Carol Bates Fellowship
ABOUT THE WALTERS ART MUSEUM
The Walters Art Museum is among America’s most distinctive museums, forging connections between people and art from cultures around the world and spanning seven millennia. Located in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood, the Walters is free for all. The museum’s campus includes five historic buildings and 36,000 art objects.
Today, the Walters serves Baltimore and Maryland by embracing its role as educators and storytellers, using the collection as a vehicle of knowledge and cultural expression to support learning, dialogue, and community engagement. The museum is committed to public education, offering essential programs that help people to connect art to their lives. The Walters’ Visitor Promise aligns staff and volunteers across the museum to preserve and share the works in our care for future generations, partner with communities, and create welcoming, accessible experiences for visitors. The museum offers challenging and creative work opportunities by promoting collaboration, teamwork, and a culture that celebrates the diversity and inclusion of all. In December 2020, the museum finalized a set of multiyear diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI) goals in alignment with the museum’s Strategic Plan and grounded in the following commitments: expand the histories the museum examines and shares; partner with our communities; and center equity, inclusion, and accountability in our culture and decision-making.
OVERVIEW OF ROLE
The Carol Bates Fellow researches and supports the learning and community engagement programs, audience engagement, and evaluation practices of the Walters Art Museum. This year’s Fellow reports to the Manager of Evaluation and Audience Impact and will support the museum’s ongoing efforts to understand how people perceive and engage with the Walters. The Fellow will play an important role in researching how the Walters serves the Baltimore community and broader public, by understanding the experience of museum visitors, including groups that have been historically underrepresented in museums, including, but not limited to individuals of African American, Asian, Latino/Hispanic, Native American, or Pacific Islander descent. Through this position, the Fellow will learn how to conduct rigorous evaluations and audience research using surveys, interviews, observations, and other methods to gather data. The Fellow will use research tools to better understand visitors’ needs and desires, and create a feedback loop between the Walters’ audiences and staff.
The Fellow’s main projects will be to support the implementation of a new standardized exit interview process and communicate findings from this research with staff. The Fellow will also conduct standardized observations of museum visitors to understand how visitors engage within the galleries and at key public programs. A successful candidate for this fellowship will be customer-service minded, willing to engage audiences face-to-face, and an analytical thinker.
This fellowship is a 30-hour per week position, with some weekend and evening work. As the Fellow will be conducting audience research, this role requires the Fellow to work one weekend day or Thursday evening each week as needed to ensure that research conducted is inclusive of visitors who may have different audience characteristics than Walters’ weekday visitors.
Duties and Responsibilities:
- Collect visitor data with Walters’ audiences via paper/pencil, tablet survey, and verbal interview;
- Follow all data collection protocols to randomly approach visitors, recruit them to participate, and conduct research with visitors;
- Take accurate, precise notes based on observations, interviews, or other engagement with visitors;
- Record, clean, and code quantitative and qualitative data into systems such as Word, Excel, or Google spreadsheets;
- Conduct an analysis of the collected data through hand coding and/or descriptive statistics;
- Report on research findings through a PowerPoint presentation with charts and visuals documenting key learnings;
- Participate in an orientation to the museum and collaborate on and participate in continuing professional development designed with emerging professionals in mind;
- All other duties as assigned.
