I was in your exact same position, except I had to decide whether to
stop at a M.A. and go into museum work, or declare Ph.D. candidacy.
Declaring candidacy would mean that I had made the decision to go the
university route.  My way of making the decision was to look at who was
teaching in my field, and how likely it was that I was going to be able
to get a teaching job when I finished my degree.  My research revealed
that there was a glut of art historians with my specialty, and they were
all pretty young and recently arrived into tenure-track jobs.  I also
investigated work availability in a traditional museum setting, and
discovered the curatorial situation in my field was virtually the same.
I ended up switching specialties to contemporary art while keeping
myself a generalist in 19th/20th c. art, stopping at the M.A., and found
that I was actually more employable in a greater variety of settings.
After 3 years I picked up a M.B.A. and went farther into administration
than curatorial work, which is also a bit more flexible if you don't
mind being less personally involved with the art.  I work at a somewhat
smaller institution where we make up the rules as we go along (while
remaining professionally responsible, of course), and the ability to go
back and forth between administration and curatorship has served me
extremely well.

I hope hearing about my experiences has helped you.

Julia Moore
Director of Exhibitions and Artist Services
Indianapolis Art Center

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