Curator-Organizer-Collectives

Artspace New Haven seeks five curator-organizers or curatorial collectives for our newly visioned Neighborhood Platforms, for the 2022 Open Source Arts Festival. Curator-organizers will develop and present the work of local artists in sites across Westville, The Hill, Newhallville & Dixwell, Fair Haven, and East Rock. Proposals from curator-organizers and/or collectives will be carried out in dialogue with neighborhood representatives and Artspace staff. These platforms will supplement, and not replace other Open Source happenings (open studios and programming) and will be open every day of the festival. More information about Open Source as a whole, including artist registration, will be available soon.

Curator-organizer-collectives will meet bi-weekly over Zoom with the Director of Curatorial Affairs, Laurel V. McLaughlin and Neighborhood Representative Facilitator Steve Roberts to discuss funded projects in their respective neighborhood. The curator-organizers or collectives will be responsible for designing an exhibition according to an agreed-upon timeline, contacting and collaborating with artists, creating a flier for review with Artspace staff, installing works with artists, de-installing, and returning the works with artists. Artspace will support Neighborhood Platforms in securing volunteer support during the rung of the festival and promote all exhibitions and programs as part of our communications plan for the 2022 Open Source Art Festival.

JOB TITLE: 2022 Open Source Art Festival: In Common Spaces Neighborhood Platform Curator-organizer-collective

STATUS: Part-time, Exempt

REPORTS TO: Director of Curatorial Affairs and Neighborhood Representative Facilitator

HONORARIUM: $1,000

OPEN SOURCE FESTIVAL DATES: October 21–30, 2022

SUBMISSIONS DUE: July 15th, 2022

APPLICATION: Interested applicants should send an email to director@artspacenh.org with the subject line “OS NEIGHBORHOOD PLATFORM” and attach one PDF that includes a one-page resume, one-page cover letter, and one-page proposal for an exhibition. 

The resume should list your experience in the visual arts including roles, dates, and one personal or professional reference. The cover letter should detail why you are interested in working with Artspace New Haven on the 2022 Open Source Art Festival: In Common Spaces (as detailed below) and share more about your experience working in the arts with contemporary artists. The one-page proposal for an exhibition should include a one-paragraph description of the exhibition, a list of artists who are considered for inclusion or your method of curating (such as an open call), and how you plan to execute the exhibition in dialogue with Artspace New Haven staff and neighborhood representatives. 

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ABOUT OPEN SOURCE

Artspace New Haven’s 2022 Open Source Art Festival gathers artists, curators, cultural producers, organizers, and audiences across the city of New Haven to convene around shared artistic processes and experimentation from October 21–30, 2022. The newly-imagined fall 2022 iteration, In Common Spaces, takes its title from the idea behind Artspace as a shared space for the visual arts, branching outwards to include the collective experience of communion in our common spaces. We acknowledge that this feeling of communion is challenged by red-lining, racism, xenophobia, and COVID-19. In keeping with the New Haven Municipal Cultural Equity Plan, which reckons with these systemic challenges, the festival hopes to ignite city-wide joy, curiosity, and questioning within the artistic communities of New Haven artistic communities for all. In Common Spaces is thus an opening of studio practices as the festival has done for forty years, a new convening of exhibitions in our neighborhoods to broaden access to Open Source for all, and a reflection on New Haven’s desires to assemble together around artistic experimentation and support through programming. 

While the 2022 Open Source Art Festival: In Common Spaces manifests across the city of New Haven, our informational hub remains at Artspace New Haven in the Carriage House, redesignated “The Spot.” The “The Spot,” will have information, maps, and schedules relating to In Common Spaces, and also models a “common space” with a community fridge stocked with snacks, beverages, and sitting areas to relax over conversation with fellow festival attendees, friends, chosen family, or new acquaintances. Artspace New Haven is a home for experimentation and civic discourse during the 2022 Open Source Festival, and year-round through our exhibitions and programming.