It’s often not what you know, but who you know that makes for a successful museum career.
Guiding lights, gurus or professional friends in high places can open doors and minds while providing perspective, advice or simply a sympathetic ear; in short, if you want to get ahead, get a mentor.
“Having someone outside your immediate sphere who is dedicated to watching your development in a nurturing way is beneficial for any individual,” says Caitlin Griffiths, head of workforce development and events at the Museums Association.
“And the very best partnerships work both ways; while mentees receive valuable support, mentors have the chance to develop themselves, too. I have a mentee who works in a national museum – something that I have never done – and I am developing my knowledge of the sector while talking to her about what she’s doing.”
Choosing a good mentor means finding someone who’s on your wavelength, someone who is genuinely interested in people and curious about what’s going on in the wider sector, says Griffiths.
“When selecting your mentor, you shouldn’t fall into the trap of picking someone purely because they’re in the job you dream of doing,” she advises. “Instead, find someone with a particular strength you’d like to acquire and look outside your traditional comfort zone.
"Many people in curatorial roles seek out mentors who are curators when perhaps they should be looking for someone with different skills. You should use a mentor for the things you can’t easily find within your organisation.”
Sarah Staniforth enrolled on a museum leadership course at the University of East Anglia in 2003, and struck up a partnership with programme director Nichola Johnson that flourishes to this day. It bore particularly juicy fruit when Staniforth was preparing to apply for her current role of historic properties director at the National Trust.
“Nichola's mentoring was invaluable as she provided an external perspective on the trust in general and that role in particular,” says Staniforth. “There were huge challenges for me; there had never been a woman in the post before and the fact that I was a conservator – rather than a curator – looked like a problem, too.”
Unlocking potential
She continues, “The selection process was long-winded and tortuous and Nichola’s leadership experience was extremely helpful in keeping up my morale as well as identifying the characteristics needed for the role and the strengths I could bring to it.”
Johnson, the director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, describes her approach to mentoring as the chance to “unlock” people.
“It can be specifically purpose-led, mentoring someone to get through a particular qualification they need, for example, but when I’m mentoring at entry-level, it’s completely different,” says Johnson.
“That’s more about helping people not only to recognise their own potential but also enabling them in the kindest way to see why certain things would be unrealistic for them.
“It’s also about using one’s links and contacts to help the mentees’ careers. It’s interesting to watch people move through a number of institutions while still lending them a helpful ear when required.”
The rise of the mentors is a useful antidote to the institutional gloom of the museum world, she adds. “Back in the days before museum studies courses, you entered a museum and went to sit at the foot of someone who was a specialist.
"If you picked up the bad habits of someone who saw the public as an irritant, you were perpetuating that cynical culture. Finding a good, positive role model is so important.”
Louise Govier continues to enjoy a productive partnership with Virginia Tandy, the director of culture for Manchester City Council, as she works towards her Clore fellowship.
Govier, former adult learning manager at the National Gallery, is combining her studies with a new career as a freelance consultant and welcomes the advice she receives from “someone who has no agenda other than to be helpful”.
“It’s great for confidence building and appreciating stuff about myself that I tend either to ignore or take for granted,” she says. “It’s also good for gaining insights into how things work at the most senior levels and bits of the sector I’m less familiar with such as the wonderful world of local government.”
As a result of her work with Tandy, Govier is preparing to lead a workshop with a range of staff from Manchester Art Gallery exploring ways in which museums and art galleries could go further in co-creating their work with members of the public. She is also preparing to take on a mentee of her own.
Free expertise
Unlike the vast majority of professions, museum mentors traditionally provide their services for free and a wide range of programmes offers the chance to find your perfect partner.
As well as the Clore Fellowship, mentoring also plays a key role in the cultural leadership programme, while the Associateship of the Museums Association has some 250 mentors across the UK and is always looking to keep the gene pool fresh by offering free training to people interested in supporting others.
Arts & Business matches museum folk with counsellors from the commercial world while the Art Fund International (AFI) initiative helps UK museums, galleries and contemporary art organisations around the world to improve collections and share working experiences; each partnership is awarded £1m to fund their artistic endeavours, including acquisitions, over a five-year period and professional mentoring is an important part of the process.
Ben Harman, curator of contemporary art at the Gallery of Modern Art (Goma) in Glasgow, found himself the perfect mentor in the shape of Katrina Brown, director of Common Guild, a visual arts organisation in the city.
“The reality is that, like many other curators, I have spent most of my time at my desk in Glasgow with precious few opportunities for research or travel of any kind,” says Harman. “Having Katrina as a mentor and being able to get out and about means we ultimately buy better works and offer better displays for our visitors.”
Pooled knowledge
An early purchase was a work by the German conceptualist Lothar Baumgarten which, says Harman, would have been harder without Brown’s advice and contacts in New York.
“I would have been approaching galleries out of the blue; name and reputation are really important and Goma is still pretty much invisible to people around the world, but Katrina’s input was invaluable as she is so well-known and respected.
“I’ve learned a lot from her about the type of events I should be attending and the people I should be meeting. I remember sitting at one lavish dinner paid for by a blue-chip London gallery and thinking about how different it was from being at a local authority museum; it’s all about striking a balance between those two worlds. I know I have the very best advice to hand when I need it.”
Under the AFI scheme, the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art is compiling a collection of important North and South American drawing; Gavin Delahunty, curator of fine art, was assigned Catherine Petitgas, a member of Tate’s Latin American Acquisitions Committee, as his mentor.
“She helped me to be realistic about the list of artists we should have been interested in; she travels extensively and it’s like having additional pairs of eyes and ears around the world,” says Delahunty.
“My confidence has increased; we are a new regional organisation somewhat off the beaten track and here is a woman who sits on the boards of international museums, someone has made a major contribution to discourse on contemporary art,” says Delahunty.
“I can bounce all sorts of ideas off her and she’ll say if I’m wide of the mark. Her generosity has been overwhelming and that kind of high-level exchange and honesty has been like a compass for us. And there have been very few successful explorers who didn’t pack their compass.”
When Ronan Brindley needed some very specialist help with writing the business plan for a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) bid by Bury Art Gallery, Museum and Archive, Business in the Arts North West provided a 12-month mentor, saving him not only the trouble of finding a financial guru but also thousands of pounds in consultancy fees.
Brindley was given the appropriately-named Alex Wiseman – head of strategy at United Utilities – whose practical advice on all stages of the paperwork made him worth his weight in gold.
“I was, for example, dismissive of the ‘do nothing’ option in the process, seeing that we had a stage one HLF pass, but Alex straightened me on that, advising that doing nothing always needed to be evaluated and costed because it acted as the benchmark for all other options,” says Brindley, now principal learning manager at Manchester Art Gallery.
“In the risk analysis section, I was inclined to score the risk of losing museum accreditation as ‘low’. Two years after the project was completed and a new museum and archive opened, Bury Council decided to sell Lowry’s A Riverbank and the museum lost its accredited status.
"While the business planning for the project was fine, Alex advised me at the time that risk analysis has to be continuous as you never know what bizarre decision may be around the corner.”
“Integrity and values”
As a man who enjoyed an unconventional route into the sector, Mike Benson – former British Steel crane driver and now director of Ryedale Folk Museum – chose a non-traditional figure to be his Clore Fellowship mentor – the former education secretary and arts minister Estelle Morris.
The two met at an awards dinner and got on like a house on fire. “Integrity and values are what I look for in people and Estelle has them in abundance,” says Benson.
“Someone outside the sector with great experience of high public service is very useful to the way I go about things; her influence is everywhere I go and she’s changing things all the time. That’s why people admire her so much.”
Benson admits his background meant that he often had not heard of the cultural heavyweights brought in to speak at Clore sessions.
“But Estelle instils confidence in me and that’s what I pass on to my young people at the museum. They often know the answers; they sometimes just need a mentor to say, ‘Yes, you’re absolutely right’.”
John Holt is a freelance journalist