Director, Palmer Museum of Art

The Opportunity

The College of Arts and Architecture at The Pennsylvania State University seeks a dynamic, visionary, and collaborative leader to assume the directorship of the Palmer Museum of Art, following the June 2024 opening of the new 71,254-square-foot building designed by Allied Works and located on the grounds of The Arboretum at Penn State. Reporting to the Dean of the College of Arts and Architecture, the Director will guide an ambitious slate of exhibitions, public and educational programs, and collaborations with partners within the University and beyond, to elevate the profile of the Palmer Museum of Art as a destination, regionally, nationally, and internationally.

The next Director will:

Work closely with the museum staff, leadership, faculty, and students in the College of Arts and Architecture and partners in The Arboretum and across the University to position the museum as a vital center of academic and student life, broadening the museum’s collaborative relationships with departments, schools, colleges, centers, institutes, student services and organizations, and museums/galleries/collections beyond Arts and Architecture.
Enhance the regional, national, and international reputation and stature of the museum by fostering the creation, presentation, and publication of original scholarship relating to the museum’s collections and temporary exhibitions, and through ambitious exhibitions that foreground the Palmer’s exemplary collection.
Fully activate the new museum building through a robust schedule of exhibitions, programs, events, and collaborations that will engage both current and prospective constituents and supporters.
Pursue collection growth in areas of existing and potential strength as well as areas of need.
Advocate for and secure additional operational funds to support activities and initiatives, working in collaboration with the College’s Dean and the Director of Development and Alumni Relations.
Explore strategies for engaging Penn State students, faculty, and staff beyond the University Park campus. (For information on Penn State’s twenty-four campuses, see: http://psu.edu/academics/campuses.)
The Director reports to the Dean of the College of Arts and Architecture and is a member of the college leadership team. In collaboration with the Dean, the Director sets the museum’s strategic direction and oversees its operations.

Specific responsibilities of the Director include:

Plan and execute strategies and initiatives necessary to fulfill the museum’s mission and ensure its financial stability and growth. Align the mission, vision, and strategic plan of the museum with those of the college and the University;
Provide vision and leadership to clearly articulate the role of the museum as a University and community resource, assuring its active engagement with all its current and potential constituencies, including students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, donors, and community members;
Develop, implement, and manage responsibly the museum’s annual budget and its short and long-term strategic plans;
Partner effectively with the Dean, college and University development staff, and the National Advisory Council and the Friends Leadership Council to engage actively and effectively in fundraising, membership program development, and collections building, including regular travel in support of these objectives;
Develop and implement significant exhibitions and public programs with museum staff, faculty, and students in the college and beyond that engage the University community and broader regional and national audiences;
Inspire museum staff by setting and maintaining high professional standards for the museum in all areas, encouraging cross-function collaboration, and providing professional development opportunities;
Work with the National Advisory Council and Friends Leadership Council to clarify and strengthen their roles by establishing clear policies and procedures and specific responsibilities;
Collaborate with the college leadership team and the Arboretum to set, pursue, and achieve shared strategic objectives.

About the Palmer Museum of Art

The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State is the largest art museum collection between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and the most significant academic art museum in the state of Pennsylvania. A key element of Penn State’s land-grant mission of teaching, research and scholarship, and public service, the Palmer Museum of Art is a vital and accessible cultural resource for Penn State’s students, faculty, staff, and scholars, as well as visitors to and from the Centre region, the Commonwealth, and beyond. Through its world-class collection, exhibitions, programs, and outreach, the museum is a welcoming, inclusive, and vibrant forum for authentic arts experiences and a site where meaningful dialogue about today’s most potent ideas and pressing concerns is cultivated.

The museum features an average of nine special exhibitions per year. Recent major exhibitions include _MADE IN PA_ (2024), the inaugural exhibition in the museum’s new location; _Looking at Who We Are: The Palmer at 50_ (2022); and _Global Asias: Contemporary Asian American Art from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation_ (2021). The museum is currently completing a two-volume catalogue of its American art collection, funded in part by a $100,000 grant from the Luce Foundation. A free-admission museum, the Palmer Museum of Art celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2022 and opened its doors to the new state-of-art building located at The Arboretum at Penn State on June 1, 2024. The new museum has welcomed approximately 50,000 visitors between June and February, far exceeding the annual attendance in its previous location. More information about the Palmer Museum of Art can be found here: https://palmermuseum.psu.edu/.

Organization, Governance, and Finance

The work of the Palmer Museum of Art is enabled by 17 full-time staff members, including five vacancies, 16 part-time employees, and a cadre of student employees and volunteers. The Director’s senior team includes the Assistant Director and Curator, Senior Curator, Curator of American Art (vacant), Director of Education, Marketing and Communications Director, Registrar, Chief Preparator, Event Rental Coordinator, and Facility Manager. The Palmer is supported by a college-based Advancement Office, including a Director of Development, three Major Gift Officers, and an Annual Giving Specialist, with access to central offices in Penn State’s Division of Development and Alumni Relations that support annual giving, donor and member services, prospect management, and research.

A 12-member National Advisory Council is dedicated to strengthening the relationship between the museum and the community, and a nine-member Friends Leadership Council spearheads activities of the museum’s membership, which consists of approximately 315 households. The operating budget of Palmer in FY2025 is $2.6 million, split between earned income (3%), philanthropic income from endowment and contributions (23%), and University support (74%). The museum’s expenses can be broadly categorized as programming and events, engagement, and administration.

The Building

The new Palmer Museum of Art is a 71,254 square-foot state-of-the-art facility, designed by Allied Works. A significant cultural resource for the University and the region, the new museum boasts 19 galleries on two levels, indoor and outdoor courtyards, and the Palmer’s first-ever dedicated education and event spaces. Located on the grounds of The Arboretum at Penn State, the museum is the largest academic art museum in Pennsylvania and the only art museum in the Big Ten Conference integrated with a full-scale arboretum.

In its new location, the museum offers diverse and thought-provoking exhibitions, engaging education programs, and community events that welcome audiences and support curricula across the University system and k-12 schools.

The new facility offers numerous ways for people to engage with the museum’s growing permanent collection. In addition to galleries dedicated to nineteenth-century American art (2,787 total sf), American modern art from 1900 to 1950 (2,572 total sf), European art (927 sf), arts of Africa (956 sf), postwar art (1,159 sf), contemporary art (2,395 sf), ceramics (1,363 sf), and studio glass (866 sf), a works on paper gallery (599 sf) allows staff to curate rotating exhibitions from the museum’s diverse collection of prints, drawings, and photographs. Three visually connected spaces—two on the ground level of the museum and one on the second level—allow for flexibility in planning special exhibitions (3,519 total sf), and a teaching gallery (881 sf) enables staff to work with faculty and students across the University to connect course concepts to the museum’s permanent collection through exhibitions and installations. In addition, a new object study room (744 sf) with an adjacent works on paper storage area (715 sf) allows faculty, students, and visiting scholars to study and learn from works from the museum’s permanent collection firsthand.

The new museum includes dedicated education and event spaces. In the museum’s new Education and Administration Wing, there is a studio classroom (640 sf) with space for hands-on creative activity. An adjacent education terrace (1,412 sf) allows staff—from the Palmer and the Arboretum—to organize outdoor education programs separate from or as part of studio-based classes and activities. Larger education programs and outreach events can be organized in the museum’s event space (1,328 sf), a multi-use room adjacent to the museum lobby (2,275 sf) and the event terrace (2,126 sf), that can be set up for films, lectures, symposia, performances, and events.

The Collection

With a growing collection of nearly 11,000 objects, representing a diversity of cultures and spanning centuries of art, the Palmer Museum’s strengths include American art, ceramics, studio glass, and photography. For more about the collection, visit https://palmer.emuseum.com/collections.

American Art

The American paintings survey major developments of the nineteenth century, with concentrations in portraiture from the Early Republic, Hudson River School landscapes, genre scenes and still lifes from before and after the Civil War, and figural subjects by expatriates and impressionists around 1900.

Ceramics

Studio ceramics are well represented, including works by European and Japanese traditions in the early twentieth century, and contemporary Danish ceramics, among many other historical and contemporary work.

Studio Glass

The Palmer Museum of Art’s collection of contemporary glass has grown exponentially in the last decade, more than a half century after the founding of the international studio glass movement in the early 1960s.

Photography

The permanent collection currently includes more than 1,500 photographs (approximately 13% of the collection).

Philanthropic Impact and Opportunities

The Palmer Museum of Art has been a vital cultural resource for Penn State and the central Pennsylvania region for decades, and the new Palmer Museum of Art at The Arboretum at Penn State has been a dream and focus of the University’s educational and outreach efforts for the past several years. Since launching the campaign for the new Palmer Museum of Art in spring 2019, we have raised more than $26 million for the museum, $22 million of which was dedicated to the building fund.

The museum’s success and future growth will depend on inspiring ongoing support the museum, its collection, and its education and outreach missions.

More than 85% of the Palmer Museum’s permanent collection has been gifted or purchased with donated funds, and the museum currently has a pipeline of planned gifts in kind, totaling approximately 800 works of art from 15 donors.

The Palmer benefits from a membership program that started in 1974, just two years after the museum was established on the Penn State University Park campus. The membership program was recently relaunched with the opening of the new museum and nets approximately $80,000 per year in dues-based contributions; student memberships for the Museum are free.

In the new museum, more than 30 naming opportunities remain to recognize significant contributions to the Museum of Art Enrichment Fund, a discretionary endowment to support museum operations, exhibitions, acquisitions, and education programs. The University will soon launch the public phase of Penn State Forever: The Campaign to Lead and Serve, which will emphasize the Penn State’s—and by extension, the museum’s—public service mission, highlighting the ways that the museum prepares students for lifelong success, meets the needs of people in their communities, and have impact nationally and internationally through their exhibitions, scholarship, and research activity. Across the University and throughout the campaign, every college, campus, and unit will pursue these ambitions in ways that speak to their unique mission and to the communities they serve.

To read more about the College of Art and Architecture, Penn State, and State College, please download the full position profile via the link above.

Candidate Profile

The next Director of the Palmer will be an ambitious, creative, and collaborative leader who is inspired by the mission of the Palmer Museum of Art and of Penn State, and who inspires others as well. Top candidates will demonstrate seven to 10 years of progressively increasing organizational leadership within art museums, arts institutions, or similar organizations; experience within an academic art museum is desirable. Other must-have qualities include a talent and enthusiasm for outreach and partnership, and a commitment to advancing inclusivity, representation, and belonging in their approach to exhibitions, collections, audience engagement, and mentorship.

While no individual candidate will have every experience outlined in the position description, ideal candidates will display the following professional and personal qualities, skills, and characteristics:

Strategic, Collaborative and Visionary Leadership

The Director will be a dynamic and charismatic leader with an entrepreneurial and innovative spirit and an ability to partner with colleagues across the University, in the local community, and with members of the broader art and museum world. This individual will serve as a visible and effective advocate for the critical role that the arts play in the overall educational and public mission of The Pennsylvania State University. The successful candidate will be a proven strategic thinker with the foresight and capacity to understand and balance complex and discrete priorities and needs both within the Museum as well as across the breadth of the Penn State system. This leader must be comfortable operating within and energized by the environment of a large, complex University system that values academic engagement and intellectual vitality. Capable of providing stability and exuding confidence when faced with important and quickly changing circumstances, the Director will be a consultative thought leader.

Mission Fit and Expertise

The Director will demonstrate a passion for art, an appreciation for the creative process, and dedication to and enthusiasm for serving students and lifelong learners at all levels. As the leader of an art museum within a public, land grant University, the successful candidate must be someone who values the Palmer Museum’s educational mission and the integration of the museum into the Penn State curriculum. The Director must also be deeply committed to research and creative scholarship, while cultivating collaborative opportunities within the broader art and art museum world.

The Director will help set the vision for rigorous, compelling exhibitions, programs, and publications that expand scholarly inquiry and audience engagement, make the Museum an attractive destination in Pennsylvania, and elevate the profile of the Palmer nationally. The next Director will have a solid grasp and keen awareness of national and international trends and best practices in art museums and within the art world.

Skilled and Inspirational Manager

The Director will be a results-driven leader with a collegial, team-oriented working style, open and nimble in adjusting to emerging needs or shifting priorities. This individual will have a proven record of visible, effective leadership and management and the demonstrated ability to professionally develop, mentor, and retain a strong team that is focused on impact, excellence, accountability, and efficiency. They will be a motivator, able to inspire a shared vision, quality performance, and strong morale, empowering and cultivating staff through active and effective communication, feedback, and delegation, while actively promoting teamwork and collaboration.

External Relations and Relationship Building

The Director will have a compelling public presence and will be skilled at developing, building, and sustaining relationships. They will have a demonstrated ability to connect with and build bridges among the various stakeholders across a range of contexts, including students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, the Board of Trustees, the National Advisory Council and Friends Leadership Council, leaders of arts and cultural organizations, major donors and collectors, and members of the State College community. The Director will have excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to connect genuinely with audiences of varying levels of expertise. They will have the capacity to serve as an active and sensitive listener, and to thrive as the Palmer Museum’s foremost champion and advocate, persuading stakeholders to support and advance the Museum’s mission.

The Director will possess a high comfort level operating in the public arena, which includes valuing outward engagement, being at ease with people, and embracing the expectations for a leader with substantial visibility in the community.

Credibility and Recognition

The successful candidate will have recognized distinction in the field, significant standing with peer institutions, and the stature to represent Penn State and the Palmer to all stakeholders. The next Director will operate with transparency and integrity in all dealings and bring an awareness of ethical best practices stipulated by the Association of Art Museum Directors, the American Alliance of Museums, and the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries.

Development and Fundraising

The Director will be an engaging fundraiser with demonstrated success in cultivation and stewardship. This individual will possess the capacity and mindset to build strong relationships within the community and to deepen collaborations with central advancement, current and potential donors, the Museum’s councils, and the broader Penn State community. Ideally this leader will have prior experience with and a track record of success in prospect engagement, donor cultivation, and stewardship, and will provide high-touch engagement with all the Palmer’s constituents.

Operational Abilities

The Director will have a record of successful oversight and management of budgets and personnel, and firm understanding of museum functions and operations. They will promote a culture of excellence, collaboration, and high-quality execution at all levels within the institution, providing outstanding stewardship for the advancement of the Palmer Museum of Art. This individual will have the perspective to consider the impact of decisions, strategic plans or initiatives, and programs on the organization, in relationship to University and college policies and guidelines, and to make sound recommendations accordingly.

Educational Background

A master’s degree in art history, museum studies, or a related, relevant field is required; an earned doctorate in an appropriate discipline is preferred. Deep professional and leadership experience in a comparable setting and in art historical study will also be seriously considered.

Compensation and Benefits

Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience. The salary range for this role is $180,000 to $200,000 with a generous benefits package.

Contact

Koya Partners has been exclusively retained for this engagement, led by Naree Viner and Tenley Bank. Express interest in this role by filling out our https://talent-profile.dsgco.com/search/v2/21879 or emailing Tenley directly at tbank@koyapartners.com. All inquiries and discussions are strictly confidential.

Koya Partners l Diversified Search Group is committed to providing reasonable accommodation to individuals living with disabilities. If you are a qualified individual living with a disability and need assistance expressing interest online, please email NonprofitSearchOps@divsearch.com. If you are selected for an interview, you will receive additional information regarding how to request an accommodation for the interview process.
Penn State is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer, and is committed to providing employment opportunities to all qualified applications without regards to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identify, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.

To apply, visit: https://apptrkr.com/6073156