Museums: A Place to Work

Planning Museum Careers

Jane R. Glaser, Artemis A. Zenetou, Jane R. Glaser, Artemis A. Zenetou

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135634674
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Museum Administration
• Index: Business

Surveying over thirty different positions in the museum profession, this is the essential guide for anyone considering entering the field, or a career change within it.

From exhibition designer to shop manager, this comprehensive survey views the latest trends in museum work and the broad-ranging technological advances that have been made.

For any professional in the field, this is a crucially useful book for how to prepare, look for and find jobs in the museum profession.

Part I

The museum world, its works and wonders: Prologue

You may be among the curious who have had an abiding interest in museums and are considering launching a museum career, but you’re not sure why or where to start. There is also a great deal you would like to know about museums and their origins. With this in mind, let us introduce you to the museum world, its works and wonders. This world has a long and interesting history, as you will see, and over the centuries it has attracted the interest and commitment of many thoughtful, wise, creative, and innovative people. From the historic yesterdays of museums, we present for you the time frames as museums evolved into both the unusual and the traditional educational institutions they are today.

Why are there so many museums? It may be as simple as that Americans are always at risk at being disconnected with their past, and creating museums is an effort to find a meaningful past. In a country whose history is as short as ours, and in a country whose attention span is as short as ours, I think that museums are part of our civic memory, and clearly people have that in mind. They are also making a statement of who they want to be so that museums are part of an affirmative proactive aspect of the American temperament which says we are not who we want to be or need to be, yet we are ready to make a down payment on that.

Kenneth Yellis, Yale University Peabody Museum of Natural History

The beauty of museums is that they are not part of the real world, and yet we have to make certain that in our museums what people see in our buildings has to relate to what they see outside – they can’t be two worlds apart. If museums are meaningful, people are going to go to museums and say that the museum has some relationship to what people are doing outside the museum.

Kenneth Starr, formerly Milwaukee Public Museum

Museums, first and foremost, should be educational institutions. We may be a storehouse too because it is one of our functions to locate, obtain, and maintain material culture that reflects history – and that means storing things in a positive sense. But dissemination of information is the key!

Spencer Crew, National Museum of American History

I think it is the duty of the museum to use the research in its education and public programs. I think this is the basic justification for why we are here, why we have the collections, and why we do the research.

Craig Black, formerly Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History

It’s intellectually challenging and a tremendous privilege to work in a museum.

Barbara K. Gibbs, Cincinnati Art Museum

I like the environment of museums. People tell me how lucky I am – others spend their leisure time in museums, and I work there!

Janet Dorman, formerly The Phillips Collection

Outside people are fascinated by what museum work is – all they do is make money. They tell me that someday they wish they could do what I do.

Robert Macdonald, Museum of the City of New York

Embarking on a museum career you should have an openness, and perseverance. Museums are exciting.

Belgica Rodriguez, formerly Art Museum of the Americas (OAS)

If you are looking to do something that is useful to humankind, to make the world a better place, by all means, do it!! You should think about museums.

Glenn Guttleben, The Exploratorium, San Francisco

I find that the people who work in museums tend to be generally intelligent, sensitive, and well-intentioned people.

Peter Ames, formerly Science Museum of Boston

Museums are recognized as powerful centers of learning: they are a positive social force in their communities, they enhance their communities’ public reputation and economy, and they provide a place where diverse cultures can find values that unify them.

Susannah Simpson Kent, formerly Institute of Museum Services

1

So you want to work in a museum. … Why?

You may have your answer already, but most people who ask about working in a museum are not sure why.

• Perhaps it sounds glamorous – it’s different from ordinary run-of-the-mill kinds of jobs.

• You have been collecting “things” for years, so don’t collectors belong in a museum?

• You have a solid background in a discipline, but you don’t particularly want to teach.

• You are a scholar, primarily interested in research and writing – where do you fit in a museum?

• You have been working in another field for five or ten years, and it’s time for a change.

• You have spent two summers working on an archeological “dig” and found it fascinating, but you want to see where those artifacts end up, and how, and by whom they are studied and cared for – is this a place for you?

• Butterflies and bugs had special places on the shelves in your room for years – if you work in a museum, will you be able to go out in the fields to collect and study the specimens you love?

• You are a computer “whiz” – do museums want you?

• You are passionate about the importance of education and are looking for an educational institution whose mission matches your drive – would a museum be a good place to work?

• You are artistic, so there must be something for you to do in a museum.

• You are curious about who does all the work in getting an exhibition together – what goes on behind the scenes?

“I think museums are in a marvelously interesting place in American society now. The largest issues that are in life center around values that have to do with things like tolerance, diversity, and freedom of expression which museums can translate against our own history.”

Edmund B. Gaither, Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists

“I am strong in my encouragement to people who are interested to come into the profession if they have a passion for it. If they have a serious interest in museums and museum work, then they are going to succeed.”

Malcolm Arth, formerly American Museum of Natural History

• You are intrigued by all those works of art, objects, and artifacts, and, since you like to do research, you would like to get closer to them, study them and learn more about them.

• You are very well organized, methodical and neat – you would like to keep records and set up systems in a museum, you think.

• Perhaps you have a museum studies or an arts administration degree, and a museum should be for you, but you are not sure where you fit.

• You want to know if your training and skills in writing, public relations, teaching, law, marketing, management, computers, etc., are transferable to museum work.

• You have a high-school diploma or a technical-school certificate – what can you do in a museum?

• You are comparing the museum field potential with several other fields, and you want to know what the career tracks are and how well you would be paid.

• You have heard that museums are the “old boys’ club,” and you are anxious to know about gender equity in hiring practices.

• You want to know if senior-level positions are attainable for minorities in traditional museums – where do you start?

• You want to know if the Americans with Disabilities Act is really going to have an effect on hiring people with disabilities for many jobs in museums.

• You have a great imagination, are creative, and like people – shouldn’t you be working in a museum?

These are among the many approaches to inquiring about museum work that we have encountered over the past thirty-two years. All are valid, and all require answers, even though the ramifications and variables are endless. Of course, there is no one answer to these questions.

This is why we have written this book

We hope it will serve as a definitive guide, nationally and internationally, for those embarking upon a museum career, for high-school and university students and career counselors, for those changing careers, for museum studies students and instructors, for all university disciplinary programs students and instructors, for museum staff (those who hire, those who advise, and those seeking new or different positions), for career-reference shelves in libraries, and for those merely seeking information about museum work.

“I work in a museum because I love the collections, the people – it’s interesting, it’s challenging, and there is always change.”

Linda Thomas, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

The book provides factual and up-to-date information on the types of positions available, educational prerequisites, experience and on-the-job skills requirements, the nature of policy-making positions, important ethical considerations, diversity in the work-force, the use of new technologies, the importance of managerial acumen and entrepreneurship, museums as learning-environments, museum governance and its effect on museum operations, where training and professional development fit in, and the obligations of museum staff in the “global village.” These and many other considerations are indicative of the higher standards and increasing complexities within museum work. These issues affect museum staff today and certainly tomorrow, and if you want to work in a museum, you need to be prepared.

You should love museums, of course, and you must be committed to the ideas they embody. Museum work is a life of dedication and public service. Careers are not nine-to-five positions; they require doing what it takes to get the job done. The rewards they offer are not generally financial, though salaries are better than they once were. If your goal is a very lucrative position, however, look elsewhere.

To give you some idea of the observations, philosophies, rewards, and satisfactions of museum work you will hear throughout this book from among the many museum professionals interviewed. This special feature brings you personal commitment and enthusiasm derived from their experiences as professionals in the museum field.

All of the information in this book can be of value to those seeking a career in museums, and who need to know about abilities and knowledge required for museum positions. For example, skills in marketing and fund raising are imperative in a contemporary society where museums are competing with a multitude of organizations for support, both private and governmental. Such skills, important as they are, are not necessarily a part of the traditional academic training which candidates for museum careers receive.

Planning and preparing for a museum career are relatively new courses of action, but wise ones. Competition for jobs is greater than in the past, when most people came into museums through other disciplines or accidentally and learned museum practices mostly by trial and error. Museums today have a whole new set of concerns and financial constraints in serving their vast communities, recognizing the diverse cultures and age groups as part of their constituencies, providing the public and the educational establishment with alternatives, and becoming agents of social change.

Despite current financial restraints, the museum field has been, and continues to be, a “growth industry.” Changes in society, advances in technology, and the “information age” of the 1990s are opening new avenues in museum work. At the same time museums are reaffirming their basic functions – collecting, preserving, researching, exhibiting, and interpreting – and must also include those added dimensions of knowledge and skills to prepare candidates for their roles in the museums of the twenty-first century.

“I like working in a museum because it allows me to use more of my skills than any other position that I have ever had in my life, and it allows me more control over what I am doing. I love the job.”

JoAllyn Archambault, National Museum of Natural History

To understand the museum “profession,” take a long look at museums themselves. What is a museum? How do museums differ from or resemble each other? Exhibitions are one of the most visible products of museums, a bridge between the museum, its ideas, its collections, its research, and the public. How do they reflect their institutions? What do a museum’s public programs, special events, publications, and facilities reveal about its mission and philosophy? That should give you some idea about the people who work in them, what their jobs may be, and the manner in which the museum operates. One of the main objectives of museums, as individualistic and independent as they are, is to build a sense of unity in their institutions and in the individuals who comprise the museum work-force.

Then read this book. We hope you will find answers to your questions about museum careers, and we also hope you will draw inspiration from those already committed to this career path. Why do they like working in museums?

One of the assets in terms of being in museum work is that you meet diverse people, you meet specialists who know incredible things about their subject-matter, so that if you have an interest you have access to people that will enable you to learn in depth about issues that concern you. Museums are full of the most creative and innovative thinkers that I’ve encountered. I love working in the field. I think museums celebrate the very best humankind has endeavored to give.

Claudine Brown, formerly Smithsonian Institution

I never regretted going into the museum field. It’s wonderfully satisfying, endlessly satisfying. No two days are alike. It’s like Alice in Wonderland. When you finish your book you will find that there will be a great variety of views, and this is one of the joys and satisfactions of the museum world in that we don’t come out of a production line like doctors, attorneys, etc. You sit around a table with a group of museum people, and it’s seldom that two come from the same background. That brings a great richness to the profession. There is great diversity and quality that adds immensely to the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• PART I. The museum world, its works and wonders: Prologue
• PART II. Principles and standards of museums: Prologue
• PART III. What museum workers do – theory and practice: prologue
• PART IV. Museum careers – where to start: prologue
• PART V. Global perspectives: prologue
• PART VI. Views on the future in museums: prologue
• Appendices
• Index