What Exactly is a Museum Curator, and How Do I Become One

If you have a passion for artwork of all types and love spending time in museums, perhaps a career as a museum curator would be right for you. As a museum curator, you might be responsible for managing a museum’s entire collection, or specific collections within a large museum.

Every museum has at least one curator, and the more prestigious and sizeable museums may have several. Most curators for museums have studied such subjects as anthropology, archeology and art history. This career is not to be mistaken with a museum archivist, whose responsibilities center on the valuable documents within a museum’s collection. The curator is solely concerned with the museum’s collection of art and/or artifacts.

What Types of Collections do Museum Curators Work With?
There are many different kinds of collections with which you might work as a museum curator, depending on your interests and place of employment. Some museums are dedicated to specific art periods or artists, such as the Museums of Modern Art found in most major cities or the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Such a museum might have everything from paintings to sculptures to drawings and sketches, all of which the curator would be charged with assembling. Other museums might focus more on historical artifacts, in which case the curator might work with collections of coins, clothing or collections with anthropological significance.

As the curator, you would be responsible for planning, cataloguing and displaying the items in any given collection. You would also need to have the skills to evaluate potential new pieces for the collection and negotiate the best prices possible for the museum. Writing and business skills are essential, as you’d be writing grant requests, using a variety of computer resources and working with other people.

Education, Training and Job Outlook
Most museum archivists have graduate degrees in a related field, such as art history or anthropology, as well as several years of experience working in museums. There are also graduate programs in museum studies, but these are only offered at a handful of schools. Many curators acquire voluntary certification through the Academy of Certified Archivists, as well.

The job market is highly competitive, but for those who get their feet in the door, the pay is good. When the most recent census was taken in 2008, the median annual salary for curators was $47,220. Plus, the personal rewards of a fulfilling career are priceless.

About the Author

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Author (Tisamit). Submitted on Mon, 26 Dec 2011 Time: 6:34 AM

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