Job vacancy: Curator of the Post-Academic Program

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht is seeking a committed and visionary Curator of its Post-Academic Program. Conducted since 2017, the program offers positions to Netherlands- and internationally-based practitioners working at intersections of art, theory, and social action. The program is geared toward the advancement of talent and research, on an individual level and, especially, collectively among its cohort. Artists and other thinkers and practitioners are provided with an opportunity and resources to develop their theoretically-informed and politically-driven art and inquiry in concert with the aesthetico-political practice of BAK. Advancing the notion of art as a public sphere and a political space, BAK is committed to engaging the social, ideological, and environmental urgencies of the present. BAK combines public programming and exhibition-making with research, learning, and talent development, bringing together disparate communities to imagine and enact transformative ways of “being together otherwise.”

Prompted by multiple challenges, including those of the current “age of pandemics,” from 2021 onward the Post-Academic Program will extend beyond its current form into a new composition of dispersed yet interconnected “research cells” that collaborate across distance from the Netherlands and elsewhere. The Curator will lead this process, conceptually and organizationally, and will do so jointly with the BAK team and as a part of the broader research, learning, discursive, exhibitionary, publishing, and institutional environs within BAK. In this process, the Curator will engage their substantive prior work experiences with artistic practices driven by contemporary urgencies, alternative pedagogies and organizational practices, non-oppressive facilitation, and the ability to think within and with the institution as a viable artistic, learning, political, and communal base. Equally importantly, the Curator will be able to employ their expansive international network in art, theory, and social action, as well as their advanced communication skills. This position entails the care and maintenance of relationships with several overlapping organizational entities in different parts of the world, and thus requires a sustained commitment to creating and facilitating collaborative institutional models, and consistent attention to specific contextual needs. The Curator will further be involved in developing additional institutional collaborations, as well as co-imagining and carrying-out programming and publishing endeavors that manifest the work of the program in connection with BAK’s research strands.

BAK offers the Curator a 32 hours a week employment as well as an inspiring working and team environment. The designated salary conforms to the guidelines for contemporary art institutions in the Netherlands. BAK is an equal opportunity employer. The position requires professional knowledge of English language; the knowledge of Dutch language is strongly preferred. The Curator is expected to maintain their residence in the Netherlands and preferably in the city of Utrecht.

The expected start date for the position is April 1, 2021 (an earlier appointment may be possible in consultation).

Candidates are invited to submit their applications consisting of a motivation letter and professional curriculum vitae (including two names for reference) no later than January 15, 2021 to: info [​at​] bakonline.org (please indicate the subject as “Curator Post-Academic Program”).