Troy raises a good point about the paradox of museums needing bodies while
museum grads need jobs but the two needs remain unmet due to lack of funds.
Why can't curators and educators make the case for hiring people? The oldest
reason, still going strong, is that museums are chronically short of money.
In most museums, less than 40% of the operating budget comes from hard
money--money paid by visitors through admissions or store sales. The rest is
soft--it must be raised through grants, begging, etc.

But I think that there are a couple of other reasons as well. First of all,
most museum professionals just can't stand to let something fail or be less
than the best, so they continually overextend themselves to bring an exhibit
or program to fulfillment. The museum administration may not be aware of the
personal cost--all they see is that the same people who were claiming "it
can't be done!" did in fact make it happen.

Secondly, within the last twenty or so years we have seen a significant
change in American lifestyles and attitudes (not exclude non-American's, but
I'm not familiar enough to know if the following applies to you as well).
Once upon a time, middle class and wealthy women didn't need or expect to
work. While their kids were in school, they were able to volunteer their
time. I think that the mind sets of many museum administrators were formed
during that period. The museum profession hasn't yet adapted to the fact that
they are going to have to pay people to do things that were once done by
volunteers.

What we as museum professionals need to do is demonstrate that the museum can
benefit financially from expending that money. It's a tough gamble to
convince administration that hiring full-time people can have long term
benefits when it's never been done before.

Believe me, I know. A year ago I convinced a museum to create 4 full-time
positions in the Education Department. At that point, we only had two
full-time staff in the department, yet conducted programs that sometimes
required as many as 14 people working simultaneously. I "proved" the need by
calculating the time and energy that was expended hiring and training a
constant stream of low paid part-timers who left every 6 months.

It was hard bringing in so many entry-level people at the same time. The
salaries were so low that we didn't even try to advertise outside of our
part-time staff. After the first 6 months, the administration felt that 3 out
of the 4 positions were failures. Our dedicated part-timers, many of whom
were much more experienced and qualified than the new full-timers, were angry
and frustrated by what they perceived as inadequacies of the full-time
people.

Fortunately, the museum administration decided to let normal attrition deal
with the full-timers. They figured that they would leave soon and the
positions wouldn't be refilled. However, 3 of the 4 people are still there
and have really settled into their positions. It's exciting to see new
programs and techniques coming from their midst. Emotions have calmed down
all around and I think that the original case has been proved. It's over a
year later, the people are still there; they are there at times that are
awkard for part-timers to fill; they are able to work on new and existing
programs to help increase attendance (revenue!); and the knowledge base of
the department is not only stable, it's increasing. How long they'll stay is
hard to say since the salaries are extremely low for full-time people. Next
case will be to analyze the benefits of increasing the salaries.

If anyone else wants to try this, I can tell you what criteria I used to
calculate the cost/benefits to the museum for hitiring full-time people.

Good luck,

Jeannine Finton
Education Consultant

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