Mirkopoulos Curator of Ancient Greece and Rome – Royal Ontario Museum
ROM seeks a forward-thinking, dynamic curator of Ancient Greece and Rome who is interested in audience-centric exhibition and collection development with ambitious ideas for exploring cross-cultural and topical narratives between ancient cultures and the present day. In the context of ROM’s strategic direction toward a more global, visitor-focused storytelling model, the Greek and Roman curator will champion cross-cultural and transdisciplinary perspectives that highlight the relevance of ROM’s collections of art, culture, and nature in contemporary societies. The successful candidate will have a track record of collaborative exhibitions and enjoy working with colleagues, scholars, and community to consider new thematic and thought-provoking content, presentation and associated public programming. The curator will also expand the reach of ROM scholarship and museum initiatives through publications, lectures, and engagement in the field. A major rethinking of permanent collection galleries is in the early stages creating opportunities to plan, collaborate, and execute an innovative and engaging reinstallation of ancient materials.
The Mirkopoulos Curator of Ancient Greece and Rome is responsible for the development and care of one of ROM’s largest ancient collections with more than 7,000 objects from the Greek world, including Bronze Age Aegean and Ancient Greece (the 5th largest collection of Greek art in North America). This area includes a singular collection of Cycladic vessels and figurines, Minoan ceramics, Mycenaean artifacts, one of the most complete collections of Greek coins in North America (2900 examples), and the largest Greek sculpture collection in Canada. The Ancient Roman collection includes about 20,000 objects, plus 40,000 coins, including stellar marble portrait busts, Romano-Egyptian encaustic mummy portraits, and marble figures and sarcophagi. There are also important works from Etruria, Byzantium, Ancient Cyprus, and Prehistoric Europe. This position will be responsible for expanding the research on the provenance of ROM’s historical holdings, strategic deaccessioning, repatriation, and expansion of the collection in keeping with contemporary museum practice and thought in the field. In a moment when the push for repatriation recurrently questions the historical foundation of the encyclopedic museum, gallery development, exhibitions and collecting strategies must connect the past with the present in an ethically grounded, visually effective, community-minded, and emotionally engaging way.
ROM welcomes candidates who are passionate about the study and interpretation of the arts and culture of the ancient world, and who are invested in new ways of thinking about and presenting this material. Applicants with research specializing in any of the relevant areas of ancient art history, visual studies or material culture are encouraged to apply.
For more information: https://classicalstudies.org/placement-service/2023-2024/37674/mirkopoulos-curator-ancient-greece-and-rome
