On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 11:28 AM, Brian Rayca <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> This thread was a question about the primacy of collections care and research vs interpretation and education.  A curators job, particularly in a
> small museum, is to be an educator.  They ought to be reaserching and finding out new stuff about the collection and passing it on.  That is the
> essence of why they research and why they write.

That's not "education". That's just finding out new stuff about the
collection and passing it along. Can a curator create a program on a
topic and differentiate instruction for different age groups,
abilities and interests? Can a curator work with a group of
homeschoolers ranging in ages from 5 years to teens who have never
worked in a structured environment and thus really don't know how to
listen to a short lecture or raise their hands for questions? Does a
curator know how to match a museum's school program lesson plans to
the local school's standards of learning? Does a curator know a love
Bloom's Taxonomy as much as the collection taxonomy?

Not saying a curator CAN'T do these things but it's an entirely
different skill set and one that you just don't "pick up on" by
"working with kids". I think curators in small museums should be
expected to do more than research but I don't want them to also run
the education program no more than I want educators to be in charge of
researching collections. Can curators and educators do aspects of each
other's jobs? Absolutely and they should be cross-trained, especially
in small to medium-sized museums. That doesn't mean that their primary
job function changes because they are working in a different-sized
museum. If your museum is so small that you are a
curator-educator-exhibit designer-volunteer manager, I'd argue that
you shouldn't have a job specific title like "educator" or "curator"
but a generic "museum specialist" as you are someone who does what
needs to be done, which is another entirely different skill set.

Deb Fuller

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