Ms. Stanton,

I wondered if you had done any research into the roots of museums.  Many
were begun by a wealthy person or group of people - ostensibly as a
public service, but sometimes ending up as more of a private club.  This
includes museums founded by groups suchs as the DAR, National Society of
Colonial Dames etc.

These museums were funded by the "founders" and often staffed by
volunteer members.  As the demands and standards changed for these
tax-exempt institutions, staff gradually changed to "professionals".  I
suspect these volunteer roots may have an impact on salaries.

I have worked in several New England museums that have stemmed from these
roots.  They rely heavily on the volunteer involvement of their members,
and seem not to really understand what they are doing when hiring
professionals - what the cost of our training and experience should be!

Just a thought that has long been in the back of my mind as I read these
posts on salaries.

Kathrine Walker, Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State Univ.
[log in to unmask]

"opinions are my own!"

On Wed, 31 Jul 1996, Sally Ann Stanton wrote:

> I can't help but jump in on this particular thread. Having quit a $45,000
> year university administrative post to become a starving doctoral student
> living on less than half of that (and raising a kid on my own, to boot),
> I understand the frustration of museum professionals who work long and
> often thankless hours for their institutions, and see peers in other
> fields earning large salaries, bonuses, expense accounts etc. My
> ex-husband is a software consultant who makes five times what I do, and
> half the time he sits around playing Tetris.
>
> So, I decided to focus my dissertation on exploring what might explain
> the fact that we as a society give lip service to the importance of the
> arts and humanities, including history and museums, but we don't put our
> money where our mouth is, as many European nations do. One factor I
> believe contributes to this situation (it by no means explains it) is the
> evolution of museums as educational institutions over the last 100 years,
> and the association of education with women and children. Until very
> recently, men have dominated higher education and educational
> administration, while classroom teachers have been largely women. Look at
> your education department and your docents -- mostly women, right? What
> is the big focus for museums these days? Education - entertainment -
> families. What is the common denominator? Gender. I believe museums have
> become identified as socially "feminine"; and as a result, are accorded
> lesser importance and lesser value than traditionally socially
> "masculine" institutions such as business, industry or sports.
>
>  Here in Milwaukee there has been a very visible public campaign to build a new
> sports stadium for the Brewers. From the media coverage, one gets the
> impression that the world will end if the stadium deal falls through.
> Every wealthy investor and their brother has advanced a plan to chip in
> so the stadium can be built. Breathless, feverish news reports give us
> daily updates on the deal. I'm trying hard to imagine anyone getting this
> excited over building a new MUSEUM here. I'm not saying that women never
> attend baseball games and men never go the museum. I'm saying that what
> we are socialized to value reflects a long-standing gender ideology which
> places premium value on anything associated with men, and devalues
> anything associated with women (anything associated with children, by
> proxy, is associated with women due to their childbearing and
> childrearing roles). I think this applies to everything from what
> products are sold in stores to which insitutions receive governmental
> support. The only reason movie and tv stars receive big salaries is that
> what they do is now classified as an "industry" or "business" with high
> "profit" potential. The "art" (i.e., feminine aspect) has become secondary.
>
> Museum professionals are underpaid and undervalued because what they do
> is perceived as "soft", "nonessential", "nonprofit", "educational", and
> that means "not all that important", in a society where the dollar is
> almighty. Despite the fact that many women make more money than their
> husbands, despite the fact that many women support families without any
> help from a male breadwinner, despite the fact that most women now work
> for a majority of their lives, Americans subconsciously cling to the
> mystical ideal of the nuclear family and the male breadwinner.
> Until this changes, the arts and humanities will continue to take second
> place; museums will take a backseat to baseball stadiums, and museum
> professionals will be paid ridiculously low salaries (just as teachers
> were and in many cases still are) for work which pays well in other
> institutions.
>
>
> I hope my dissertation research (scheduled to begin this fall) will help
> to shed light on this issue, and maybe assist museums in recognizing
> their own part in communicating gender ideology.
>
> That's my 2 cents worth (well, in the "real world" maybe 20 cents worth!)
>
> Sally Stanton
> Ph D Candidate
> Univ. Wisc. Milwaukee
>