Curators, or Learning Officers
Contemporary museum practice, particularly as exercised by local authorities, favours using education specialists to complement the work of the curatorial teams. But where should the balance lie?
Museums should be centres of learning and subject expertise, with collecting and interpreting inextricably linked to conservation and research. But can one area be adequately discharged without the other? What are the benefits of learning officers as opposed to curators?
Many regional museums are under pressure to restructure their organisations and increasingly, the emphasis is placed on education at the expense of curatorial expertise. Without curators will scholarly standards be upheld?
Will such restructuring jeopardise the future development of the collection, inhibit career progression for curators and indeed have an adverse impact upon those education programme it seeks to enhance?
Or will the focus on education make collections more accessible and attract new users, while freeing curators to focus on research and collection development?
Topic posted: 11 January 2007.I do not think this is an either or issue but rather one of balance. There are perhaps too many curators and too few educaors in museums. A prepondernece of art historians seems to render the art world to arcane for the general public and these experts seem to revel in the very inaccessbility that their professional language creates. I would welcome much more emphasis on information made comprehensible to the general public. 25 years ago I visited the old brewery museum in San Antonio, Texas and in every room there was a console where a visitor could learn more about each work and each artist and about similar works and similar artists. I have not found anything similar in any of the many museums I've visited since throughout the world. There is also scope for much more use of the internet not only to show collections but to cooperate with other museums so that there could be links to museums holding other works by a particular artists
Comment posted by: sapiens. (16th March 2007).
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