What are some red and orange flags to spot bad museum managers?

By orange flags I mean slightly not ok, but not as serious as red flags, or if given enough time, they could potentially become red flags. And yes I know, bad managers exist in every sector, but is there anything that is particularly prominent for museum managers?

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Edit:

Might as well share a bit of my observations.

1. Tardiness (organe), resulting crazy overtime and much unclaimed TOIL

2. Whatsapp instead of emails (red)

3. Gatekeeping of collection knowledge (red)

4. Unable to maintain planning or scheduling under 30 mins (orange)

5. No sense of tech knowledge (orange)

Hello, I have a bachelor's in Anthropology and I currently am a social studies teacher. I gotta get out and teaching was never my goal in the first place. My intention when I was in school was to work in a museum in some capacity, maybe curatorial but it wasn't really fleshed out. But now I'm sure that I want to be hands on like preservation but I don't know where to go from here. From someone in that field, what would be the logical next step. I'm assuming I need a masters at least, but in what? Thanks for your help!!

Hello!

I am an undergraduate student in a History program. My dream and goal is to work in a museum, either in management, marketing, collections management, curating, I am open to everything since I know that it’s a very tough industry to pierce.

I am researching what my next step should be. I am planning to do a Master’s degree but was wondering if a History or a Museum Studies degree would be most relevant?

I am at a loss for what I should do next and would really appreciate some advice!

Thank you!

Hi everyone! I have worked with the Center for Collections Care in the past and wanted to share their schedule for anyone interested in taking some hands-on courses in collections care and conservation!

I'm delighted to share that the Center for Collections Care (C3) at Beloit College will offer 14 in-person courses and six online courses in 2025. Registration is now open! 

C3 provides one-of-a-kind opportunities for hands-on learning and practice for emerging and practicing museum, library, archive, and conservation professionals. Courses are taught by accomplished professionals who are committed to sharing their knowledge and expertise. The Center's residential learning community of practice offers participants the opportunity to connect with and learn from one another.

Scholarships

If you work for a small museum and/or are an emerging professional or volunteer, you are eligible for our scholarships: $600 for in-person courses and $250 for online courses. Courses fill quickly, so register soon to reserve your spot and apply early for scholarships!

Registration Includes

• Campus accommodations in apartments with air-conditioning and full kitchens; accommodations are included the evening before courses begin
• Breakfast, lunch, and snacks
• All consumable course materials; participants frequently leave with samples, finished projects (mounts, mats, storage boxes, etc.), and print and electronic resources

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions!

Hi everyone I am a new grad who is recently out on the job market looking for opportunities. For context, I am based in Canada. I have recently been offered a verbal offer for a one-year contract and it is a position I really wanted. However, due to complications related to background checks, I can't start as of right now. I am looking for short-term contracts in this field to support myself financially in the mean time. Unfortunately, while I always knew in our line of work, one has to prepare to move where the job is, but I feel like I can't even afford to relocate financially. The rental market is also insane right now, needing to pay deposit, pay stub, rental history... I would really appreciate any advice on how to deal with potentially moving quite frequently with being a contractor. What did you do when you were between contracts? Did this kind of lifestyle every affected your mental health?

Hello!

So after months of applying i have landed two job interviews at two different museums I love! Im very excited about the prospect of working at either of them but i have never had experience in what a "real" museum interview/ application process looks like!

For reference, i have worked in a museum before but it was at my university and i was recommend by a proffesor who worked in it so it was much more of a relaxed process. I had the opportunity to develope great visitor service skills and even lead a student curatorial team in devloping an art exhibit.

I had my first inerview for one of the museums last week and it went really smoothly and it honestly felt like a great conversation about my skills and how i could apply them to the role (visitor service associate) however the guy who interviewd me said that i would be notified if i move on to the second inerview.

So my question is, what can i expect a second interview to look like? Is it usually multuple people that interview me? Is there more perosnal or practical questions asked? Should i have anything prepared for it?

Any advice is super appreciated!

I am a volunteer docent at a small local history museum. I also take care of the museum's website. I'm starting a new section on our website that deals with interesting questions from visitors. Occasionally, we get questions that we don't have answers to and I enjoy researching these questions and providing answers. My goal is to publish the questions and in-depth answers. I want to write at a level that is easy to read for the school kids that visit our museum.

When I write answers that will be published on the website, I want to document my research and provide references, etc. I'm used to using the MLA style guide, but I read somewhere—I don't remember where—that museums generally use the Chicago Manual of Style.

Can anyone comment on what style guide they use at their museum (or whether they bother with documenting sources or style guides at all)? Do you have a References Section or a Further Reading section?

Thanks.

Edit: We are located in the United States.

Hello, I am looking for tips on how to start working in museums. Ideally I’d like to go back to school and become an archivist. I currently hold a BA in English and substitute teach. Ive volunteered with the public library and interned at an art gallery.

Any suggestions for next steps?

So I don’t know a lot about museum funding but I do know that they get some from the government, but how will this be now that we have a soon to be red president, Supreme Court, senate and house? They already stated they want to get rid of department of education, not to mention heavy red state book bans. So why would they fund museum that teach science when Christian nationalism hates science, or history about minority groups when they are already trying to change lesson plans on that too, or anything that isn’t white nationalism. I’m genuinely asking, is the museum world dead?

Edit: thank you for your insight, I’m not a museum professional at all just an intern hoping to be museum professional one day and wanted to know if the museum world in America was in trouble. I am generally worried about censorship especially with historical museums/exhibitions that deal with topics such black American, indigenous people, queer and women’s history being altered or taken away. as well as getting job within the field since it already hard as it is, I’d imagine the lack of (not previously educated) funding from donors and government/grants would make it harder to get in the door (paid position).

Hi everyone,

I've been tasked with creating four scavenger hunts for my museum: One for grade levels K-2, one for 3-5, one for middle school, and one for high school and up. If anyone has similar scavenger hunts and is willing to share them for ideas, I'd be grateful.

Hi all! I'm new to this subreddit, so please forgive me if there was a similar post in the past! I'm not sure if this should go in the internships thread, since fellowships are slightly different, but please let me know if I need to repost this in there.

Anyway, I am currently a master's student studying conservation (I won't list my specialty for privacy). I am currently applying to postgrad fellowships and they require CVs instead of normal résumés.

So, here's my conundrum: I've been looking at a million different guides to writing CVs, including some specific to museums, and there are a lot of sections where I have nothing to list. I know some of these are much more applicable to people further along in their career, but I'm still nervous!

I don't have anything published yet--I want to publish a few things, but my program is so rigorous that I haven't had time to edit them for publication. I haven't presented at any conferences or symposia. I have no teaching or formal research experience. I have no honors or awards, mostly because of my health issues interfering with my schoolwork during undergrad. I feel like where I'm strongest is in my listed skills and in my professional volunteer experience, but I'm not sure if that's enough.

Any advice? What else have people listed on their CVs as master's students? Or, if anyone here has been in a position to hire postgrad (master's, not PhD) fellows, what were you looking for in a CV?

Thanks!

Hi everyone. Incoming existential career post: I left a low-paying curatorial position field last year to be a caregiver, and now I need to return to work as a breadwinner. There's a lot going on at home but that's the short story.

I'm looking broadly. I can't make ends meet on a curator's salary, so need to lock that bit of grief up in a box and throw away the key. I know many of my skills are translatable (administrative, organizational, budgetary, grant writing. . . ). I have a decade of art gallery experience, but am early-career for museums.

I don't expect you to solve this for me, but any pep talk or additional thoughts would be most appreciated. You often see things I don't and I'm just not in a good spot. Thank you, internet strangers, in advance.

ETA my prior salary was $55k ("decent" for a curator but inadequate for a solo breadwinner), I need to catapult myself to at least $75k with insurance. For anonymity I won't be specific but I do have two nonterminal graduate degrees in visual art fields. Thanks again.

Hi! I am currently writing my Master's thesis (Haaga Helia University of Applied Sciences, Finland) in which I am studying the relationship between tourism and cultural heritage conservation and how to find a balance between them.
For the research, I need to conduct a survey among professionals. If you have time, could you answer it? It takes less than 10 minutes to complete.

You can also share it if you know someone that could be interested in answering it :)

You can find the link below:

https://forms.office.com/e/mPyisajQH7

Thank you for your help!

I need to loop a bunch of video on a tablet, and I also need to disable the controls. any suggestions?

Have any uk museums been accepted into google arts and culture platform say in the last six months? We’ve not had anything back and not sure how to proceed.

Hi! I've been currently asked to inventory and digitalize some of the collection at my museum we are an underwater archeology museum so our collection is composed of coins, ceramics, kitchen utensils, and any random things that you can find on a ship, I don't have that much experience digitalizing or doing inventory but we will need to make technical sheets of the museum items and we are also waiting for the Google & Culture to approve the partnership so we can have tools for doing inventory and to show of the collection online.

How would you approach this task?
Anything to take into consideration while doing inventory?
Any resources where I can learn more on how to inventory, photograph or on how to create the technical sheets for the pieces?

I have some idea on the execution of this but I would like more experience people to give me their insight

Our museum just got some brand new iPads for our guides to use during tours. I'd like to set up a system where everything a guide needs for their tours (tour outlines, reference images, any audio/video that supplements the objects, etc.). Each tour would have it's own folder with all this and it needs to be very easy to navigate for our less tech savvy guides.

Does anyone have some kind of organization system or app they have successfully used for their guided tours? What were the pros and cons? Any input is appreciated!

Hi everyone! This question is directed to anyone who works on or adjacent to social media for museums (of all sizes), what challenges do you encounter while creating content and managing your social media presence?

-Are there institutional blockers from higher up to do certain types of content? Or people within the org not wanting to participate with social media? -Do you have trouble coming up with content? Or getting content approved? -What content do you mostly post and what do you wish you could cover? -Do you post about your collection object by object? -Is generating graphics a difficult pipeline for you or your team? -Has it been hard to build a following and engagement?

I’d just love to know more about what challenges you encounter in these types of roles. And if you don’t have challenges I’d love to know what works for you! What type of content does your audience seem to love?

I know this is a LOT of questions so any feedback you can provide would be really helpful! Thanks in advance

Has anyone here found a really good free/cheap OCR program for scanned documents? I ask because I am in the process of scanning my institution's quarterly periodical with the hope of making the scans searchable via OCR.

My institution has published a periodical 4 times a year, making each year a volume, for the past 43+ years. I am saying that each volume is on average 200 pages, I eventually hope to get the exact average but just go with it right now. So 200 pages per volume for 43 years = 8600 pages.

I have tried some free OCR apps, but they are not great. They are about 85٪ good. Because I have such a large amount to go through OCR, I want the best one I can find.

My goal has long been to be a curator (or assistant/associate curator). I'm currently in my late 20s, have a BA, and am working as a Curatorial Assistant at a prestigious university's museum.

Right now, I'm making over $50k a year, unionized, working no more than 40 hours a week, and in a location I'm fine with. My job includes a lot of admin tasks and I answer to a lot of people, but I also get to curate exhibitions and installations and provide research support to curators.

Looking at job listings, I'm starting to wonder if it's worth it to leave my job in a few years to pursue a PhD with the goal of landing a curatorial position. There are so many where I'd only be making $10-20k more than I do currently, that would require me to move to cities where I would rather not live (I spent the beginning of my career moving for jobs so familiar with that game), etc.

I know it's not easy out there, I see colleagues with PhDs from top 10 universities struggling to find jobs, but I think we always believe we'll be the one to make it. I'm currently content, but I'm driven to want to keep climbing in my career and I do worry about my hard work going to waste by never getting curatorial independence in my career. The time period that I would want to enter a PhD program will be closing in a few years, so I'll need to decide relatively soon. Should I even try, or do I have it good enough where I am to just stay put forever?

I would love advice from those who are further along in their careers. Thanks so much in advance for any thoughts!

Hello! I work as a small children’s science museum that focuses on learning through play. I’ve recently been given the opportunity to lead a Toddler Time program every other week! We read a book and do activities that relate to the theme that plays on fine/gross motor skills and all the milestone things for littles. So far they have been fun but I find myself getting stuck on activities that aren’t repetitive. You know, sensory buns, balls, animal matching- this kind of thing. Does anyone have recourses or tips for creating activities that are educational, age appropriate and fun? I think I’ve exhausted googles ideas trying to plan the rest of the school year. Thank you!

Hi all! I'm currently a senior in uni studying history. I am planning on grad school next fall to get my master's.
My current dilemma is what I should be going to grad school for. Eventually, my goal is to work in a museum, reaching for the stars, I'd be a curator. I know it's much farther down the line, but still a possible goal. What have you guys studied to end up in museum management? I'm looking into public history, history, or public admin/business admin as possibilities. Anyone have any recommendations/suggestions?

I had the most delicious pork meatballs there. I asked the waitress if she knew the herbs or spices. She went and asked someone and came back "basil and parsley." Well, no way was that wonderful taste just basil and parsley. Does anyone know how I could contact the museum and ask for more info?

If you manage museum volunteers, what types of projects do they work on? How do you keep them engaged?

For context, our volunteers' primary responsibility is giving tours of our house museum, but the days are long and business is slow. I offer our volunteers primary source transcription work to do in their off-time, which most enjoy, but I know it gets tedious for them. I never want to give them pure busywork like decluttering closets, but also struggle to come up with projects they can reasonably execute in their off time *and* are actually helpful to us as a museum.

So MuseumPros, help me brainstorm! How can I make their volunteer work more interesting and rewarding?

Hi everyone.

I am struggling to decide what grad program I should go with. I will be applying in a year. It is my dream to be a museum curator, or some kind of job that specifically works with artifacts.

I am a history major with a public history certificate. I have had 2 museum internships that involved education and working in collections (another one this summer) and multiple local public history related projects.

I have a list of museum studies programs, but many of them have an art history focus which is something that does not interest me entirely, yet does not disinterest me. It is just not what I want.

That is why I am considering applying to archeology programs. My resume and experience is tied deeply in museum work I am afraid it would not work out. I was told an MLIS would be for archiving and document work which bores me a bit. I also like Anthropology, but I think i prefer Archeology.

Any help would be appreciated meanwhile I spiral through my possibilities. I just really love artifacts and physical history.

Edit: thank you all for the help! I looked outside of museum studies programs, and I think I've decided on an Applied History with a concentration in Museum Studies program! Its close to me, I'd get in state tuition, and there's a possibility of free tuition and housing. It's also nearby many historical areas I can intern at! They require at least 2 internships. The program is also only a year and a half which sounds great.

They also offer a dual MLIS program with it, so I'll look into that as well.

Does anyone have any experience using Shopify or Square from the very beginning? How easy are they to start? Which one is better for a small museum? I have things for a shop but no way of selling them in person except every couple of months when we host in-person events (it's complicated).

I’m interested in pursuing a M.A in Museum Studies. I hold a B.A and work experience in communications and advertising. I saw the USFCA program has hands-on-experience and I have some questions: 1- What kind of internships did you land? 2- Was it relevant to get a full time job after graduating? 3- What’s your work experience and education background?

P.S.: I’m trying to get a volunteer in a Museum setting before I commit to a M.A. Initially - as I also learn about the other career options - I’d like to be working with exhibitions or project management.

Hello! I am an MS student interested in biology/natural history applying for my first museum position. Would anyone be interested in reading and editing my cover letter? At the moment, it’s too long but I love all of it and am having a difficult time cutting it down. DM me directly and I can share the word doc with you by email. TIA!