A Day in the Life

Day in the Life: Curator

By Valarie Kinkade

"So how did you become a curator?" colleagues have asked. My first museum job was at the Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles when I was 11. I was taking a summer class at the museum that started at 10 a.m. My father would drop me off on his way to work at 9 a.m., and I had an hour to explore the museum and adjacent rose gardens before class. The guards got to know me after the first week and would pay me pennies to push all the buttons and flip all the switches in the exhibits and come back and tell them if anything wasn't working.

I earned an undergraduate degree in anthropology from UCLA and a graduate degree in archaeology from Yale University. A good educational background can be indispensable in succeeding in the museum world. Graduate school is probably a minimum requirement for most curators today, though there are a few who, through their work as dealers, collectors and writers, have not needed a master's or doctoral degree.

Curator Valarie Kinkade carefully moves an 18th-century chair at the Little Compton, Rhode Island Historical Society.

My next museum job was at the Smithsonian. I began as an intern in the Museum of Natural History and eventually was hired in collections management to assist with its move to a new storage facility. I worked after graduate school as a historic house museum site administrator, followed by two years as the curator for a military museum and a year as a site administrator of a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Next, I took a position an assistant director for two months, which was not the job for me.

Image:Curator Valarie Kinkade carefully moves an 18th-century chair at the Little Compton, Rhode Island Historical Society.

I began a consulting business called Museum and Collector Resource in 1996. We do curatorial and collections management projects for museums, corporations and private collectors—our clients are anyone who has "stuff." We do a good deal of new museum planning, inventories and exhibit development.

At times my job is glamorous and exciting. I had a project a few years ago with Amaze Design in Boston and the National Park Service where I spent several days interviewing people who had participated in the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. I spent days traveling the Alabama countryside, sitting in people's living rooms drinking everything from moonshine to strong coffee and listening to fascinating stories from this time period. I brought together friends who had not seen each other in many years and people opened their closets and attics to me, bringing out relics that symbolized the Civil Rights Movement. I also met with Ku Klux Klan members and former policemen who played different roles in the struggle.

At times my days are not as glamorous. I have had hours where my main job was to replace the toilet paper in the porta-potties at the museum's annual antiques show. I have picked bugs off a mummy while suited in Tyvek and a respirator; I have mopped floors after a flood in storage, washed down shelving and cleaned out crawl spaces.

A curator is often thought of as the intellectual of the institution, the person who knows the most about the subject being discussed in the museum. Generally this is true, but as our world becomes broader and our understanding of our subjects deepens, the best curators are those who know what information they lack and where to get it. Some of a curator's day is spent searching for that information, and then there's the excitement of making new discoveries and contributing to the scholarship of our world.

More and more, my typical day as a curator is spent on the Internet. This is my main venue for gathering and assessing information about the scholarship in my field. This is also the main way I interact with museum staff, collectors, dealers and the general public. I spend some time online trying to stay on top of technology—everything from RFID (radio-frequency identification, a method of tagging objects) to cell phone tours and podcasts. The method of interpretation can often affect what I choose to interpret.

I spend part of my time writing, whether it is for publications like this one or developing presentations to deliver to members or colleagues. Paperwork is the bane of the curator's existence. Performance reviews, insurance documents, condition reports and deeds of gift form piles on my desk.

As the interpreter of a collection I feel it is important to maintain a level of connoisseurship on the items in my museum. So, I spend parts of my day in discussions with dealers, appraisers and collectors, attending conferences and reading publications. Unfortunately, a lot of curators are not given the time to pursue these things during our regular workdays. We often find ourselves engaging in these activities on our own time.

All of life's experiences can help one to be a successful curator, but there is one set of attributes that the best curators possess and that cannot be learned in school. I believe you need a good ethical compass. This will come in handy as you explain to the artist why she cannot put price tags on the sculptures she has loaned for the exhibit. A good hand with objects, also known as the "touch," is a true necessity. Connoisseurship, which I define as an appreciation for what others will find interesting or aesthetically pleasing about an object or topic, keeps our museums from collecting that which is superfluous. Finally, a passion about what you are caring for is essential.