEM is
preeminent internationally for representing the art of the modern era, from the period of
British colonial rule to the present, in what is today India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
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Additionally, the extensive Bhutanese textile collection is the most important such collection
in an American museum. The museum also houses diverse works from various Southeast
Asian cultures, principally from the Philippines, Thailand, Burma, Indonesia, Vietnam,
Cambodia, and Laos, as well as from Tibet and Nepal.
Bhutanese throne cover, wool, silk, and cotton, ca. 1900
PEM’s diverse Asian export, maritime, photography, fashion, textile, and library holdings
complement many aspects of the Indian and South Asian collection. As just one example,
PEM’s collection of 19th-century photographs by Lala Deen Dayal is one of the top in the
world.
INDIAN ART
The museum is home to the most important collection of modern Indian art, from the
1700s to the present, outside India.
In 2001, the acquisition of the Chester and Davida Herwitz collection of post-Independence
art from India established PEM as the first museum outside of India to focus on the
achievements of its modern artists. The Herwitz collection of post-1947 Indian paintings and
works on paper—some 1,600 works by approximately 70 artists---remains unparalleled in
any American or European museum.
Painting dominates the overall collection, in large measure because of the Herwitz collection,
but also because of PEM’s deep holdings in the vernacular Kalighat painting tradition: the
museum’s Kalighat paintings constitute one of the top three collections in the world.
Bikash Bhattacharjee (1940-2006), Durga, 1985
Oil on canvas, 41½ x 39¾ inches, Herwitz Collection
Maqbool Fida Husain (b. 1915), Fury Etched, 1970
Herwitz Collection
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The collection of vernacular and regional genres from across the subcontinent has grown to
national importance. The Figiel collection of 15th-to-18th century devotional bronzes is a
telling counterpoint to India’s classical sculpture traditions not available in other American
public collections. Other areas of strength include kantha quilts; colonial-period Indian export
decorative art, especially furniture; 18th- and 19th-century British maritime-related prints,
drawings and paintings of India; and 19th-century photographs, especially the group by Lala
Deen Dayal. PEM’s colonial-era holdings are especially strong, and pose intriguing
opportunities to work forward into the 20th and 21st centuries as well as to move back into
and through classical Indian art. These elements, along with holdings in other collection areas,
contribute to PEM’s ability to explore a multi-faceted approach to Indian and South Asian art
and culture.
ASIAN EXPORT ART
Asian export art encompasses works in all media made by artists in China, Japan, India, and
Indonesia (among other cultures), specifically for non-local patrons and markets. PEM’s
collection is the largest, most comprehensive, and diverse of its type in the world. Among the
first objects collected by the museum’s founders were decorative art objects produced in
China, Japan, and India for Europeans and Americans. The collection has a particularly strong
international profile for Indian export furniture. PEM curators often draw on the Asian export
art collection to highlight the impact of cross-cultural exchange.
RESPONSIBILITIES
The new curator will play a pivotal role in shaping and implementing the museum’s goforward, team-based program in Asian art and its specific manifestation of Indian and South
Asian art and culture. This will be accomplished primarily through innovative exhibitions,
interpretation and programming, as well as through strategic enhancement of the collection
and original research.
The primary responsibilities of the Curator will be to:
 Work with the Deputy Director and PEM’s curators to establish the direction, goals,
and priorities for Indian and South Asian art at the Peabody Essex Museum.
 Organize exhibitions and secure exhibitions organized by other institutions. The
focus will be exhibitions that offer fresh ways of interpreting and appreciating the art
of diverse Asian cultures, with special emphasis on Indian art because of the
collection’s strength and patronage potential. The curator is expected to develop a
more interconnected view of Asian cultures, and to foster a dialogue between
historical and contemporary expressions.
 Organize collection-based installations of Indian and South Asian art that integrate
engaging ideas, new interpretive methods, immersive experiences, and design as part
of the museum’s team-based interpretation initiative. The initial emphasis will be the
new installation devoted to South Asian art as part of the museum-wide installations
slated to open between 2018 and 2022. The curator will also serve on other
appropriate interpretation teams associated with this large-scale effort and the
museum’s ongoing efforts to provide leadership in the arena of museum
interpretation.
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Develop a systematic plan to strengthen PEM’s collection through strategic
acquisitions of historical and contemporary works, long-term loans, research, and
conservation initiatives.
Enhance and expand the museum’s international network and partnerships with
museums and governments relevant to South Asian art and culture. The emphasis will
be identifying opportunities to exchange exhibition projects, loans, and expertise.
Cultivate and secure patronage for PEM’s South Asian initiatives and for
the museum overall in collaboration with the museum’s philanthropy
staff and South Asian Visiting Committee.
Develop programs and events in conjunction with exhibitions and in collaboration with the
education staff that emphasize new ways to provide immersive experiences of Indian and
South Asian culture and art.
Serve as an advocate and representative for PEM’s mission, exhibitions, publications,
research, programming, and collection, assuring that the museum’s reputation for
innovation and scholarship are continually advanced. Sustain an international reputation and
profile through publishing, lecturing, organizing or participating in symposia, membership in
professional organizations, and other pertinent activities.
QUALIFICATIONS and PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
The successful candidate will:
 Have substantial experience working with institutions with extensive collections of
Indian South Asian art and culture and organizing compelling installations and
exhibitions, including nationally and internationally traveling shows; experience with
both historical and contemporary art is preferred; an established international network
is highly desirable.
 Have an advanced degree in art history or cultural studies, with a specialty in Indian
or South Asian art and culture (a Master’s degree is required);
 Be an outcome-oriented, hard worker with initiative and high energy level; a
“doer” with a willingness to work hands-on;
 Be a mission-driven individual with a commitment to PEM’s core values and
transformative goals; open to experimentation and thinking “outside the box”;
predisposed to juxtaposing ideas and objects in new and unexpected ways,
including across disciplines, between different realms of creativity beyond the
visual arts, and between the historical and contemporary;
 Be a good listener and strategist; comfortable receiving input from many sources,
and able to analyze and formulate disparate information into sound, wellorganized goals, strategies, and proposals; a partner able to flexibly collaborate
with people of diverse areas of expertise, experience, cultures, and personalities; a
tactful negotiator;
 Be an individual with strong self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and a good sense of humor.
PEM recruits internationally. A good command of the English language is required.
Nominations welcome.
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TO APPLY FOR THIS POSITION
Qualified candidates should email their cover letter, résumé (Word documents preferred), salary
requirement, and names of 3 references with contact information by April 17, 2017 to retained search
firm: Marilyn Hoffman and Connie Rosemont, Museum Search & Reference, [email protected]. Apply in confidence. References will not be contacted without prior permission of the
applicant. PEM is committed to diversity among its employees and encourages qualified candidates
from all backgrounds to apply.
ABOUT SALEM AND BOSTON
Salem and Boston North Shore cities and towns are among the country’s oldest coastal communities,
including Salem, Newburyport, and Marblehead. The region has a 300-year history of art and
architecture, and maritime activities are still an important part of the regional culture. Salem and
nearby Gloucester offer numerous museums, art galleries, historic homes, theaters, parks, restaurants,
boutiques and antique shops. Salem alone draws more than 1 million visitors a year. Boston is quickly
accessible via a regular commuter train to North Station. New England’s bountiful outdoor recreational
activities are quickly accessible, including sailing, hiking and skiing.
Boston is a world-class center for banking, health care and technology research. One of American’s
leading intellectual centers, Boston boasts some of the most prestigious universities and medical centers
in the world. It is also steeped in 400 years of history, which it preserves and celebrates, while
maintaining many distinct and historic neighborhoods. As a metropolis, it is home to numerous
attractions including museums, theatres, musical events and robust restaurant opportunities. The
suburbs have some of the nation’s top-rated school systems. Boston is served by a strong public
transportation system and offers outdoor recreation along the Charles River and Atlantic Ocean. Sports
fans enjoy the Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and Bruins, as well as the soccer team, the Revolution.
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