Exhibit Project Manager

Job Description

Job Description

The Role
As Exhibitions Project Manager at Liberty Science Center (LSC), you oversee the logistics, teams, and timelines of physical exhibition installations. This includes tracking budgets, contracts, licensing, and the approval process, as well as coordinating communication within and among internal departments and external vendors and partners. Responsibilities include collaborating effectively across teams to oversee new projects and renew existing exhibitions and contributing to the coordination of other institutional initiatives. The Exhibitions Project Manager reports to the Vice President of Exhibitions.

About the Ideal Candidate
This role is best suited for a project manager who has experience bringing physical environments, exhibits, installations, or fabricated experiences from design through production and installation. You should be comfortable working with fabricators, contractors, designers, architects, engineers, media producers, and other vendors—and understand how design decisions translate into real-world materials, fabrication, installation, safety, and quality control.

Experience in museums or science centers is valuable, but it is not required. We are particularly interested in candidates with backgrounds in exhibit fabrication, experiential design, themed entertainment, scenic fabrication, architecture/interiors, retail environments, trade shows, specialty fabrication, or other physical design-and-build environments.

Candidates whose project management experience is primarily in digital media, television, film, software, or content production may not be the best fit unless they also have significant experience managing physical fabrication, construction, or installation projects.

What You’ll Bring
You are someone who finds satisfaction in creating systems to create and maintain order, are highly organized, and an adept multi-tasker, able to adeptly track the moving parts of multiple projects of varying scales. You are an especially strong communicator, with interpersonal skills that support relationship building and cross-disciplinary collaboration. You are able to focus on the details and set priorities as you keep the bigger picture and mission-driven goals in mind. You are a skilled creative problem solver and able to diplomatically diffuse points of tension that invariably arise in the execution of complex projects. Your sense of humor, perspective, and flexibility make you a valuable member of a collaborative team.

What You’ll Do
These key responsibilities will be dynamic and essential functions:

• Work closely with project teams including content developers, designers, fabricators, media specialists, and contractors to bring multi-faceted physical exhibit projects to fruition on schedule and within budget. 

• Oversee details and logistics for all phases of exhibition development, production, fabrication, installation and post opening to ongoing and upcoming special exhibitions, temporary installations, traveling installations, and other digital and physical exhibition projects. 

• Participate in review of bid packages and contracts for project vendors (fabrication, multimedia, etc.).

• Coordinate project schedules, meeting agendas, and workflow for internal and external teams.

• Track project budget and process invoices.

• Manage and maintain exhibition project documentation which includes contract management, licensing, and the approval process.

• Review exhibition design drawings and consultant coordination documents which may include data, lighting, electrical, and architectural coordination.

• Oversee quality control through production.

• Develop deliverables for staff, designers, fabricators, media producers, and other external vendors and partners.

• Help produce and document standards and processes for project management best practices applicable across a range of projects.

• Work closely with other Liberty Science Center staff as part of a cross-divisional exhibition team. 

• Support other exhibition development, research, administrative, and project management responsibilities as assigned.

Preferred Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities (KSAs)

• Demonstrated experience of organization and project management across multiple simultaneous projects

• Leadership that supports a collaborative work environment

• Experience managing external partnerships or contractors

• Innovative problem solving

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills

• Demonstrated success as a project manager of a creative or technical team.

• Experience with budget management

• Fluency with digital project management tools and software, including MS Word, Acrobat, PowerPoint and Excel

• Knowledge of new technology, multimedia and film production is a plus

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong exhibition coordination, production, or project management experience in a museum, science center, or related context.

• Minimum of 5 to 8 years relevant professional experience.

• BA/BS (MA/MS preferred) degree in science, math, engineering, science education, social sciences or a field related to informal teaching and learning.

• Certification in project management.

Supervisory Responsibilities

This position manages design staff, interns, freelancers and external vendors.

Classification and Schedule
This is a regular full-time exempt position and is benefits eligible. All FT employees must be available to work a schedule that takes LSC business needs into consideration. 

Physical & Environmental Demands
An Exhibition Project Manager at LSC must be able to perform the following with or without reasonable accommodations. 

• Prolonged Sedentary Work: Sit and use a computer for extended periods to research, write, and other administrative work

• Continuous Mobility: Frequent walking, standing, bending, and stooping across large galleries or outdoor installation spaces

• Repetitive Motion: