Position at Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives

[Mary Ballard <BallardM@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Textile Conservator
Bristol's Museums, Galleries & Archives
Bristol Grade 12  Scale points 38-41  £28,173 * £30,654
Job Ref. No. 9560	

Bristol Museum is searching for an experienced, highly motivated textile conservator to carry out a broad range of duties: preventive and remedial conservation, assessing and preparing items for exhibition and loan, condition surveying, answering enquiries, interpreting environmental data, improving storage, etc.

Working as part of the team covering antiquities, paintings, paper, geology, social history and preventive conservation, you will have responsibility for the care of flat textiles, costume and costume accessories from across many of the curatorial disciplines of the Museum and Art Gallery, its other venues and period houses.  You will also be responsible for running the textile conservation studio and managing contract conservators, interns and volunteers.

You will work with a wide variety of museum staff and outside specialists and must enjoy using your considerable communication skills to forge constructive relationships with them all.  You must also welcome responsibility for planning, prioritising and overseeing work programmes as well as organising your own time. 

You will have a degree from a recognised textile conservation-training programme, or comparable experience, and ideally five years post training experience.  We seek an individual with a creative and flexible approach to problem solving, along with a broad experience of historic, ethnographic and modern textiles and dress and their conservation. Experience within a museum work environment will be seen as an advantage and we welcome applicants who have or are working towards accredited status (PACR).

Bristol is a dynamic, ambitious and muli-cultural European city, acknowledged as a centre of cultural excellence.  Bristol City Council is transforming its cultural facilities with investment in its Museums, Galleries & Archives Service thanks partly to the Renaissance in the Regions initiative and through major lottery funded projects which include the creation of a new Museum of Bristol.  As textile conservator you will be part of a growing and lively conservation department which values colleagues with a co-operative and positive outlook.

This post is offered as a fixed term contract to 31 March 2006.  Extension of the post for a further two years, or even possible establishment as a permanent post, is an aspiration dependant upon confirmation of continued Renaissance funding.  The post is for a 37 hour week.

For full application details and an application form either go to www.bristol-city.gov.uk/jobs or write to Recruitment Services, Bristol City Council, PO Box 2273, Bristol, BS99 7FF.  tel. +44 (117) 922 4499, FAX +44(117) 922 2705, email recruitment@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 

Applicants must be either EU nationals or hold a current permit that will enable them to work in the UK. 

Closing date: 16 March 2005 (Interviews will be held on Monday 4 April 2005)

For an informal discussion about the post please contact:
Ray Barnett, Collections Manager, Tel. +44 117 922 3600, ray_barnett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx or, Frances Hinchcliffe, Paper Conservator, Tel. +44 117 922 3615, frances_hinchcliffe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 


Mary W. Ballard
Senior Textiles Conservator
Smithsonian Center for Materials Research & Education
4210 Silver Hill Road, Suitland MD 20746 USA
tel: 301-238-1210 fax: 301-238-3709
email: ballardm@xxxxxxxxxxxx