Museum Directors and Curators

The directorship of a museum is an all-consuming occupation. Considerable travel, program development, fund-raising, and staff management may be involved. Evenings and weekends are often taken up by social activities involving museum donors or affiliates. A museum director must be willing to accept the pressure of answering to the museum's board of trustees while also overseeing museum staff and handling public relations.

As new issues that affect museums arise in the national consciousness and draw media attention, a director must be able to respond appropriately. A delicate balance must be maintained between the role of a museum as a civic institution, as reflected in the kinds of programs and exhibits developed for the public, and the less visible but equally important role of the museum as manager of the objects in its care, as reflected in conservation, research, publishing efforts, and the availability of the collections to visiting scholars. Museum directors must juggle competing interests and requests for the museum's resources.

The office of a director is typically housed within the museum. Many directors have considerable staff support, to which they can delegate specific areas of responsibility, and thus must have strong interpersonal and diplomatic skills.

Curators typically have an office in a private area of the museum, but may have to share office space. Employment conditions and benefits are more like those of industry than academia, although the employment contract may stipulate that the curator is free to pursue a personal schedule of fieldwork for several weeks during the year.

A curatorial post and a directorship are typically 9-to-5 jobs, but that does not take into account the long hours of study necessary to sustain scholarly research, weekend time spent on public programs, or evening meetings with donors, trustees, and museum affiliates. The actual hours spent on curatorial-related and directorship activities may be double those of the employment contract. Directors and curators must enjoy their work, be interested in museum operations and a museum's profile in the community, and willingly put in the necessary time. Becoming a museum director only occurs after years of dedication to the field and a great deal of tenacity. Likewise, curatorial positions are won by highly educated, versatile people, who in turn accept long hours and relatively (in comparison to other industries) low pay in exchange for doing work they love.