About Us

The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is part of the Nova Scotia Museum, in the Department of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage. This department supports communities across the province to be welcoming, inclusive, and accessible, providing a great quality of life for Nova Scotians. We value the collective diversity of our heritage and our people and believe in the transformative nature of culture to help create healthy, active, growing communities.

For more information visit https://cch.novascotia.ca/

About Our Opportunity

The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is seeking a Curator of Interpretation to lead the development of engaging, accessible, and meaningful visitor experiences. Reporting directly to the Museum Manager, this role is responsible for overseeing exhibition development and circulation, gallery renewal, and museum-wide wayfinding initiatives. The Curator also serves as the project lead for the annual Maritime Heritage Festival - an emerging program for which they will play a key role in expanding its scope, strengthening partnerships, and growing its audience in the years ahead.

Primary Accountabilities

The Curator of Interpretation helps advance the Maritime Museum’s strategic and interpretive goals. They play a central role in shaping the museum’s visitor experience through the planning, coordination, and delivery of interpretive initiatives and major projects. This position requires a high degree of collaboration, creativity, and organization to successfully manage concurrent priorities—from exhibition development and gallery renewal to large-scale public programming. Working internally across teams and with external partners/contractors, the Curator ensures that projects are delivered on time, on budget, and aligned with the museum’s strategic vision and commitment to accessible, engaging storytelling.

The Curator:

• Serves as the primary liaison for exhibition projects, coordinating collaboration across internal teams and ensuring alignment between fabrication, content development, and interpretive programming. Manages relationships with external contractors, designers, and consultants to support successful project delivery.
• Ensures projects are delivered on time, on budget, and aligned with institutional goals.
• Coordinates gallery renewal and interpretive planning to create dynamic, accessible, and engaging visitor experiences.
• Manages the development and implementation of museum-wide wayfinding systems to enhance navigation, accessibility, and visitor flow. Ensures consistent interpretive messaging and visual identity across galleries and public spaces.
• Leads the planning, delivery, and ongoing growth of the annual Maritime Heritage Festival, including programming, logistics, and budget oversight. Builds and strengthens partnerships to expand the festival’s reach, audience, and overall impact year-over-year.
• Researches and applies for funding opportunities to support interpretative initiatives.
• Produces scaled exhibition floorplans and contributes to the digital/graphic visual and interpretative design elements.
• Contributes to broader museum planning and ensures projects align with strategic goals, while monitoring outcomes and visitor engagement. Prepares reports and budgets and ensures all initiatives meet safety, conservation, inclusion and accessibility standards.

Additionally:

The Curator supports education and visitor services, Boat School, the CSS Acadia Interpretation Plan, initiatives of the NSM Interpretation Working Group, the NSM Collections Team, and the Museum Manager as required. Represents the Museum at events and performs other duties, as assigned.

Qualifications and Experience

Undergraduate degree plus minimum 5 years professional experience, or a Master’s degree in related field plus 3 years professional experience, such as interpretative planning, exhibition design, education development and teaching, public programming, project management in the culture/heritage sector. Preference given to candidates with a minimum 3 years’ museum interpretation, education and/or curriculum development experience.

The Curator should have knowledge/experience:

• Strong understanding of interpretive planning, audience engagement, and inclusive storytelling.
• Demonstrated experience managing complex, multi-stakeholder projects.
• Experience planning public events or festivals
• Demonstrated competency in Adobe Photoshop and/or other graphic design software (e.g., Illustrator, InDesign, or equivalent), with the ability to contribute to or effectively direct visual and interpretive design elements.

• Historical research and project writing, and practical knowledge of the maritime and marine sectors

• Proven ability to work collaboratively across disciplines and with external partners.

• Advancing principles of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility

Assets:

• Specific certification in interpretation and/or museum studies are considered assets.
• Artifact handling and conservation knowledge

• Skills working in CAD

Equivalency

Applicants relying on education and experience equivalencies must demonstrate such equivalencies in their application.

Benefits

Based on the employment status and union agreement, the Government of Nova Scotia offers its employees a wide range of benefits such as a Defined Benefit Pension Plan, Health, Dental, Life Insurance, General illness, Short and Long Term Disability, Vacation and Employee and Family Assistance Programs. For information on all our Benefit program offerings, click here: Benefits for government employees

Working Conditions

Some weekend and afterhours may be required.

What We Offer

• Career development where you have access to career guidance, tools, resources, and ongoing training for every stage of your career
• Engaging workplace: our employees feel valued, respected, connected, and tuned in, we have forward-thinking policies and strategies
• Countless career paths
• A Dynamic, client-focused office environment where service excellence and teamwork are our focus.