Director of Programs

Start: July-August 2026 | Full-time

The Role
The Director of Programs works with the Executive and Artistic Director to lead Wave Pool’s programmatic work across the organization: gallery exhibitions and events, residencies and fellowships, Driving Lessons professional development, community engagement, woodshop and ceramics programming, and partnerships with organizations inside and outside the arts. The position holds both curatorial vision and operational detail, and works independently across them.

A significant near-term focus is Throughlines, the successor to Open Engagement: the national convening for socially engaged art that Wave Pool is co-leading. Here, the Director co-manages the Artists’ Programming Committee, drafts open calls, manages artist selection, supports artists through project implementation, and oversees documentation and reporting.

Across all of Wave Pool’s programs, the Director curates and designs programming, manages projects and budgets, and supports artists. The position coordinates the work of fellows, resident artists, and guest curators, and supervises student interns and project-based contractors. It requires comfort managing complex relationships across multiple organizations and stakeholders, managing multiple projects and budgets, and holding curatorial vision alongside administrative detail.

This position reports to the Executive and Artistic Director.

Qualifications
– Strong preference for artists with an active cross-sector social practice.
– Experience working collaboratively and amicably within socially engaged, community-based, or public art contexts as an artist, curator, or organizer is central to this role.
– Project and budget management experience.
– Written and verbal communication ability.
– Good knowledge of the Cincinnati arts ecosystem, and experience developing collaborative initiatives with regional non-arts organizations are a strong plus.

This is an in-person position, residence in the Cincinnati area at the time of the position start is required.

Compensation
– $50,268/year
– Health cost reimbursement
– Unlimited PTO after 1 year of employment
– Access to Wave Pool’s facilities for personal creative work, including woodshop, ceramics kiln, vinyl cutter, project space, and tool library.
– Artist/Research Leave policy for residencies and projects

About Wave Pool
Wave Pool is a socially engaged art center in Camp Washington, Cincinnati, championing artist-driven practices that extend beyond galleries and museums: listening deeply, collaborating broadly, and working with neighbors and partners through visionary approaches to world building. Our work pairs communities’ wisdom with artists’ sense of possibility, building relationships and collective practices around complex issues. Wave Pool operates a gallery, residencies and fellowships, professional development for artists, woodshop, ceramics studio, and community gathering space.

Wave Pool is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, pregnancy, age, disability, or any characteristic protected by applicable law.

For more information about the position, reach out to Boris Oicherman, boris@wavepoolgallery.org, or come to his office hours at Swell Art Cafe, 4–6 pm every Wednesday.

To Apply
https://www.wavepoolgallery.org/jobs Application deadline: Sunday, July 5, 2026

The application form will ask for the following:
1. Do you live in, or are you planning to relocate to, Cincinnati, OH?
2. Your name
3. Email address
4. Links to personal creative work (up to 5 links in total):
a. recent projects that best exemplify your creative practice (website, press, documentation)
b. Curatorial/programming/organizing work
c. Writing examples
5. CV (upload)
6. Questions-instead-of-a-cover-letter (up to 75 words each). We are not looking for polished writing; you should not spend longer on these questions than you would on a cover letter.
a. What drew you to apply for this job?
b. Describe a project that you were not involved in that made you go “I want to do things like that.”
c. Describe a socially engaged project, yours or someone else’s, that you think didn’t work, and why.
d. When you imagine this job going well, what are you spending your time on?
e. On the other hand, what kind of work do you want to do less of?
f. What’s something about socially engaged art today you don’t like, or that you think you’d do differently if you had it your way?