We estimate that in Britain the percentage of curators (in the traditional
sense) among the total museum workforce has fallen from around 35% to
under 13% of museum employees of all kinds (including security/manual
grades) in less than 30 years.  This is partly due to the (welcome) growth
of other museum-based sub-professions such as conservation, interpretation
and museum education, and also because many museums have become
increasingly autonomous of their sponsoring bodies (such as public
authorities)and hence are now responsible for tHeir own buildings, human
resources, finance etc. and therefore require directly employed staff in
thses areas.  However, there is little doubt that in some curatorial
subject areas (e.g. natural history) despite a doubling of the number of
museums over that 30 year period there has been a real fall in
curatorial job numbers.

Worrying, isn't it?

Patrick Boylan

=========================================

On Sat, 9 Aug 1997, Bremcom wrote:

> Subject: museum future
>
> I guess many specialized curators are going the way of the dinosaur...
>
> there are only so many artifacts available and you can always get a hold
> of a few experts in a particular curatorial area to confirm cultural
> value...but you can only run a muserum into the ground once.
>