by Paddy Johnson on September 29, 2014
I first heard of Thomas & Associates in 2001. I had just finished grad school and was looking for work. A professor who was friends with the company’s current president, Geri Thomas, told me I should check out the art recruiting and consulting firm. I sent out a resume to them and never heard back.
I now see that as a sign of a good recruiter. I had no experience or particular aptitude for commercial arts administration, and that would have been clear from even a quick look at my resume.
Founded in 1999—just two years prior to my own discovery of the firm—Thomas & Associates provides staffing, consulting and professional development seminars exclusively for arts and culture. The company has taken on top-tier clients like the Studio Museum, James Cohan Gallery, and Sean Kelly. Thomas herself has taught arts administration at NYU since 2002, and helped to create a certificate program at the university in Art Collections Management and Display. Prior to that time, Thomas owned a gallery, worked in PR for Te Papa, New Zealand’s national museum, and held the Director of Exhibitions and Collections position at the Jewish Museum.
13 years after my original application, I reached out to her again. I wanted to know what recruiting firms do, between fielding grad student resumes and helping museums put on major exhibitions. Now that I’m a blogger, I finally get to find out what happens behind the scenes at the offices of Thomas & Associates.
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on March 19, 2014
Every hour we’re awake or in the office, we’ll be liveblogging. Check back here.
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The Plot Thickens: A Personal Account of Industry City’s Bid to Take Over Sunset Park
by Erik Gonzalez on October 21, 2013As many of you in the art community know, there is a mega-show in Sunset Park opening to the common public. The show, titled “Come Together: Surviving Sandy,” presents itself as evidence of the resiliency of the New York’s artists and their communal solidarity in the face of Hurricane Sandy.
This presentation is insidiously disingenuous.