Visitor Services Assistant – FLEISHER ART MEMORIAL
Position Description
Reports to: Visitor Services Coordinator
Position Classification: Temporary, with potential to transition to Permanent. Part-time
Wage Classification: Hourly, non-exempt
Job Description:
Fleisher Art Memorial is seeking a part-time Visitor Services Assistant to work Saturdays during the Spring 2024 term (15 hours bi-weekly, the term runs from April 1 through May 24) to assist students, faculty members, and visitors at our lobby entrance desks. The Visitor Services Assistant serves as a friendly and professional ambassador for Fleisher, exemplifying qualities of reliability, quality customer service, organization, and efficiency to ensure that visitors’ needs are met with promptness and grace.
Visitor Services Assistants are expected to have both day and evening availability during our fall, winter, and spring school terms; the current opening requires availability specifically on Saturdays to support children and youth programming. After the spring term, there is also the possibility of expanded hours and/or other shifts in future terms. Hours vary significantly depending on our school hours.
Responsibilities:
• Be a friendly and approachable presence at all times.
• Provide knowledgeable assistance to visitors and students seeking information about Fleisher and its surrounding areas.
• Interact with students, visitors, and faculty members on a regular basis by answering questions, assisting with the registration process, and fielding phone calls.
• Help maintain the safety and security of Fleisher’s building.
• Graciously walk students and guests through Fleisher’s Community Safety Policies and answer related questions.
• Tactfully handle stressful situations and demonstrate quick problem-solving abilities.
• Assist in contacting model, faculty, and class monitor substitutes when necessary.
• Stay current on Fleisher’s happenings, policies, and procedures.
• Manage record keeping and payments.
• Keep a neat and orderly workspace at all times.
• Complete opening and closing procedures efficiently and accurately.
• Perform other tasks as directed by the Visitor Services Coordinator.
Skills and Qualifications:
• Outstanding hospitality skills.
• Excellent verbal communication.
• Dependability and punctuality are essential in this role.
• Prior customer service skills preferred.
• Familiarity with Microsoft Office.
• Willingness to learn constituent management databases.
• Passionate about Philadelphia’s art and culture community.
• Fluency in English. Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, or other language skills strongly preferred – please identify this clearly in your application.
• Ability to obtain necessary Child Clearances once employment is confirmed.
Compensation:
$17.50/hour
Benefits for Part-time Staff Include:
· Annual Household Membership to Fleisher Art Memorial.
· Tuition waived for one class or workshop per semester.
· Free admission to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
· Additional hours available upon completion of training for special/rental events.
Interview Process:
The hiring team for this position consists of:
• Phoebe Funderburg-Moore, Visitor Services Coordinator
• Erin Sweeny, Director of Communications
• Garrett Williams, Human Resources
The hiring process for this role consists of a phone screening with the Visitor Services Coordinator and an interview with the Visitor Services Coordinator, Human Resources, and the Director of Communications.
About us:
Located in Southeast Philadelphia, Fleisher Art Memorial is recognized as the nation’s oldest community school of visual arts. Founded in 1898 as the Graphic Sketch Club, Fleisher has maintained its mission to make art accessible to everyone regardless of economic means, background, or artistic experience. Fleisher welcomes more than 20,000 visitors and students each year through free and low-cost workshops, a prestigious exhibitions program, public events, and residencies in public schools and community centers. For more information, visit Fleisher.org.
To Apply:
Submit a cover letter and resume in one document. No phone calls, please. We will receive applications until March 23, 2024 or until the position is filled.
Fleisher’s core values lead us to seek a broad range of perspectives and backgrounds to achieve our mission and to maintain a diverse and inclusive environment. Fleisher is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. We are committed to employment practices that ensure employees and applicants for employment are provided with equal opportunities without regard to race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, age, religion, physical or mental disability, medical condition, veteran status, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, or any other factor that is not related to the position.
Fleisher strongly encourages individuals from marginalized and underrepresented groups to apply.
Faculty and Teaching Artist
Rolling submissions
Overview of Fleisher Art Memorial: As the oldest tuition-free arts education program in the nation, Fleisher is both a community-based arts center and a regional presenter of contemporary art, fostering access to professional arts education, artistic excellence, and cultural exchange. Programs at the Fleisher Art Memorial are inspired by its founder, Samuel Fleisher, who over 100 years ago invited “the world to come learn art.”
Fleisher’s Mission Statement: To make art accessible to everyone, regardless of economic means, background, or artistic experience.
Fleisher Art Memorial offers classes including, but not limited to, the following areas of study:
- Still life sketching & painting
- Live model sketching & painting
- Portrait sculpture
- Mosaics
- Darkroom photography
- Digital photography
- Ceramics
- Jewelry
- Lithography
- Screen Printing
- Collage and Papercutting
- Digital Animation
- Pastels, Watercolors, Charcoal
At this time, we are not actively recruiting faculty or teaching artists. However, we welcome hearing from individuals who want to share their interest in teaching at Fleisher. If you are a practicing artist and/or arts educator interested in running classes or workshops that share your creative process and techniques with adults or children, please share the following details and as we recruit for positions, we will reach out to candidates that meet our criteria.
Please respond to this posting with your Resume/CV, including three references, and be sure to answer the following questions:
Name:
Email:
Phone Number:
Teaching Medium:
Teaching availability: (Daytime/Nighttime/Weekends)
Are you willing to substitute teach a class, if needed: Y/N?
Age range preferences (children, teens, adults)
If chosen to work in our Children and Youth program, are you able to furnish your required clearances to work with children before your first day of work?
Link to a personal website/ online portfolio (if available)
Fleisher’s core values lead us to seek a broad range of perspectives and backgrounds to achieve our mission and to maintain a diverse and inclusive environment. As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to employment practices that ensure employees and applicants for employment are provided with equal opportunities without regard to race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, age, religion, physical or mental disability, medical condition, veteran status, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information or any other factor that is not related to the position.
Fleisher strongly encourages individuals from marginalized and underrepresented groups to apply. Fleisher is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer.
No phone calls, please.
Thank you for your interest in teaching at Fleisher!
Please note: As we are not actively hiring new faculty or teaching artists, we are unable to reply to every inquiry.
Fleisher Art Memorial (FAM) is excited to announce the call for entries for the 47th exhibition season of the Wind Challenge. Established in 1978 as The Challenge and now known as the Wind Challenge, Fleisher's annual juried competition is committed to enriching people’s lives through art by featuring the work of exceptional artists living in the region. Artists living within a 450-mile radius of Philadelphia are welcome to apply.
For this series, nine selected artists will be featured in a trio of Wind Challenge Exhibitions—each featuring three artists—to be hosted at Fleisher in 2025. The jurors for this year’s competition are Colette Fu and Heidi Ratanavanich. The selected cohort of artists will work closely with the Director of Exhibitions in curating their work and exhibition-related programming.
The Wind Challenge Exhibition Series is made possible thanks to generous support from the Wind Foundation.
SELECTION PROCESS
Applicants are reviewed in a two-stage selection process:
Round 1: Jurors review submitted artwork online. From this initial review, finalists selected to advance to the second round will be notified via e-mail or phone call by May 11, 2024.
Round 2: Finalists deliver one original artwork to Fleisher by May 16, 2024, reviewed along with their original image submissions by the jurors. (Installation artists being considered as finalists will be encouraged to come to Fleisher for a site visit if interested in submitting a specific proposal for the Fleisher galleries. The resulting round 2 submission could include a plan for the space and/or physical work related to the proposed installation.)
FINAL NOTIFICATIONS to selected artists sent by Friday, May 24, 2024.
2025 JURORS
Colette Fu is a Philadelphia-based artist Colette Fu received her MFA in Fine Art Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2003 and soon after began devising complex compositions that incorporate photography and pop-up paper engineering. Her pop-up books are included in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Getty Research Institute, Library of Congress, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many private and rare archive collections. Fu's numerous awards include a 2023 Artworks Grant, Joan Mitchell Artist and Sculptors Grant, the Meggendorfer Prize, and a Fulbright Research Fellowship to China. In 2017, Fu created a room-size pop-up book utilizing her own photographs entitled Tao Hua Yuan Ji, Source of the Peach Blossoms—a 21 x 14-foot pop-up book that people could enter—at the TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image. She teaches pop-up courses and community workshops internationally.
Colette was a Wind Challenge artist in the 2006-07 series.
Heidi Ratanavanich is a Thai/Chinese artist based in Lenapehoking (Philadelphia). They use print-making, food, and space-making to create works that provoke community learning, gathering, and remembering to imagine new collective possibilities. Their practice focuses on finding gaps to plug into in communities, to make art that feels necessary, scrappy, and joyful. They specialize in making physical and ephemeral objects that acknowledge and celebrate the labor and care of community-building.
ELIGIBILITY
- Applicants must live within a 450-mile radius of Philadelphia.
- Selected artists must not be showing the same major body of work in a local gallery or alternative space in the same year as the Wind Challenge exhibition.
- Selected artists must be available to install their work, participate in the Wind Challenge Artist Exchange public program (a panel conversation led by the selected artists in which they ask each other questions and share insights into their creative process), and be present at the opening reception.
Please note that students enrolled in a full-time degree/certificate granting program during the year of the exhibition and previous Wind Challenge artists are ineligible.
EXHIBITION SCHEDULE
The Wind Challenge Exhibition Series will be held in the Dene M. Louchheim Galleries at Fleisher Art Memorial. The exhibitions are tentatively scheduled for the first half of the 2025 year and each exhibition will run approximately four-weeks. Exhibition dates will disclosed in May 2024.
SELECTED ARTISTS RECEIVE:
- The opportunity to display recent work in a three-person exhibition.
- The opportunity to work with Fleisher’s Director of Exhibitions in one of the country’s first community art centers, helping to curate their work in the selected gallery space.
- $750 honorarium.
- Opportunity to gain exposure and promote your practice through participation in the Wind Challenge Artist Exchange and public reception.
- Promotion in Fleisher publications, online materials, and related marketing.
- Optional: Opportunity to engage with Fleisher's audience by creating a one-hour workshop. Please keep in mind that clearances are needed to engage with youth.
DEADLINE: 11:59 pm on Monday, April 29, 2024
For more information about the Wind Challenge Exhibition Series, visit fleisher.org.
Please direct inquiries to:
Gerard Silva, Director of Exhibitions and Community Outreach
gsilva@fleisher.org / 215-630-0501
ABOUT FLEISHER ART MEMORIAL
Founded by industrialist Samuel S. Fleisher in 1898 as one of the nation’s first community-based art centers, Fleisher Art Memorial is renowned for its long-standing mission of making art accessible regardless of economic means, background, or artistic experience. In 2024, Fleisher is celebrating its 126th anniversary as the center continues to provide free and low-cost studio art classes along with opportunities for emerging and seasoned artists to exhibit their work. Extensive arts education and community-based programming also reflects the organization’s commitment to serving and strengthening communities in Philadelphia by developing, sharing, and promoting creative resources.
Made at Fleisher: Spring Student Market, May 12, 10 am–3 pm
LOCATION: Fleisher Art Memorial, 719 Catharine St, Philadelphia, PA 19147
STUDENT VENDOR APPLICATIONS DUE: Monday, April 7, 11:59 EST
MADE AT FLEISHER is an indoor juried art and craft market organized by Fleisher Art Memorial to celebrate the work of current Fleisher students and alumni. This inaugural student market will highlight the many mediums offered at Fleisher. Shoppers can expect quality art work and handmade goods that reflect Fleisher's offerings.
INTERESTED IN SELLING YOUR WORK?
You will need to log-in or create an account via Submittable below to see the full vendor application. Please complete all of the fields to provide a clear understanding of you and your work.
- FREE TO APPLY
- Deadline to submit is Monday, April 7
- Vendors will be notified of their acceptance by Monday, April 14
- If accepted, vendors will be onsite to sell their work at Fleisher on Sunday, May 12
- Vendor fee to participate, if accepted, is $10. This fee supports Fleisher's work as a nonprofit organization.
- Applicants are encouraged to share social media handles and websites for Fleisher's use when promoting the event and MADE AT FLEISHER vendors.
- Please keep Fleisher's mission of making art accessible to everyone, regardless of economic means, background, or artistic experience in mind when pricing your wares. Vendors who offer gift options of $75 or less tend to sell the most during Fleisher market's.
About the Juror
Maureen Duffy has been a member of the Fleisher faculty since 2017. She is a jewelry designer and artist living and working in the heart of South Philadelphia. She graduated from Moore College of Art and Design in 2005 with a degree in 3D fine arts with a concentration in the studio of metals. She earned her graduate degree at SUNY at New Paltz, NY. In addition to Fleisher, Maureen has taught jewelry classes at Moore College of Art and Design, Millersville University, and Tyler School of Art. Since finishing graduate school in 2007, Maureen have been actively showing and selling her work at galleries, boutiques and craft shows.
Fleisher Art Memorial is a nonprofit community arts organization located in Bella Vista. Our mission is to make art accessible to everyone, regardless of economic means, background, or artistic experience. Fleisher offers an extensive selection of classes and workshops for artists on a quarterly basis; explore current offerings for adults here!
Questions? Please contact Gerard Silva, Director of Exhibitions and Community Outreach, at gsilva@fleisher.org.