For whatever it's worth:

I have a Masters degree in History; spent twelve years as 1) Director of
Community Services and Adult Education, International Programs,
International Education and Executive Director of a World Affairs Council
for a community college; 2) Executive Director of a major world trade
association; 3) president of an unprofitable consulting company; 4)
director of a history museum.  The history degrees and the twenty years of
non-profit management experience have provided me just about all I have
needed to run this museum, although I had to do some quick on-the-job
learning to get up to speed on certain aspects of museum management, most
of which are common sense (like how to determine if a potential curator
knows what he/she is supposed to do).


------
Robert Handy
Brazoria County Historical Museum
100 East Cedar
Angleton, Texas  77515
(409) 864-1208
museum_bob
[log in to unmask]
http://www.bchm.org

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From:   Dill, Christopher L.[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Monday, August 17, 1998 3:34 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: An interesting questionabout starting in museums....

     I think Deb may be right.  I started 25 years ago as an
     anthropology graduate student who took a job running a
     state historic site.  Moved through a soft money
     archeological position to a hard money state
     archeologist job, and then to the museum - I went from
     digging it up to taking care of it, all with the same
     employer.  There were no "museum studies" courses
     readily ("obviously"???) availble to me when I started,
     although I was always fascinated with museums, and
     worked in one at the U of Kansas while in school.  On
     the other hand, the folks who apply for jobs here now
     often come out of public history or museum studies
     backgrounds.  I suppose that some "old timers" must
     have gone directly and deliberately into museum work,
     but I don't recall the opportunity ever being real in
     my youth.