PhD Position on Corporate Collections
The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) at the Faculty of Humanities is looking for a PhD candidate in the NWO project "Corporate Collections as Emerging Heritage: Art Market Dynamics, Corporate Strategies, and Public Support for the Arts"
The PhD project is concerned with the historical and contemporary dynamics of corporate collections as guardians of emergent heritage. It is part of a larger project that will analyse how corporate collecting functions as a source of signals to different audiences, including museums and other actors on the art market and both internal and external stakeholders of the collecting organizations. The PhD candidate will be supervised by Dr. Arnold Witte, department of Cultural History, and prof.dr. Nachoem Wijnberg, professor in Cultural Entrepreneurship, of the Amsterdam Business School.
Job / Project Description
Corporate art collections form an important part of the demand for contemporary art in the Netherlands. Many corporate collections showcase 'avant garde' art produced by artists just entering the art market, increasing these artists' chances to be canonized and recognized as part of Dutch cultural heritage. At the same time, these collections are an outcome of attitudes towards cultural consumption among the members of these organizations as well as a result of strategic decision-making at the organizational level. By using a signaling framework to integrate cultural studies and management science perspectives this project will study the effects of corporate art collecting in the context of the dynamics of the art world, as well as in the context of the competitive strategies in which corporations that build collections are involved. The project will be done in close collaboration with the Netherlands Association of Corporate Art Collections (VBCN), the Stedelijk Museum and the Rijksdienst Cultureel Erfgoed.
The PhD researcher will combine humanities and management science perspectives in the analysis of historical and contemporary data. He/she will research the dynamics of acquisitions for corporate art collections in comparison to acquisitions of comparable contemporary art by museums after 1955, and the position of mediators as expert selectors. He/she will explore a number of case studies, the main material of which consists in archival sources and published material on acquisition history, contemporary reception within the art sector and corporate world, and later public debates on preservation of these collections. Next to this line of inquiry, the Ph.D. researcher will also collaborate with the Postdoc researcher and the two project leaders to study specific effects of corporate collections on the cultural consumption behaviour of the employees of the collecting organization in present-day companies in the Netherlands.
Requirements
- A master's degree in any of the following or equivalent fields: Cultural History, Art History, Museum Studies, Management Science, Economics, Sociology.
- Understanding of quantitative research methods and archival research;
- Interest in theoretical frameworks from Cultural History and Management Science.
- Affinity with the context of corporate art collecting and contemporary visual art;
- Knowledge of Dutch and an excellent mastery of the English language.
Further Information
Further information can be obtained from Dr. Arnold A. Witte (A.A.Witte@uva.nl) or Prof. Dr Nachoem M. Wijnberg (N.M.Wijnberg@uva.nl). Please see http://asca.uva.nl/research/research-constellations/content/corporate-collections/corporate-collections.html for the description of the project.
Appointment
The PhD candidate will be appointed at the Faculty of Humanities, in the department of Arts and Culture and ASCA. The selected candidate will be appointed for 0,8 fte (30,4 hours per week), initially for a period of 16 months.. Contingent on satisfactory performance it will be extended by a maximum of 32 additional months, leading to the completion of a PhD thesis. The starting date of the contract is 1 July 2015.
Job Application
Applications should include, in a single PDF file:
• a detailed letter of intent stating your motivation for this position;
• a full academic CV and a list of grades from your master study;
• a copy of your master thesis or another relevant writing sample;
• the names of two references
Applications may be submitted no later than 10 April 2015 by sending your application to solliciteren2015-fgw@uva.nl.