Curators work in museums, libraries, and historically significant sites to manage collections. Professionals are usually in charge of supervising the purchase of new items, conducting research on them, and displaying them for public or private viewings. Many curators also have administrative responsibilities, such as planning and promoting special events. A curator typically requires extensive experience and education in her field of specialty in order to fulfill the variety of important job duties.
Many curators work in museums that specialize in a particular field, such as art, natural history, engineering, or aerospace. Curators look for, acquire, authenticate, and display interesting and significant pieces in most settings. An art curator, for example, might be interested in starting a Modernist painting collection. She’d research the movement, pick her favorite pieces, and see if she could buy them or borrow them as part of a cooperative effort with other museums. The curator chooses where and how to display pieces, as well as what educational information to include in descriptive signs, programs, and tour scripts for visitors.
Curators of natural history museums are experts in researching and preserving fossils, artifacts, rocks, and biological specimens. Many curators are experts in paleontology and biological anthropology, and they can use their extensive knowledge to verify the authenticity of certain pieces. Curators frequently collaborate with field researchers to study new discoveries and present significant findings to the public. To create realistic skeletons and replicas, they create models and plaster casts from actual fossils.
Large museums typically employ several curators to oversee various departments. A paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, anthropologist, and geologist, for example, may be employed a natural history museum. Smaller institutions, such as a local historical home or library, are frequently owned and operated a single person. To promote and protect collections, curators are frequently involved in fundraising and public awareness activities. They write grant proposals, organize educational materials, and submit research articles to scientific, literary, and art journals on a regular basis.
In most cases, a master’s or doctoral degree is required to work as a curator. Professionals often gain years of experience in other fields before becoming curators, such as field researchers, archivists, conservators, and teachers. When starting a new curator job, most people work as an assistant to a more experienced curator. Before taking on the role of head curator, she may be required to spend several months studying the museum’s contents in order to learn as much as possible about the various collections.