PUBLIC ART SAINT PAUL

Job Description

PROGRAMS MANAGER (half time)

Organization Overview: 

Public Art Saint Paul (PASP) is a private, non-profit organization that works in partnership with the City of Saint Paul along with many organizations to imagine and create a more just, sustainable, and visually striking city. By placing artists in influential roles, we help to shape public spaces, improve city systems, and deepen civic engagement.

Over our 36-year history, PASP has become a national leader in public art practice. PASP has helped to create key public spaces in St. Paul, including Kellogg Mall Park, Mears Park, Urban Flower Field (Pedro Park), and Western Sculpture Park. Our City Artist Program has been a national leader in embedding artists in municipal governments, where artists sit at the table with city staff and elected officials, working together to find creative ways of city-making and community engagement. In 1998, in partnership with the City’s Department of Parks and Recreation and neighborhood residents, PASP created a sculpture exhibition in a neglected city park located in the Rondo neighborhood. For 25 years, PASP has maintained a rotating collection of sculptures and held annual community programs in Western Sculpture Park, which has become a key community asset and green space for the neighborhood. Our innovative approach to public art has generated landmark projects such as MN Rocks! An International Stone Carving Symposium, Wing Young Huie’s University Avenue Project, Seitu’s Jones’s CREATE: The Community Meal, and The Art of Food in Frogtown and Rondo.

PASP launched a major new initiative the first St. Paul-Minneapolis Triennial Art Festival in summer 2023, called the Wakpa Triennial (wakpa is Dakota for “river”).

Position Overview:

The Programs Manager is a position centered on running PASP programs, with direct guidance from the Executive Director, and in collaboration and coordination with other PASP staff and contractual workers. To run these programs is to ensure that all actions necessary to their delivery—before, during, and after the program’s taking place—are indeed taken appropriately. Leading such efforts requires rigorous planning and organizing, along with regular consultation with colleagues, by way of regular check-ins and as-necessary communications. The position requires direct communication with many external stakeholders, including artists, commissioned artists, presenting artists, teaching artists, City employees, nonprofit employees, and others.

The Programs Manager is not tasked with fundraising for programs, for developing themes, for determining discussion prompts, or for selecting participants. Rather, the Programs Manager leads communicating with all necessary parties and arranges for programs to appropriately deliver on their programming interest and promise, which may include preparing content and making public presentations. The Programs Manager is to lead running Wakpa Triennial Art Festival programs in the off-year of 2025. The Programs Manager is to support running programs that are managed by other staff or contractual employees, including eARTh Lab, fundraising event(s), City Artist programming, and Sidewalk Poetry selection and stamping.

Such support is restricted to event day preparation and attendance and circumstantial and opportunistic communications to raise programming profile and attendance.

The list of programs below is not conclusive, as more programs are likely to be added in the second half of 2025. The Programs Manager will be asked to lead and to support programs not listed below as they are planned for and determined by the ED for June-December 2025.

Description of Programs to Lead in Running:

Wakpa Triennial Art Festival programs—Critical Conversations, Wakpa Advisory Group meetings, Wakpa Consulting Teachers contributions, Art Ark engagements, and the Wakpa Artists Mentorship Program (tentative)

Critical Conversations: A series of four 1-2 hr in-person panel discussions, in each of Feb, Mar, Apr, and May of 2025, each involving 3-4 guests and taking place in different Saint Paul locations

Wakpa Advisory Group Meetings: A series of four 1-2 hr meetings, two in person and two remote, involving 7 members, in each of Feb, Mar, Apr, and May of 2025

Wakpa Consulting Teachers contributions: Rigorous input about creating (youth) teaching opportunities relating to the Wakpa Triennial collected from 5 teachers with expertise in indigenous arts education, scheduled for Jan-May of 2025

Art Ark engagements: A collection of yet undetermined activations of Seitu Jones’s Art Ark in the waters of the Mississippi, in and about MSP, during summer of 2025

Qualifications:

* Experience in project/programming management, preferably in the culture sector
* Exceptional organizational and communication skills, along with attention to detail
* Facility with a program management tool (MS Project, Monday, Trello, or similar)
* Keen knowledge of the histories, cultures, and artistic practices of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, especially those that live/have lives in the area of Minnesota

Location:

The worksite of the position is an undetermined remote one, other than locations of programs engagements, for a few-several hours a month as needed.

Compensation:

* $25/hr with a standard work week of 20 hours.

* The contract for Programs Manager is applicable through 12/31/2025, with a potential for renewal.