Jacqueline,

Your exhibition position sounds exciting, and your successful candidate will certainly be busy. Your description tells me you need a graphic designer with research and writing skills, or a researcher and writer with graphic design skills; this is an exhibit developer/graphic design position.

Based on your post, you need 1) someone with both signage and graphic design skills -- not just an understanding of CS4, but someone who gets exhibit and display fundamentals like proper line length, readable point size (including ADA requirements), appropriate text block length, good use of white space on a panel, as well as usability tricks (like understanding eye scanning patterns). Graphic design for signage and graphic design for print work are different; a skilled designer understands the ways they differ.

2) You need someone who will enjoy plunging into Lawrenceville history, and someone who can research, write, and edit. Your employee will need to turn lengthy, passionate school histories into short paragraphs to interest passing students and visiting alumni.

3) You need someone with web skills to create virtual exhibits. It would be ideal if you could find someone who understands content strategy for the web and usability. For this part of the job you definitely need someone who knows what makes an online exhibition good -- or someone who understands that they don't know what makes a good online exhibition, but is willing to learn.

4) You need someone with vision. Someone who can look at your archives -- or if they're boxed up, at your school architecture or yearbooks or even the botanical plants on your campus -- and generate a list of exhibition ideas. You need someone who can take that list and find ways to make it punchy, fun, and attractive to your audiences.

The way you've described the job so far, I do not think you necessarily need someone with a background in museum studies, and I don't think this is a curatorial position. This is a combination graphic designer/exhibit developer job. The right candidate is out there. If you're specific about what you need, when you post the position, you'll find him or her. A person with this set of skills rarely gets to use all of them in a single job, and your successful candidate will be as thrilled to find you as you are to find them.

Best of luck.

Sincerely,
Jennifer Chapman
Senior Exhibition Developer
ECOS Communications
Boulder, CO

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