A Day in the Life: Museum Educators
By Tracey R. Beck, Pauline Eversmann and Rosemary T. Krill
The three authors of this Day in the Life were born in different decades. We entered the field via slightly different routes. All women, we made different choices about balancing home and work responsibilities. We have reached different points along our paths.
What is the same for all of us? We are all museum educators, presently or formerly. We all view museums as places to learn about the world. We all love interesting, beautiful and old objects—and we are all committed to drawing a bridge between these objects and the people who come to view them.
In addition, we all know that we can't do this work alone. We do it within institutions that have budgets, schedules and many other staff members. Along the way, we've all learned how to help people work toward goals, manage money, develop and adhere to schedules and plan the details of successful museum programs.
Hoping that you may find a useful idea or two, here are stories of days in our lives and the steps that brought us here.
Tracey Beck
Director of the American Swedish Historical Museum, Philadelphia. Formerly director of the education programs department at the Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, Del.
Some interns who work with me are unsure whether to become curators or educators. I ask them, "Where do you get more energy and joy—from sitting in a room looking at and researching objects or from telling people what you have learned about them?" I truly love the objects in museums, but I get my energy from people.
Even when considering my career path in high school, museum work appealed to me because I loved recreational learning. I determined to pursue museum education. However, my undergraduate and graduate degrees are in content areas. Wanting a thorough understanding of the subject matter I would be interpreting, I supplemented my academic degrees with museum internships in both education and curatorial departments.
As an educator, I specialized in working with family audiences. I also found I enjoyed working on interdepartmental projects, figuring out how to make a project happen within a budget and supervising other staff. I was promoted to department director and enjoyed the challenges of working with all of the museum's audiences and negotiating their sometimes-conflicting needs.
As I grew and looked for additional opportunities and challenges, I began to realize that unless I committed to living in large cities with large museums, there wasn't much further for me to go as a museum educator. I then discovered a small museum that was seeking an executive director. The budget, staff size and level of activity were comparable to my current department, but my role would be very different. In particular, my lack of fundraising experience was a concern. I convinced the board that fundraising is really "friend-raising"; as an educator, I had already been doing that.
Many of the same skills needed to be a good educator stand me in good stead as an executive director. Communication skills are paramount when working with a board, leading the staff and making a case to donors. Negotiation and project management skills are equally important. Most of all, I find the enthusiasm that I brought to museum education makes me a good "front-person" for the organization with its various constituents.
Pauline Eversmann
Retired. Formerly deputy director of library, collections management and academic programs; deputy director of public programs; and director of education, public programs and visitor services at the Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, Del.
My career path has been non-traditional. For that reason, I think it offers lessons for professionals who are just starting out and wrestling with such questions as "What kind of museum do I want to work for?" "What type of museum education do I like the best?" and, of course, the big one, "Will I be able to find a job?"
I sometimes refer to myself as a failed academic. I left graduate school, after the agony of passing my written and oral exams, to raise a family. However, I got a second chance when I saw a newspaper ad seeking museum guides at Winterthur. Having visited the museum several times, I knew and liked it. So, I applied.
I could say that the rest is history, but it really isn't that simple. While I liked guiding, I realized that it did not offer a path to a career. I wanted to start down that path. My children, then 8 and 10 years old, were at an age that made it possible.
At this point, something important happened: I found a mentor. A member of the education, public programs and visitor service division told me that a position as an assistant curator of education was about to be posted and asked me to consider applying. Not only did she encourage me in the application process, she also guided me through the sometimes-rocky shores of museum politics once I got the job.
Most importantly, when my mentor left Winterthur, she recommended me as her replacement on the executive committee of the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, a graduate program sponsored by Winterthur and the University of Delaware. That recommendation was to change my professional life. I not only served on the committee but was asked to teach an introductory course for the students. Voila! I was teaching in an academic institution—and I didn't have a PhD.
Six years later, the director of education at Winterthur resigned, and I was asked to fill in as interim director. I faced a big decision: Did I want to apply for the position and leave a job I loved? Because I didn't have formal museum training, I didn't think I was qualified. I wouldn't have applied were it not for my colleagues. They encouraged my candidacy and helped me see how we could all work together to make a difference.
After 12 years of administration, I realized I no longer had any enthusiasm for the job. Getting out of bed and going to work each day became harder and harder. And so I stunned everyone, including my family and staff, by simply resigning. I was granted the opportunity to stay on as a part-time employee in the academic programs division of Winterthur, the area that had always held my heart due to my love of teaching and mentoring students.
I was nine months into my new life when my boss resigned. I was asked to return to full-time employment as the interim administrator of his division, which included the research library, conservation, collections management and academic programs, for six months while the administration planned its next steps. I had no hesitation in saying yes to this offer; I knew it was right. But when six months stretched to 22 months, I decided it was time to really retire. And so, at the end of my career, I found myself doing what I assumed I would do all those many years ago: I was teaching and providing administrative leadership in an academic setting.
Rosemary T. Krill
Senior curator of education; formerly director of the visitor service department and curator of education at Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, Del.
According to career planning articles, I am something of a rarity in the early 21st century. I have had a decades-long career in one field, even at one institution. Though I've held a number of different jobs, they've all had one common goal: making museum visits more meaningful and enjoyable for visitors.
It began at the University of Delaware's museum studied program. About to complete my second year, I visited the director of the program, Dr. Edward Alexander, to discuss my path forward. By the end of our meeting, he had led me to ask myself the same question that Tracey posed: "Do I want to work with objects, or do I want to work with objects for people?" I chose the latter, and it made all the difference.
My work in education and interpretation proceeded at a small local historical association, followed by the Hagley Museum, where I had been a graduate fellow. Projects ranged from developing a grant-funded outreach program about a Revolutionary War engagement to planning a festival day to working on a joint curriculum with other museums and academic institutions. Along the way came opportunities to manage budgets, supervise staff and write grants. These skills were not a big part of museum studies training at the time. Happily, they are taught now, either in coursework or in practicum. I urge the students that I mentor to find courses or experiences that develop these skills, inside or outside the museum world. Like arrows in a quiver, they can help you hit your career target.
My graduate work did position me in a different, important way, by providing a network of colleagues in responsible museum positions. By the time I decided to marry, become a parent and briefly retire from full-time work, they were ready to hire me for contract projects. My resume had no huge hole.
My return to full-time work was serendipitous. Those in charge of interpretation at Winterthur applied for a major grant to produce a new handbook for interpreters of the house and decorative arts collections and brought me onboard. The project, ultimately published as Early American Decorative Arts: A Handbook for Interpreters, involved several years of interpretive planning, research, writing and training staff who led visitors through the 175 rooms of the Winterthur house.
Pauline Eversmann, the new deputy director for public programs, then needed someone to take over visitor service. She asked me, opening up another career opportunity that had advance ticketing, front desk sales and house and garden tours as part of the mix. But interpretation and education beckoned again when my supervisors wanted a renewed emphasis on training and education for our interpreters. Now my work is focused on research and teaching the full-time, part-time and volunteer interpretive staff. Tomorrow, one 'day in my life,' I will teach about three rooms at Winterthur, the history of their design and installation, the objects that furnish them now and the meaning that they can have for our visitors the day after tomorrow. 
