Blog: Endangered species?
Stuart Davies, 23.12.2009
Stuart Davies asks: as we work our way through a period of cuts, retrenchment and general change, who or what do we expect to suffer first or most?
Opinion will vary, but maybe the curator will be feeling especially vulnerable. The curator, perhaps, finds it less easy to justify his or her existence than the learning officer or the development and commercial manager.
This is of course not a new situation.
Since the 1970s it may be argued that the curator has been in decline. The recognition that museums need specialists in management, marketing, learning and other disciplines has been largely responsible for this.
These roles have been an essential part in modernising museums in the late 20th century. And while they should have been added to the establishment of museums, limited resources have meant that resources have been diverted away from curatorial posts and into these new areas.
Renaissance funding has done something to reverse this trend in Hub museums but the problem remains elsewhere. It is not just a matter of losing posts; there is a more general crisis around what curatorship actually is in the 21st century.
Renaissance North West recently held their third annual Curating for the Future conference.
The audience were, not surprisingly, principally interested in how to avoid the pain of cuts but there was still some discussion about longer-term issues.
One point raised was the disintegration of curatorship. Not only has the number of curators decreased as resources are diverted, but the traditional curator has diversified into specialisms in documentation, learning, access and so on.
Curatorship once meant no more than knowing the collections, researching their history and significance and transferring that knowledge to others. Knowledge plus communication equals scholarship.
Traditional curatorship (and the scholarship we all hope is associated with it) has much to recommend it. Understanding our collections rather than just counting them, labelling them and wrapping them in acid-free tissue is surely still an essential part of the purpose of a museum.
Focusing on the authenticity of our collections is also as potent as exploiting them for their educational value. Our collections are a major national heritage asset and we need curators to research them to reveal their learning and inspirational potential.
And new technology offers opportunities to develop and expand the curatorial role.
Interactive technology is creating new means of providing large amounts of information to the museum consumer.
The curator has hitherto been constrained by the limited capacity for transferring knowledge within public galleries. Curators have always known far more than the label, catalogue or touch screen could cope with. That is now being transformed and too much information is no longer the problem that we thought it was. Curators should now be major content providers.
There are challenges too. Social media is accelerating the notion that anyone can be a curator and indeed everyone should be encouraged to be a curator. But this too opens up new opportunities for the curator as content creator and as a sophisticated communicator. Are curators an endangered species or are we about to embark upon a new golden era of curatorship?
To read Stuart's previous blogs, please click here
This is of course not a new situation.
Since the 1970s it may be argued that the curator has been in decline. The recognition that museums need specialists in management, marketing, learning and other disciplines has been largely responsible for this.
These roles have been an essential part in modernising museums in the late 20th century. And while they should have been added to the establishment of museums, limited resources have meant that resources have been diverted away from curatorial posts and into these new areas.
Renaissance funding has done something to reverse this trend in Hub museums but the problem remains elsewhere. It is not just a matter of losing posts; there is a more general crisis around what curatorship actually is in the 21st century.
Renaissance North West recently held their third annual Curating for the Future conference.
The audience were, not surprisingly, principally interested in how to avoid the pain of cuts but there was still some discussion about longer-term issues.
One point raised was the disintegration of curatorship. Not only has the number of curators decreased as resources are diverted, but the traditional curator has diversified into specialisms in documentation, learning, access and so on.
Curatorship once meant no more than knowing the collections, researching their history and significance and transferring that knowledge to others. Knowledge plus communication equals scholarship.
Traditional curatorship (and the scholarship we all hope is associated with it) has much to recommend it. Understanding our collections rather than just counting them, labelling them and wrapping them in acid-free tissue is surely still an essential part of the purpose of a museum.
Focusing on the authenticity of our collections is also as potent as exploiting them for their educational value. Our collections are a major national heritage asset and we need curators to research them to reveal their learning and inspirational potential.
And new technology offers opportunities to develop and expand the curatorial role.
Interactive technology is creating new means of providing large amounts of information to the museum consumer.
The curator has hitherto been constrained by the limited capacity for transferring knowledge within public galleries. Curators have always known far more than the label, catalogue or touch screen could cope with. That is now being transformed and too much information is no longer the problem that we thought it was. Curators should now be major content providers.
There are challenges too. Social media is accelerating the notion that anyone can be a curator and indeed everyone should be encouraged to be a curator. But this too opens up new opportunities for the curator as content creator and as a sophisticated communicator. Are curators an endangered species or are we about to embark upon a new golden era of curatorship?
To read Stuart's previous blogs, please click here
Add your comment
"The recognition that museums need specialists in management, marketing, learning". I would suggest that it is not a recognition of need but a failure to recognise that our need is less for the experts than for their expertise. We have moved away from the core purpose of museums (the protection and understanding of our collections) and now the effects are being felt.
Stuart has to an extent identified this with 'Understanding our collections rather than just counting them, labelling them and wrapping them in acid-free tissue is surely still an essential part of the purpose of a museum'.
Sadly, the statement 'Curatorship once meant no more than knowing the collections, researching their history and significance and transferring that knowledge to others" is misleading. It implies that this is not our raison d'être. But if the development of the collection is added, then that is precisely our purpose. The old-style Diploma and even the original Leicester course prepared the student to 'drive a museum', with all that this implies, and it led to the development of the recognition of our need for access to other expertise such as those described. Sadly, that knowledge led to us throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The new career training is more about the whys and whats than the hows, and the number of staff who have hands-on understanding and care for our collections has suffered dramatically as a result.
In a world of cuts I suggest that the very last cuts should be in curators, but the corollary is that curators need to be multi-tasking people with wide-ranging skills and the desire to infect others with their passion. 'Managers' (and I don't mean those whose titles have changed to manager to satisfy the MBA breed, but precisely that breed), marketing and education staff, are all people who should support the role of the museum, whereas the curator encapsulates that role.
RinR good for curatorship? Don't make me laugh. It has served a few museums well in terms of major projects, but in providing a pool of competence that is available beyond the walls it has singularly failed, and in many instances the curatorial staff are now far fewer than ten years ago. Anonymous (MA Member, MP Subscriber) 20.01.2010, 20:19 has made the case well.
Sadly, at least part of our problem (I speak as a former MA Board member) is that the MA is neither fish nor fowl. Because it welcomes all comers as members, including our employers, it can not easily defend the essential core values of the profession.
I used to reckon that I was in the role of the GP and that this meant that I could deal with most aspects of my professional curatorial role, but that I needed to refer to consultants (ie the nationals and larger museums) for more unusual matters. Today, I don't believe that many of the larger museums have the staffing levels and skills to provide this back-up, let alone the will and ability.
That was training based around the work-place - a chance for experienced curators to pass on their knowledge and skills. That, coupled with the addition of the Leicester University courses gave the academic rigour that was necessary to produce good curators. Good curators are not elitist - far from it!
Museums probably need to strengthen specialist skills of all types and, with funding from Creative and Cultural Skills, the MA hopes to begin preliminary exploration of how the situation might be improved.
For more on what we've said in the past about entry-level training, see: http://www.museumsassociation.org/careers/8326
Curators are completely necessary in museums. Someone has to take responsibility for caring for the objects themselves and the knowledge about them. They are the link between preservation and access of collections. If they are an endangered species, it is because we, as a sector, have let them become this way. Perhaps we have even encouraged it. We need to move away from thinking that specialists are a bad thing.
At first I welcomed hub funding but now regret its arrival. This may be just the experience of my own institution but I have seen Renaissance funding highjacked by management. Extra resources have been placed into marketing, outreach etc but nothing into curation. In my work as a trained curator I was, and still am, perfectly capable of carrying out these other tasks, in fact I see them as an inherent part of my role. So again I dispute Staurt Davies comment that "Curatorship once meant no more than knowing the collections, researching their history and significance and transferring that knowledge to others." This was never the case in any museum but the Nationals.
Within my institution these new hub jobs were not advertised, either externally or internally, and relatively inexperienced staff were promoted in to these roles, tempted (& who can blame them) by the offers of salaries well above those that would be offered to a curator. The irony is that these same individuals, in these new roles, find they also have to take on the curator-role because so many professional curator jobs have been deleted from the staff structure to "save money". The results are second rate exhibitions and substandard supporting materials So, I have to disagree completely with the statement that “anyone can be a curator”.
I also witness a duality within hub-funded institutions - those jobs which are hub-funded which come with a budget & those jobs which are core-funded where no spending is permitted due to "council cut-backs."
Museum collections come alive when trained, competent and enthusiastic curators support them, however curator roles have always attracted salaries well below the level that the people who occupy these posts deserve.
The MA desperately needs to restore trained curatorship back into the heart of the museum profession - unfortunately I think it may already be too late.
The MA is a small independent organisation doing its best for all its members who come from museums of all shapes and sizes across the UK. I don’t accept that all of our programmes, products and information are geared to larger museums. We try very hard to achieve a balance and provide support and help. For example, next month we begin our …Love Museums campaign offering museums the skills and information to improve their campaigning and advocacy on the ground. All of this will be free to members.
We are a membership body, we are accessible, we do respond. Let me know exactly what you want from the MA that you are not getting now. You will get an answer. mark@museumsassociation.org
What we still fail to achieve, and what MLA and Renaissance did not repair or join up, is the museum community working together - sharing those specialisms and interest areas amongst geographical areas. I would imagine most people working in 'professional' museum roles have grown a specialism at undergraduate level, and developed broad museum skills at post graduate level, surely these networks are the thing that need sorting? In our area there are Learning and Access Networks, where skills, expertise and best practice are brought and shared - this does not seem to happen with subject specialists (whether this is their job role or not). In fact one has only to look at the GEM website and eList (as well as other such as the Museums Computer Group) to see where this is happening in the 'newer' museum realms. Why not in the curatorial?
One of the things that seems to disadvantage the curator is that no-one understands the term any more. Many museums are moving from curator to museum manager, from subject specialist, to freelancer, and the ones not noticing this drift? The nationals, who continue to inward face, keeping those specialisms a tightly guarded commodity.
Where will we be a few years time? Worse off, although not for losing curators, but for the ever increasing gap of expertise polarisation of the local from the national, and as funding changes, the rich from the poor.
As for the notion that anyone can be a curator I fear this is confused and confusing. For many recent graduates, spending years being thrown from short term contract to short term contract and embarking on a whole range of CPD courses to put themselves in a position to qualify as a suitable candidate for a curatorial post and then to hear the sector turn around and say “but actually anyone can do it” feels like a kick in the teeth. The rhetoric is unhelpful. I am a great advocate for people getting involved in their museums and working with objects; as at our museum, many locals can offer valuable information and insight, but it is the curator that put this all together, gives direction and synthesis, analyses, researches, and helps to contextualise the wealth of information within the confines of best curatorial and conservation practice. The MA and other bodies need to make their mind up – either the curatorial role is a professional one which people take up after relevant training or it is something anyone can do if they have an interest.