Posted: 10/24/2009
Closes: Nov. 23, 2009
Level: Senior
Type: Permanent
Job categories: Director

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR for William King Museum: Center for Art and Cultural Heritage, located in Abingdon, Virginia. This position is the lead executive and operating officer for this American Association of Museums accredited museum. Responsibilities are staff management and the leadership role in all aspects of planning, fiscal management, fundraising, and ongoing operation. The Executive Director position is supported by 20 full and part-time staff and reports to a volunteer governing board of approximately 25. This full-time position with benefits is open beginning January 2010.
The William King Museum is located on 22 acres of property in historic Abingdon, Virginia, and is housed in the 1913 William King High School building, which has been renovated and adapted as a high-security museum facility. The operating budget is approximately $1,000,000, with annual visitor numbers averaging approximately 25,000. The Museum presents the cultural heritage of Southwest Virginia & Northeast Tennessee within the context of world cultures and the continuum of artistic trends today. The only accredited museum in far Southwest Virginia, the Museum’s changing exhibition program annually features 8-10 exhibits of loaned objects of original art in three galleries. Most exhibits are organized by WKM with the balance borrowed from other museums and lending institutions. For example, the three exhibits for fall 2009 are J. C. Leyendecker: America’s ‘Other’ Illustrator (borrowed from the Haggin Museum’s permanent holdings); From These Hills: Contemporary Art in the Southern Appalachian Highlands (the Museum’s biennial exhibition, with a guest curator); and Buying time: Clocks along the Great Road, 1790-1870 (curated by the Museum). Opening in December will be Matisse, Picasso, and Modern Art of Paris (on loan from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the University of Virginia’s permanent collection).
The successful candidate will lead the Museum to its next level of growth, which is centered on a capital project that includes the construction of two new buildings, new roads and parking areas, an amphitheatre, and an outdoor sculpture garden. A master plan has recently been completed and architectural drawings finished through the schematic phase for landscape features, an artist/artisan studio complex, and a new museum entrance building. A capital fundraising campaign, including a new operating endowment, is in the early stages of development, and its completion should be considered a priority responsibility, as is audience development and increased sources of earned and contributed income, which are the anticipated outcomes of the Cultural Campus Expansion Project. Programmatically, high school through senior adult education is the targeted growth area resulting from the capital project. In summary, the capital project will enhance the Museum’s existing position as a resource for the region¹s new creative economy, making it a premier visitation site for both residents of the region and visitors.
A small permanent collection of regional decorative arts and material culture is the result of the Museum’s Cultural Heritage Project, which has conducted a field survey of objects made prior to 1940 in 16 counties in Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee. The collection is housed at the Museum’s second site, the Fields-Penn 1860 House Museum. CHP data is held in a permanent archive and serves to inform collecting activities, exhibitions and publications, including a new hardcover book published by the University of Virginia Press, Great Road Style: The Decorative Arts Legacy of Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee. Two curators manage the exhibition and collection program.
The Education Department provides public and school programming to 14 school districts serving 8,000 K-12 children and their teachers annually. The Department's key programs, VanGogh Outreach, Tour Plus, ArtShops, and Student Gallery, are based on the Virginia Standards of Learning with a visual arts emphasis. Workshops utilize expertise of studio artists and art professionals from the Southwest Virginia region and from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Other programs and services offered are Summer Art Camps, both at the Museum and at outreach camps across the region, Art Enrichment for after-school coordinators, Teacher Workshops, Open Studio, Art Birthday Parties, youth and adult classes and workshops, and participation in career fairs, and community festivals. The Director of Education, supported by an instructive staff, manages all educational programs.
The Museum is funded by federal, state and local government support including the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Southwest Virginia Public Education Consortium, Washington County, the Town of Abingdon, and numerous private foundations, businesses, individuals and community service clubs. The Museum maintains an extensive membership program. The William King Museum is a museum partner of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and a member of the Virginia Association of Museums, Southeastern Museums Conference, the American Association of Museums, and the Association for State and Local History.
Abingdon is located in the rolling hills of Southwest Virginia, alongside Interstate 81 and at the crossroads of Highways 11 and 19. Its population is 7800 and, according to the last census, is growing at 11%. Its per capita growth rate is the fastest in the state. It is considered within the Tri-Cities metropolitan area, which has a population of 500,000. Abingdon is a town with a strong arts community: several galleries, a year-round professional theater, Barter Theatre, the official state theater of Virginia; a local arts center, the Arts Depot; symphony and chamber concerts; and one of the largest summer festivals in the nation, the Virginia Highlands Festival. It has recently been designated a “Dream Town” and was featured in a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal. Abingdon is included in the book The 100 Best Art Towns in America and is regularly featured in Southern Living Magazine, including a recent edition which speaks of Abingdon as a “place you come to visit and decide you want to move there.” It is family-friendly and known for its professional community and its educational facilities. Johnston Memorial Hospital is located in Abingdon, and four colleges and universities are nearby, including Emory & Henry College, King College, Virginia Intermont College, and East Tennessee State University. In addition, Virginia Highlands Community College and the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center are located in Abingdon.
Abingdon is a 3-hour drive from Charlotte, NC and a 2-hour drive from Knoxville, TN, Roanoke, VA and Winston-Salem, NC. Tri-Cities Airport is 30 minutes away and connects with several daily flights to hubs such as Charlotte, Cincinnati and Atlanta.

Applicants can learn more about the museum at www.williamkingmusem.org. Applications, which should include a letter of interest and a current resume, are being accepted only via email to Steven Morris, Chairman of the Search Committee, at directorsearch@wkmuseum.org by Monday, November 23.