The Board of Directors is also an important part of the structure of Manifest. This body of decision makers includes the directors and founders. Jason is the president of the board.
Because part of Manifest's mission is to involve and motivate students in the community, the interns really play an important role in maintaining the gallery day-to-day. A lot of the responsibilities of the interns have already been addressed in previous posts. At the lower echelon of the organization are Gallery Interns and Academic Gallery Interns, who are like gallery interns but receive course credit for their working hours. After obtaining a certain numbers of service to Manifest, you may be promoted to Senior Gallery Intern at the discretion of the board of directors. And after still more time, you may be promoted to Gallery Assistant. With each promotion comes more responsibility and input into the organization. For example, after some time, an intern may become a part of the jury that decides what work to include in an exhibition, and at the Gallery Assistant level, application for junior board membership is also possible.
The ability for an intern to grow within the organization is one of the things I really like about Manifest. If my schedule for the fall semester allows, I would love to continue at Manifest in the hopes of learning more, gaining more experience, and advancing within the organization.
Good!
ReplyDeleteIn all fairness Kathleen, I should clarify that I am a volunteer as Director, but as Chief Curator I began receiving a stipend in 2007 based on the board of director's decision (before that everything I did was volunteer for three years). They realized that I could not continue to put in so many hours (probably more than a full time job) without some compensation. Yet Manifest is so young and cannot afford to pay a full-time Executive Director, although this is our goal in the future (regardless of whether it is me). The stipend I receive is carefully documented to cover specific tasks related to curating and managing the exhibits, and is a modest amount relative to an hourly rate. It was necessary to break this down like this because there is a potential conflict of interest in my being Executive Director, Board President, AND getting paid as a contractor for my curatorial work. The contractual part is what eliminates the conflict of interest, and the board makes the decision to 'hire' me as contractor by a vote that does not include mine.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to see such a thorough journal about your experience at Manifest! I'd like to have a printout of the entire thing for our files once you're done with it, if possible.
Thanks for being a great part of Manifest!
jason