Jay, your are describing almost exactly what happened to the institution I
am now working at.  I am doing the same sort of work your Curator of
Collections is doing, and I'm "just" the registrar.  Relating this to the
Salaries thread, I probably as Registrar, get paid alot less that someone
with "Curator" in their title does.  Yet I am doing now what in the past, a
Curator as "caretaker of the collection" did. and get this - my degree's are
in Studio Art and Library Science!  (horror of horrors! Mr. Whittle)
Allison


At 12:41 PM 7/31/97 -0500, you wrote:
>I come to this long thread very late in the game but I
>desire to add my two cents.  In response to the post fom
>"Hodcarry" who suggested that curators have lost some degree
>of professional expertise as a result of "generic" museum
>programs, I could not disagree more.
>
>Using my own institution as an example, we have 35,000
>artifacts in our collection which began in the attic of a
>historical society member in 1961.  The objects collected
>are diverse, and generally relate to the history of our
>county from about 1872 to the present day.  Unfortunately,
>like so many other "small" museums, we did not have a
>professio curator until 1986.  Consequently, our records
>before then are scant.  Compounding the dificulty is that
>whenthe museum was moved to its present location, the
>facility experienced a renaissance of sortsand the community
>began donating objects at a rate beyond the capacity of the
>staff to handle.
>
>Today, our curator of collections struggles with reconciling
>scant or non-existent accession records, sometimes poor
>provenance information, and a host of other difficulties
>including a storage area retro-fitted into a ninety year old
>structure.
>
>For all that (and I'm sure there are a great many curators
>out there with similar stories), our curator has done a
>fantastic job of organizing the collection, making it
>accesible, studying unique pieces when possible, and
>following any leads on provenance she has.  While I'm
>certain that she would like to be continuing her studies
>into her area of historical expertise, the demands of the
>job do not allow it.
>
>She may not know the difference between a match plane and a
>jack plane, but I would certainly not trade her experience
>and expertise for a curator who had so specialized an
>expertise that the big picture would receive the sort of
>attention it should.
>
>In other words, at our facility, the issues of the forest
>are far greater than the issue of a single tree.  What I am
>driving at is that institutions are at variuous stages of
>professional growth, and I'm willing to bet that there is
>a far greater need for general knowledge among the majority
>of the nation's museums than specialized knowledge.  I would
>like to believe that someday our facility will have a
>Curator of Agricultural Tools & Equipment, but that day is
>many, many, years away.  Until then, however, we will keep
>working and keep studying our collection in hopes that one
>day we will be able to look at the smooth bore and the
>rifled barrel and be able to tell you what caliber it is
>without the benefit of the firearms manual.
>
>In the meantime, should our curator's salary be determined
>by the lack of "specialized knowledge" Hodcarry mourns?  No,
>and hell no!!!!! We're doing the best we can, and we're
>doing a very good job of correcting 36 years of curatorial
>difficulties.  Just my two cents (or maybe that rant was
>worth a dime.)
>
>Jay Smith
>Executive Director
>Reno County Museum
>Hutchinson, Kansas
>--usual disclaimers apply--
>
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Allison A. Smith                Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty
Registrar                       Museum of Art
[log in to unmask]   Marquette University
                        Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA
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