Letters

I feel that I have to make some kind of comment regarding what seems to be the current trend in recruitment across the museum and gallery sector.

I was made redundant in November 2010 from my post as curator of a small accredited independent Scottish museum, after seven years of dedicated work. At 55 this was a challenge I could have done without.

However, I honestly thought that experience and transferable skills, regardless of age, gender, race, or religion, had equal status in this day and age.

I have applied for over 15 posts since then. I have paid a small fortune to have my cv professionally rewritten. I have had five interviews – all unsuccessful, even though I could tick all the boxes in the person specifications etc.

At least three of the interviews, in my opinion, went very well, but I still didn’t get the job. I have purchased a book called Brilliant Interview to help with interview questions and protocols. I’ve even taken professional guidance from the local Skills Centre, all to no avail.

These are all positions that, on paper, I’m qualified or over-qualified to do. I therefore have to conclude that something is prohibiting the interviewing panel from choosing me over the other equally talented, but younger candidates.

My conclusion is that it could possibly be my age. Now at 56 years of age, with 12 years in the heritage sector as a museum manager/curator, combined with a “transferable skill” of 25 years in the field of graphic design, exhibitions, project management, fundraising and publicity to add to the mix, I seem now to be unemployable.

I am all for the younger museum professionals contributing new and fresh ideas. However, it does not help when you see that the successful candidate is a twenty-something, recent university graduate. There needs to be a healthy balance.

Grumpy old man? That I am not. I do not see the value to museums and galleries of taking on too many “fresh to the market” staff in senior roles. Experience has to be gained over years of workplace challenges, understanding the product and how it all fits together.

I am still looking for the impossible: “Museum manager wanted; over 50 and must have experience in museum management, knowledge of Accreditation issues, with a healthy pro-active and hardworking attitude, an understanding of successful branding, interpretation and exhibition design, ability to lead fundraising initiatives, good at lectures, flexible all-rounder who believes museums and galleries should not only be a place of research and learning, but a fun experience, and worth remembering...”.

I’m here! I would be interested to know if any other museum professionals have had similar challenges, and/or feel the same about the recruitment bias towards younger candidates.

David Addison, Elgin, Moray


Hilary McGowan praises the 2007 changes to the Museums Association’s (MA) code of ethics to encourage “desirable deaccessioning”.

It’s perhaps helpful to clarify that the revised code of ethics does in fact permit financially motivated disposal in “exceptional circumstances”.

Crucially, the item concerned must not be part of the museum’s core collection and the disposal must be intended to create significantly increased long-term public benefit from the remaining collection. (There are several additional other conditions that also need to be met.)

This is a difficult and controversial area and the MA is always able to give confidential advice to museums considering financially motivated disposal.

Maurice Davies, head of policy and communication, Museums Association

Museums Journal September 2011, p17


Gosh, thanks, Toby Butler. As an unemployed and qualified former museum officer, I was wondering what to spend my surplus dole money on – keeping a portfolio up-date would seem to be the perfect answer.

Having applied for more than 60 jobs in the museum sector since finishing my last contract, I am aware that it isn’t unusual for advertised posts to attract in excess of a 100 applicants – most of us trained and skilled.

Isn’t it about time institutions such as Toby’s realised they’ve flooded the market and began to prune back the “raft” of courses on offer? Looking on the bright side, the lecturing staff freed by this would have more time for a spot of up-skilling themselves.

Jane Downham, Haslemere, Surrey

Museums Journal September 2011, p19


A session at the Museums Association (MA) conference and exhibition in Brighton (3-4 October) will discuss how recent changes to the Equality Act mean that publicly funded museums have a new obligation to represent the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in their displays.

Here are some comments on the issue from the MA website:

It’s almost strange to still be talking about doing this, instead of just doing it – it seems so obvious that we should represent all sections of society in our collections and learning work. Perhaps we could move away from the stereotypes when we represent this area.

Maybe we use stereotypes because we are scared gay people are just the same as everybody else – rather normal and pretty average, which doesn’t really make for an exciting exhibition.

Anonymous

For me, the salient point is that gay people have a history and one which isn’t owned by academics. The longer this isn’t acknowledged, the easier it is to discount our existence or attempts to even acknowledge it.

The title of the BMAG’s exhibition [Queering the Museum] troubles me, to me the label queer remains redolent – at best – either of ranty youth groups or academia. Meanwhile, for many of us, it remains problematic and anything but celebratory.

Steve, development worker, Coventry Heritage and Arts Trust

How can museums better represent LGBT audiences?


Museums Journal, September 2011 Fiona Talbott is the correct spelling of the head of museums, libraries and archives at the Heritage Lottery Fund, p21. The credit for the photograph on p29 should have read: Image courtesy of Event Communications, Exhibition Designers. Photographer Graham Butterworth; the caption on p33 should have read: Writer Anthony Browne at Seven Stories in Newcastle upon Tyne.

• What’s the point of being part of a World Heritage Site? By Deborah Mulhearn
• Patrick Henry, the director of the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, talks to Simon Stephens about moving to a new venue on the city’s waterfront
• Reviews: National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh; Teignmouth and Shaldon Museum, Devon; Roman Frontier Gallery, Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle
• Plus news, comment, letters, jobs and much more
  

The October issue of Museum Practice will look at the art of exhibition labels, exploring how good text can help audiences, as well as new approaches to labels. Plus practical advice on writing label guidelines and case studies.