Hello r/museumpros,

I’m seeking advice on the scientific and conservation measures needed to properly archive and preserve a set of presumably highly sensitive items in an archive. These items would fall in the following categories: human skin tissue with ink drawing, teeth, bone fragments, cubes of human fat, etc.

Given the delicate and unique nature of these items, I am particularly concerned about the scientific considerations for their conservation. What are the best practices for: environmental controls, material-specific care, handling procedures and especially storage solutions.

Any specific advice or resources on the above points would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help and expertise.

I’ve worked in a couple galleries and museums and the method to remove vinyl lettering has usually been to remove every piece individually. My coworkers have been pretty split between finding the work tedious or relaxing. Personally, it’s a good head-empty activity while listening to a podcast lol. Out of curiosity, does anyone have any tips for a faster/more efficient vinyl removal process?

Soooo we haven't had this issue before, however it has gotten incredibly warm over this summer. We use both museum wax and putty to adhere informational prints spray mounted to foamcore. It's a small gallery, volunteer run. Hoping for some experienced folks advice on other means of hanging such materials. I thought about carpet tape but that may damage the paint on the walls or the artist info plaques themselves. I like to send the plaques home with the exhibiting artists as many are rather new to exhibiting their work in a gallery.

Also, any more sustainable solutions for foamcore mounted artist info I'd be very happy to hear of other options.

Hi all! I am a public history MA student at American and I recently came across the AASLH's Small Museum Pro! certificate program.

I was wondering if anyone is familiar with this and would find it worthwhile, either concurrently with my MA or after finishing. Or, are there other certifications you'd recommend?

Looking for something less than 5000 square feet. What else is out there?

OMSI: https://omsi.edu/for-museum-professionals/

Science Museum of Minnesota: https://new.smm.org/exhibit-rental

ScienceCenter: https://sciencenter.org/resources-museums/exhibition-rentals/

California Science Center: https://californiasciencecenter.org/exhibits-for-rent-sale

Liberty Science Center: https://lsc.org/beyond-rubiks-cube-traveling-info/rent-beyond-rubiks-cube

I am currently of the mind that it remains incredibly difficult to convince visitors to download a museum app, but I can't find any data about it after 2019. Anyone have any studies or experience on this?

Hi y'all!

I'm new to the world of curators as I am trying to change my career. I have a BS in biology and am trying to move out of the lab space. I came across the position of museum curator, and I wanted to know more about it. Are there any science museum curators on here that are willing to have me PM them with some questions!!

Thanks!

How do you prepare for an interview of assistant curator position? There might be knowledge based questions on art works but I find it no possible to learn and memorize all art pieces in a short period of time, what would you do and how to better prepare for the interview? You can also share your interview experiences as interviewers or interviewees.

I work at a small museum in collections. For large installations, we occasionally need extra help. We usually contract the help at $20/hr. There are regulars we use that we trust, but occasionally we need to bring in additional hands to do things like cut foam core, paint mounts, help hold things… nothing too specific but it can be a big help when we are crunched for time.

On a recent installation my boss, the curator, offered their daughter to help. They were a big help and I’m happy they were there. The problem is, I overheard a conversation with curator and accounting that boss felt $30 would be an appropriate rate. Accounting mentioned that’s higher than normal. Boss talked about how they had previous experience and accounting said okay.

The issue is, they were the least experienced of anyone. They were paid more than me, who has a few years working here. I understand contractor rate but it still felt like a slap in the face. For the record, I have a good relationship with my boss (even though I’m not satisfied with pay - I’m actively job searching). I don’t know if it’s worth bringing up considering it’s a conversation I shouldn’t have heard anyway… or what I would even gain out of it. What would you do?

Curious if you have instances of this, and how you approach them. We have a few (donated) works on paper that have artist signatures on the original mat, but not on the piece itself. The mats are in poor condition, and are being stored in flat files with the unframed work. Would you keep the mat separately from the piece to preserve the signature?

i applied to this in april and checked the usa gov portal literally everyday until june when they updated it to say "not selected" on my profile. then they send this email a month later. 20+ applications since the beginning of this year, only this and the frick collection had the "decency" to send a rejection email, and radio silence from everywhere else. i'm really regretting putting all this effort into a master's in this field.

i live in nyc (born and raised, didn't move here for this) and graduated from pratt this spring. please help

Applying to art museum and gallery jobs at entry level is so exhausting. I gave 4-5 interviews in two years with 300+ applications but I'm yet to land a job in the field. The jobs I'm applying to, I tailor my CV and Cover letter according to the needs, however i know they don't have my heart and soul in it. I recently read a post where someone mentioned how talking about working in a museum because it's a childhood dream seemed ingenuine. As cliche as it sounds, it got me thinking, what else should I write? I don't know why I want to work in an art museum, because I studied art history and fashion history in my BA and MA? Because I'm not good at technical skills? Because I like to surround myself with paintings and luxury? These all seem shallow, and I don't have an academic/professional type response as to why I want to work in an art museum/gallery. Seeing people younger than me bag jobs in the arts makes me hate myself, I see their work profile and it's not like they have worked more than me, so it's either them writing good answers or the field preferring a certain set of people. Do you have any suggestions how to frame a reasonable answer? I know my request sounds entitled but I really don't know what else to do.

Hi, everybody! I'm an MA Museum Studies student conducting research for my dissertation and would really appreciate your insight as museum professionals.

I'm making this post to reach out to conservators and those involved in collections management + care to search for potential participants to interview regarding how hazardous materials/objects are dealt with. I'm focusing on ethnographic and military collections as they present interesting case studies often further complicated by legislation and the sensitive nature of repatriation negotiations. I'm particularly interested in how museums balance stakeholder access with safety concern.

The interviews would take place either in person (I am based in London, UK) or online via Microsoft Teams. You will be sent a participant information sheet, a consent form, and a list of the questions I will be asking in advance of the interview. You will be entirely anonymised, with your job title and institution referred to in a generalised way (ex. Curator A, a collections staff member from a national war museum).

If this sounds like something you would be interested in, or if you have any questions, please feel free to privately message me and I will share my institutional contact with you.

Thank you!

Hello everyone, as the title says, I am really wanting to get a job in an education department at a museum. But I am unsure how to go about doing that.

I have currently been living in Japan for about two years teaching English. Before coming to Japan, I had graduated with a Bachelors of Art & had worked at various art galleries for a few years (gallery assistant positions) & at an art museum for a year (VSR position). I have also taught art to kids in the evening for a little more than a year.

I'm planning on moving back to the California (where I'm from) next fall & I want to get back into working with museums, but this time specifically in an education department. I have some teaching and art experience, but I am still worried about landing a job, especially since I know that museum jobs are competitive.

Is it worth it to get a masters in Museum Studies or Art History? I've been looking into some master programs but I am worried they are more geared towards curatorial work, etc. Or should I try to get my teacher's credentials in California? Even though I taught art before, it was as an assistant for a private school, so I didn't need my credentials.

Thank you in advance for any help/advice!

Hello r/MuseumPros, I never thought I'd post here, but I feel like I need to vent to like-minded people. I'm 30 and for the last year-and-a-few-months I've been working as a Collections/Programming Manager at a community museum/gallery in a small-ish town. Most of the time, I really like my job, but I've often found myself discouraged by the pessimism and complacency of most of my coworkers, including my direct boss. All but one of them are 25-35 years older than me, and most have worked at this museum for 20-30 years; two of them are going to retire in January. My predecessor in this role had also been in this position for around that length of time.

I definitely understand that they're probably feeling burnt out, cynical, and there's likely a degree of "this isn't my problem for much longer." (I would be too, in their situation!) I also get that they're somewhat defensive of criticisms of the museum and any attempts to change things. I know that they all worked like hell to bring the museum up to the standard it's at today, which, to be fair, is probably better than a lot of museums of a similar size. So I'm not trying to disrespect their opinions or all the blood, sweat, and tears they've put into this place. But at the same time, I often feel like my concerns and suggestions are ignored, that collections are seen as absolute lowest priority, and that any time I try to change things for the better, it's countered by "well, this is the way we've always done things."

Now we're not in a terrible situation - we have good exhibits and educational programming, we run a different art show every month, and most if not all of our artifacts have accession numbers and database entries. However, we still have a lot of issues. Our building is ageing, has various structural/safety issues, and wasn't built with the practical realities of running a museum in mind. We are extremely limited on space: our storage is at over 100% capacity, about half of our collections are virtually inaccessible due to crowding, and we have no 'swing space,' work room, or programming room. The way in which our artifacts are stored could definitely be improved. Our archival arrangement in particular needs so, so much work. Almost none of our artifacts are photographed, and very few of our archival photographs are on the database. And all of this is something I'd absolutely LOVE to address, but time constraints, space constraints, and an "it is what it is" attitude from my colleagues are always pressing on me.

At the advice of a previous employer, early this year I applied for a facility assessment done by a federal conservation agency. We were approved for it, they were here for the past few days, and they gave us lots of great advice and are going to write us up a detailed report for the way forwards. It felt unbelievably validating to have trained professionals there who actually took my concerns seriously - not just a "yeah, this isn't ideal, but it's all right" attitude, but a "this is an actual problem and needs to be addressed" approach. I was super pumped and invigorated the entire time they were there, wanting to go ahead and tackle all these issues - and yet the second they left, I started feeling depressed again.

I feel like my older coworkers were moderately receptive to their suggestions, but there was definitely some pushback. For example, the assessors strongly advised us to improve our fire prevention and suppression measures (which are not nonexistent, but inadequate) and the response, after they'd gone, was basically a bunch of eyerolling and joking. Two staff members flat-out refused to do fire extinguisher training, and they laughingly said that the only evacuation plan we need is "get out of the building!!"

They were also reluctant to close part of our gallery space for a few weeks or a month in order to give us some 'swing space' to carry out storage assessment and rearrangement, fearing that this would limit our community engagement because we couldn't have shows at that time. And I get that public outreach is a huge part of a museum's work, but it feels like around here, shows/education/programming are like 80% of the priority, and collections and archives are like 20%. It makes me feel super undervalued and I sometimes think, "what's the point of hiring me if you don't want any new ideas or enthusiasm?"

And I can see their perspective: they worked incredibly hard over the past 20-30 years to get us where we are now, so from their point of view, a lot of work has already been done and there's not much further we need to go. They're proud of that work, and rightfully so. I know that my boss takes things very personally and has put a lot of her heart and soul into the museum, and I truly don't mean to make her feel offended or attacked. I'm just trying to do my job and improve the museum. But all of this is making me feel super burnt out, and I haven't even worked here a year and a half yet. I really want this recent assessment to take us places, not just to be another failed plan that gets us nowhere - but I need support and enthusiasm for that, and honestly I'm not getting that from most of my coworkers.

Edit: realized that I'm somehow not logged into my actual profile when I posted this? Though that's probably for the best as if you go through my post history it becomes fairly obvious where I live/work. Going to stay anonymous here.

My director would like to have an accessioned piece in their office. Specifically a high valued one. They are also asking about pieces in other staff offices. I am curious if your respective collection policies address this. Yes or no? And if yes, what is the short of it? TYVM!

Hi all! I'm wondering if anyone has experience working in accounting at museums and what their experience has been. Any idea what the typical responsibilities are and what the pay is like?

I have a somewhat unusual background in that I have an undergraduate degree in art history but transitioned to a career in accounting a few years ago. I wanted to work in a museum after finishing my bachelors, but it didn't pan out due to (I think) a combination of a competitive job market and my lack of experience and connections. I ended up working in various admin roles at nonprofits for awhile and then eventually decided to get my masters in accounting so that I could have more career stability. I now have my CPA license and work as an accountant at a tech company making a little over $100k.

My current job is pretty good - it has good work/life balance and some nice perks, but I also can't help but feel like my work doesn't have much meaning and that I really don't care at all about what my company actually does. I've never lost the desire to work in a museum, and I feel like with my current experience getting an accounting job could be the way to do it. Am I crazy to be thinking about this? Would I have to take a huge pay cut? I know from my previous nonprofit experience that salaries tend to be low while you're also expected to wear many hats. Given that, and as a single person in a HCOL area, I'm not sure whether this would be financially feasible. Thanks for any advice or insight anyone has!

It’s sorted from when the museum put it into the computer, rather than their accession number, but sorted by accession number correctly in other areas. For some reason the quick find on the “objects” section isn’t able to identify the number. But the quick find on the main menu is able to find it.

I’m going to be cataloguing someone’s private art collection. I’ve a masters in painting and was taught extensively how to create my own catalogue. How should I price this? Per piece? For time spent? I haven’t found any obvious analogues online so I thought I’d go to Reddit. First time on this forum so thank you.

This is partly advice and partly a rant.

I see so many posts about people not being able to land museum jobs after school, and most advice tends to be about the importance of networking, building up your resume through internship or volunteer experience, or which job boards to look at. As a museum professional who is currently on a hiring committee, I am shocked and a bit dismayed at how bad some of the applications I’m reading are. Most are coming from people with MA degrees in humanities disciplines. By the time you’re done with a humanities MA, or even a BA, you should, at the bare minimum, have good writing and communication skills. If you’re not a great writer, get feedback from people in the field who are. Have a former professor, internship supervisor, or friends from your program give you feedback. I used to send all of my cover letters to my mom, who has zero museum experience but incredible grammar skills. If your program doesn’t offer any resume or cover letter workshops, reach out to someone at your school’s career center. They are typically happy to help alumni.

Things I see in bad applications:

• Obvious grammar errors and/or poor writing. If you’re applying for a job that requires excellent writing skills and attention to detail, silly grammar mistakes or just generally bad syntax are a huge red flag.
• Not tailoring your application to the job. Don’t just copy/paste your cover letter into a new doc and replace the name of the institution, and be sure to rewrite bullet points on each resume to fit the specific requirements. Applying for an early career collections management position but you only have curatorial internships on your resume? Don’t focus on the content of an exhibition you curated; tell me about tasks you did that relate more closely to a collections position, like updating TMS records, handling artworks, etc. Use similar language to what you see in the job description. Does the job specify experience with specific tasks as opposed to just general experience with curation, collections, education, etc.? If they want to you have experience with processing loan requests, digitizing collections, or writing accessible labels, mention those tasks explicitly if you have done them. Don’t overgeneralize.
• PLEASE don’t wax poetic about your love of museums for two pages while giving no information about why you would be a good fit for the job. I read so many corny cover letters full of clichés that tell me nothing about a candidate’s qualifications. I strongly believe that you should highlight why you’re passionate about the field, but don’t make that your main focus, and try to tailor it to the institution. I.e., talk about how your passion for interdisciplinary dialogue made you want to apply to a university museum, how your values align with a museum’s mission to uplift BIPOC voices, etc.
• Don’t include irrelevant information, because bloated applications are much harder for us to read through when we’ve already looked at 50 of them in a day. If this is a museum preparator position at an art museum, I don’t care that you created a WWII history podcast as an undergrad.
• If you've worked a ton of jobs in various fields, put your museum experience at the top of your resume. Don't sandwich it in between unrelated jobs just to keep things in chronological order. You also don't need to include every job you've ever had unless it's relevant to the position. You don't need to list your dog walking job from high school.

Sorry if I sound harsh, but museum jobs are extraordinarily competitive. You need to have a good application to stand out, especially if you don’t already have a foot in the door of a museum. If anyone else has any advice for job seekers (or wants to commiserate as a fellow search committee member), please comment!

I'm looking at whether or not paraprofessional work in a museum might be something to chase after graduation. I'll be doing literary translation on the side. I'm primarily interested in the history side (Ancient Rome would be the big focus, but ancient history, language, art, philosophy, etc. more generally). I have never been fond of the idea of working in education (school admins irk me), and I did not enjoy being a library worker (first coordinator, then dean's assistant). Does this mean museums are completely off the table? I realize there's a whole lot of crossover among the three

Hi! I work in the commercial art world but am applying for a position now in a museum. Although I know I can do this job, there are some questions on the application form that I could use some clarity so if anyone here works in a collection registrar or adjacent position and has some free time please PM me :)

https://youtu.be/BD9eIO0kiBE?si=3yuq8AWraYeievcN

I finished this museum just before my 20th birthday, and it was about a 6 month process (off-and-on work) to complete the displays and layout. I’ve been collecting ever since I was very little, but I chose to display 5 of my collections here! I’m definitely not going to set this up again for a WHILE, but what are some tips you have for me when I do in the future? My background has nothing to do with history or museum work, but I love it as a hobby. I’m a sophomore in college majoring in engineering and biology.

interested in an admin role (i think). currently i do website, social media, inventory, project management

Is it worth it to get a Master of Arts in Museum Studies degree online? Currently looking at Southern University at New Orleans. If it's not a good program but the concept is a good one, do you have any recommendations?

Hello everyone! I'm about to be thirty this year. I've been working in the fast food industry for about 10 years. I trained several other stores before I was promoted to manager. I've been a manager for almost three years.

I love my job in the business and training area, but I'm definitely starting to feel burnout from it. I have a bachelors degree in history, and have always dreamed of working in a museum. I've been looking at job positions and the requirements,and I can't help but feel discouraged that I'm not the 'ideal candidate'.

Any advice or words of wisdom for me where I should start from there or if I can?

Hi all👋 I was hired in June to work as the summer intern for a small museum in Western Maine. After only five weeks I was informed by our board that they would like me to stay on until our season ends in October, and they are changing my title from “Summer Intern” to “Curatorial Coordinator”.

I have really grown to love this organization, and would love to stay on as a full time employee. However, I don’t know what the right way to request this would be, especially for a seasonal museum. We just received a large grant, so there is a possibility of having funding to take on another salaried employee, yet no one has mentioned that this is even a possibility, and for now I am banking on leaving after our season ends.

For those with more experience, how would you approach a higher-up to ask about staying on full time?

This is for all the “George-Washington-sat-here” chairs “piece-of-the-one-true-cross” wood chips and similar type of storied objects.

Handled a sword with a masking tape label claiming to be Kit Carson’s. No documentation, it was late 19th early 20th century and the museum was in the Great Lakes region 😂

When meeting non-museum folks, how do briefly describe your job to them?

Hi all,

Collections manager at a university art museum here. My curator and I are currently working on our next exhibition and one of the objects we wanted to feature was a scan of a carbon copy of a letter written from one famous person to another. The original carbon copy was on onion skin paper, and we'd like to print it on something that would look similar. Is there a stronger, printer-friendly paper type that emulates the appearance of onion skin paper? We were toying around with the idea of vellum but I wanted to see what you all had to say. Thanks!