Something for the weekend: The Victoria and Albert Museum (V and A) has begun its search for two cataloguers to help with the David Bowie Archive, which it is in the process of acquiring. If you’re good under pressure and with changes, then this could be the job for you!
The successful applicants will work with a lead cataloguer as part of a wider team in the performance, furniture, textiles and fashion department and report to the curator of contemporary performance. The project cataloguing team will be responsible for cataloguing the David Bowie Archive using the museum’s collections management system, which involves contributing record photography and cataloguing images.
The roles will be fixed-term contracts for 24 months and will be initially be based at offsite storage in Iver, Buckinghamshire, before moving to the V and A East Storehouse in 2025. The salary will be between £26,217 and £34,956 a year.
The job advert stated: “Comprising 80,000 items spanning the entirety of Bowie’s career, the archive is an important portrait of one of the most innovative and influential artists of our time. It includes costume, staging models and other performance artefacts, photography, fan art, musical instruments, personal notes, sketches and designs, make-up charts, song lyrics and sheet music, unrealised project documentation, writings and press coverage.
“It demonstrates Bowie’s thought processes, the genesis and development of individual albums, the evolution of his own image, his collaborations with musicians, photographers, fashion designers and other practitioners.”
The V and A offers employees 29 days of annual leave plus bank holidays, flexible working, tickets to exhibitions at the museum, a subsidised staff canteen, 25% gift shop discount, a give-as-you-earn scheme, a bicycle loan, an interest-free season ticket, an interest-free rental deposit loan, free safety checks and small repairs to bikes with Doctor Bike, an employee assistance programme, and staff diversity networks.
This sounds like a hunky dory opportunity for anyone with Bowie knowledge that stretches from his Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke eras!