Guidance for an unconventional phd hopeful

[Amcam]

I would like some information/advice for entering an art history phd.

I have a bachelors from a fashion college in NYC. I did well in school and graduated with a degree in fashion merchandising. After two years of working in the field in bridal. I've decided to change careers.

I'm very interested in furthering my education. If anyone can give me advice what is required for entering an art history phd. I am looking into taking a few classes at a university near by in art history. Are there other classes I should include? A few people have mentioned chemistry. I want to be looked at as a serious student and I'm willing to devout the next two years to do whatever it takes. Unfortunately, I do not know anyone that has done a phd.

[m-ttl]

I would like some information/advice for entering an art history phd.

I have a bachelors from a fashion college in NYC. I did well in school and graduated with a degree in fashion merchandising. After two years of working in the field in bridal. I've decided to change careers.

I'm very interested in furthering my education. If anyone can give me advice what is required for entering an art history phd. I am looking into taking a few classes at a university near by in art history. Are there other classes I should include? A few people have mentioned chemistry. I want to be looked at as a serious student and I'm willing to devout the next two years to do whatever it takes. Unfortunately, I do not know anyone that has done a phd.

 

I'm not sure why chemistry would be necessary unless you are hoping to do conservation work? If you are you would probably be looking at chemistry/material sciences and fine arts in addition to art history. 

 

Are you interested in the art history of fine arts? Or would costuming history be equally acceptable? There's an MA in Costume Studies http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/art/costume/ which can be combined with a MLS. I thought that looked amazing! 

 

If you have a specific field of focus in Art History, you will want to have french or german, plus whatever language would be most helpful to your field. (Be it Latin, Spanish, Italian, etc). What are your end goals?

Edited March 7, 2014 by m-ttl

[Amcam]

My end goals would be to teach or work in a museum. I do love costuming and the art in fashion design. That is why I went to a fashion college to begin with. I went to school across the street from MOMA. I love modern art, pop art, and abstract expressionism.

[m-ttl]

My end goals would be to teach or work in a museum. I do love costuming and the art in fashion design. That is why I went to a fashion college to begin with. I went to school across the street from MOMA. I love modern art, pop art, and abstract expressionism.

 

My recommendation:

 

• Get some experience interning with an education department, or docenting! If you want to teach in a museum, you don't necessarily need a PhD at all. It's loads of fun, but it is best to know exactly what that's like ahead of time. The MA would suffice -- you could choose museum studies, or a contemporary/modern art history MA. I say that knowing museum educator, and a curator of education. One has her MA in museum studies, and the other in art history. 
• Check out the CAA programs guide to get a feel for if the museum studies programs are more or less appealing than the MA/PhD programs to you. Plenty of museum studies programs will allow you to work with contemporary/modern art and train you for museum work which is not curatorial focused. They also don't always have the language requirement, whereas art history almost always does.
• Definitely find internships, volunteer work, or even work a front desk job at a museum! 

Edited March 7, 2014 by m-ttl

[GreenePony]

My end goals would be to teach or work in a museum. I do love costuming and the art in fashion design. That is why I went to a fashion college to begin with. I went to school across the street from MOMA. I love modern art, pop art, and abstract expressionism.

When you say "work in a museum" what exactly do you want to do? Curate, Education (educational program development), Collections Management, Conservation, Prepator, Exhibit Design/Development, Administration, Development/Fundraising? Most of these have specific education points, especially conservation (you need a good number of science credits and experience to even get into a conservation program and then you need certified.) You rarely see someone in the development or administration silos who have museum backgrounds.

 

Education is a different matter. There are specific Museum Education programs (ie GWU) which are completely separate from the rest of the MSTD program and then there are all around MSTD programs that have an education track which are more integrated. Like m-ttl said, there are different ways of getting into museum education, however, I'm seeing more education job postings that require some museum background. My first director had an art education BA, museum sciences MA, and then education PhD because her first love is education, not administration (you're not going see many administrators with a MSTD degree these days, more business unfortunately.)

I hate to be a negative Nancy but there are *very* few museum jobs (except education, administration, and development) and those with years of experience and training are having trouble even getting entry level jobs (if they even find those, many are requiring at minimum 5 years experience now)

[m-ttl]

When you say "work in a museum" what exactly do you want to do? Curate, Education (educational program development), Collections Management, Conservation, Prepator, Exhibit Design/Development, Administration, Development/Fundraising? Most of these have specific education points, especially conservation (you need a good number of science credits and experience to even get into a conservation program and then you need certified.) You rarely see someone in the development or administration silos who have museum backgrounds.

 

Education is a different matter. There are specific Museum Education programs (ie GWU) which are completely separate from the rest of the MSTD program and then there are all around MSTD programs that have an education track which are more integrated. Like m-ttl said, there are different ways of getting into museum education, however, I'm seeing more education job postings that require some museum background. My first director had an art education BA, museum sciences MA, and then education PhD because her first love is education, not administration (you're not going see many administrators with a MSTD degree these days, more business unfortunately.)

I hate to be a negative Nancy but there are *very* few museum jobs (except education, administration, and development) and those with years of experience and training are having trouble even getting entry level jobs (if they even find those, many are requiring at minimum 5 years experience now)

 

I think to expound on this point a little more: 

 

The choice of you degree should follow what you want to do. If you don't want to do curation, I wouldn't necessarily recommend the PhD, because the majority of educators have MAs. You can still get a PhD in art history, but admitting you want to work in a museum rather than become a r-1 professor can be a bit trickier, and you would ideally hunt down specific programs that believe in prepping students for museum work if they would like that option. 

 

The difference is the educator doesn't need the PhD, but they still do plenty of research on the art since they're going to be teaching people about it. I think both are great - and most educators and curators I know agree that education is broad knowledge, and curation is depth of knowledge in terms of what you research. 

 

There are very few jobs, but even less Professor jobs. That said, I knew going in from my mentor friend (who is an educator) that this was true even before the economic crash. You have to really foster your connections and you absolutely need to be okay with "paying your dues" so to speak. My friend worked for awhile doing retail jobs before she got a front desk job at a museum and was able to meet the head of the education department at a different museum. That connection didn't turn into anything right away, but after a few years post-MA of retail/reception at a museum, her MA + MA experience + Museum front desk job turned into a "You should really submit your resume for this opening we have" from her contact which ended up being a job. 

 

If museums are your passion, then you'll find a way to make it work. A museum studies/museum ed MA will have you complete internship requirements. This is because like Greenepony pointed out, lots of jobs want years of experience. Back when I was still considering applying to museum studies programs for an MA (my BA is already in that!), I looked at San fran state -- and saw they wanted a full year of prior work or interning experience at one institution before applying (being a student, much of my experience is semester long). So in a few cases, people do treat this like a professional program where they want experience first and then for you to apply. That can be a catch-22, you have no experience, so you can't apply anywhere because you have no experience. My advice is to go small and local first. It will be hands on, and much of the time, they're grateful for the help. 

 

If you balanced say, an internship or volunteer experience with art history classes, a french or german class, and an extra class (Education based if you want to be an educator, or perhaps chem/drawing for a conservator, etc) then you could easily prep yourself for either the MA if you choose that route, or more seriously prepare for a PhD. 

Edited March 10, 2014 by m-ttl

[GreenePony]

If museums are your passion, then you'll find a way to make it work. A museum studies/museum ed MA will have you complete internship requirements. This is because like Greenepony pointed out, lots of jobs want years of experience. Back when I was still considering applying to museum studies programs for an MA (my BA is already in that!), I looked at San fran state -- and saw they wanted a full year of prior work or interning experience at one institution before applying (being a student, much of my experience is semester long). So in a few cases, people do treat this like a professional program where they want experience first and then for you to apply. That can be a catch-22, you have no experience, so you can't apply anywhere because you have no experience. My advice is to go small and local first. It will be hands on, and much of the time, they're grateful for the help.

 

Exactly. GWU doesn't *require* experience, per se but 90% of my cohort have had several internships, jobs, and volunteer positions even coming directly out of undergrad because they treat it as a professional program, not academic.  I wanted to apply for a job at a state-level institution I interned with in the past and their definition of experience is at 6 months in a position. Until 2nd year of grad school, I had one position where that counted, and not all federal positions will even count part-time or unpaid positions as experience.

My best experience has been with a historic house. I am not a historic house person - I don't have the personality for it - but I had more opportunities to get really good resume builders (full environmental analysis, inventories, entire collections cataloged, exhibits designed and installed, etc) there than at my ideal (size and subject matter-wise) federal internship. Also, they will remember you and will give fantastic recommendations if you do a good job.

[m-ttl]

Exactly. GWU doesn't *require* experience, per se but 90% of my cohort have had several internships, jobs, and volunteer positions even coming directly out of undergrad because they treat it as a professional program, not academic.  I wanted to apply for a job at a state-level institution I interned with in the past and their definition of experience is at 6 months in a position. Until 2nd year of grad school, I had one position where that counted, and not all federal positions will even count part-time or unpaid positions as experience.

My best experience has been with a historic house. I am not a historic house person - I don't have the personality for it - but I had more opportunities to get really good resume builders (full environmental analysis, inventories, entire collections cataloged, exhibits designed and installed, etc) there than at my ideal (size and subject matter-wise) federal internship. Also, they will remember you and will give fantastic recommendations if you do a good job.

 

Agreed. Said friend spent a summer at a local (to her) naval museum doing work with/for them and then applied to her MA at UF. The small history museum gave her tons of experience while everyone else fought over the Smithsonian and other such large museum internships. I had the opportunity at home to choose between an internship with the flagship art museum of my state, or the slightly less well known one in my grandparent's home city. I chose the smaller one, lived at home, and got twice the hands on experience that I would have gotten at the bigger museum. My curator/supervisor was amazing, and I still work with her on research projects. Although I didn't work with the contemporary curator (it's not my area, really) I was still exposed to contemporary work. 

 

Big takeaway advice #1: the best preparation for a career working in a museum is to work in a museum, and the smaller places often need your help more, and can give you a lot of direct skills, even if you don't love the size. Gallery work can also be helpful to an extent - I did a gallery internship and discovered...I don't want to work in a gallery. But I did installation work, I made tombstone labels, catalogued, organized their storage, and got some retail experience while I was at it (great back up job skill, no?). 

 

Getting gallery or museum volunteer work means you just need one person to take a chance on you. 

 

Big takeaway advice #2: I often fondly refer to what I do as "art history plus some". For folks driven to be curators, you'll want a strong research background in art history (like you were saying, take art history classes, prove your mettle, write some stellar papers), and on top of that you need to gain museum experience somehow. You have to do both, otherwise you'll be unprepared for your desired career at the end of a PhD or MA in Art History. I had an ABD TA who lamented that she had never really waded into the museum waters, and by that point she was years behind those who did gain some experience with that. 

[Borden]

My big take away from two stints at my small local museum is that I never want to work in a place where I have to build my own set pieces and do my own painting again, but I also learned how to install site-specific pieces, do lighting, write labels, and make a pretty cheese tray for opening night. It's valuable experience even if you think it's weird and not helpful at the time (artists, btw, should never be allowed to bring dirt and plants from their backyards into the gallery for their pieces because that's how you get ANTS).

[anonymousbequest]

 

Big takeaway advice #2: I often fondly refer to what I do as "art history plus some". For folks driven to be curators, you'll want a strong research background in art history (like you were saying, take art history classes, prove your mettle, write some stellar papers), and on top of that you need to gain museum experience somehow. You have to do both, otherwise you'll be unprepared for your desired career at the end of a PhD or MA in Art History. I had an ABD TA who lamented that she had never really waded into the museum waters, and by that point she was years behind those who did gain some experience with that. 

Not sure about this point.  Just as graduate students are not trained to teach but after earning the PhD are assumed to be able to be profs, the same holds true for curators.  Some grad students may be thrown into TA sections, but there is little or no rigorous pedagogical training, while others may intern or assist on exhibitions but it isn't necessary.  Most of the curators I know had no real museum training, they learned by doing just as profs do.  But they did have advisors who worked in object-based methodologies and generally come from programs like Yale or Delaware which support curatorial ambition.  A good museum on campus, such as at Yale, Harvard, or Williams doesn't hurt either.  It goes without saying that programs with many alum in prominent curatorial positions perhaps trumps the last two points.  It's relatively easy for a curator at a well-funded museum to hire a freshly minted PhD from their school as a research or curatorial assistant to let them get their feet wet, where the same is of course not true for academic jobs.

 

There's a lot of debate about the efficacy of museum studies degrees in general, but especially for curators who are increasingly doing research that requires the skills, knowledge, and context provided by the PhD.  If one wants to become an educator or registrar, the Hopkins online program is supposedly "good" and you get to put Hopkins on the cv without actually having to go to Baltimore or get in to any Hopkins academic program or anything.

Edited March 12, 2014 by anonymousbequest

[m-ttl]

Not sure about this point.  Just as graduate students are not trained to teach but after earning the PhD are assumed to be able to be profs, the same holds true for curators.  Some grad students may be thrown into TA sections, but there is little or no rigorous pedagogical training, while others may intern or assist on exhibitions but it isn't necessary.  Most of the curators I know had no real museum training, they learned by doing just as profs do.  But they did have advisors who worked in object-based methodologies and generally come from programs like Yale or Delaware which support curatorial ambition.  A good museum on campus, such as at Yale, Harvard, or Williams doesn't hurt either.  It goes without saying that programs with many alum in prominent curatorial positions perhaps trumps the last two points.  It's relatively easy for a curator at a well-funded museum to hire a freshly minted PhD from their school as a research or curatorial assistant to let them get their feet wet, where the same is of course not true for academic jobs.

 

There's a lot of debate about the efficacy of museum studies degrees in general, but especially for curators who are increasingly doing research that requires the skills, knowledge, and context provided by the PhD.  If one wants to become an educator or registrar, the Hopkins online program is supposedly "good" and you get to put Hopkins on the cv without actually having to go to Baltimore or get in to any Hopkins academic program or anything.

 

Ah, I think in relative terms, it is harder to start from absolute zero (as said TA would have been doing) than to jump in with background object based methodology. Her complaint was more that she had not really cultivated any museum connections or experience, thus making "breaking in" harder compared to classmates who had the experience already. You could very well be hired with no experience, but if you're the one hiring, would you rather pick the hire with experience, or the one who has none?

 

I don't suggest someone who wants to be a curator do anything other than a PhD in their field -- but for other museum jobs? MAs may suffice in Museum Studies. (I think the large amount of the debate centering around museum studies is that you do learn by doing; my degree is best when it is being rigorous, practical, and applied knowledge. But whether or not people think I need a degree to learn something I could have done in an "apprenticeship" is sort of besides the point -- the degree title itself opens doors and forced me to remain connected with the museum community as a whole.)

 

A quick check of AAM suggests that it's going to be an uphill climb for those who have no experience and want, as you suggest, a Curatorial Assistant position. 

 

 

 

So you obviously either need experience, connections, or both. I think it's fair to say "get experience so you have an edge in getting hired" in this case. There are loads of internal or "incestuous" hires in the museum world. But assuming or betting you'll be one of them is foolhardy before you actually have those connections. Anyone wanting to work in a museum should work in museums so that A.) they know what it's like and so that B.) when you do have those connections that springboard you into a career, your recommenders will be able to enthuse about how awesome you are at doing the things they need you to do. 

 

I believe you when you say some people get hired with no experience. But for the vast majority of people this is not the case unless they are development, marketing, IT, etc -- not curators, registrars, educators. Nowadays starting from zero is the exception to the rule. 

 

All that said, I would never recommend an online Museum studies degree unless you are working full time at a museum while you are taking the degree. 

[Borden]

 

Anyone wanting to work in a museum should work in museums so that A.) they know what it's like and so that B.) when you do have those connections that springboard you into a career, your recommenders will be able to enthuse about how awesome you are at doing the things they need you to do.

 

This is a HUGE part of it, and I'll add- so you know that it is actually what you want to do! We get a LOT of interns who waltz in from their Ivy League/Small Private School thinking that they're going to rocket to the top and go to fancy openings and curate shows, and then they realize that they're going to be someone's research grunt for a decade and that they actually hate reading and writing at the volume that's required of a curator, and drop out of the field. If you want to be a curator, you have to know what you're getting into, and you have to commit to a long period of grunt work.

[anonymousbequest]

This is a HUGE part of it, and I'll add- so you know that it is actually what you want to do! We get a LOT of interns who waltz in from their Ivy League/Small Private School thinking that they're going to rocket to the top and go to fancy openings and curate shows, and then they realize that they're going to be someone's research grunt for a decade and that they actually hate reading and writing at the volume that's required of a curator, and drop out of the field. If you want to be a curator, you have to know what you're getting into, and you have to commit to a long period of grunt work.

Oh I don't know whether the grind is that much different.  Professors are expected to read and write a lot too after all, plus they have to lecture and (shudder) grade undergraduates.  And deal with needy grad advisees, and serve on endless committees. I absolutely do not believe that it takes a decade of grunt work to become a curator who goes to fancy openings and curates their own exhibitions.  You should think of it like making tenure, which takes roughly 7 years.  I think that would be sufficient for a strong curator to move up to a rank with significant responsibility.  And have to put on a cocktail dress or tuxedo from time to time.

 

The advice here isn't bad, it just seems to be written from the perspective of being an intern at a smaller museum, as well as having a bit of a chip on the shoulder about the (very real) class divides in the field (which are even more an issue in the curatorial ranks). It's a narrow band of experience that might not be that of an Ivy League grad student (or those from a select group of non-Ivies like IFA or CUNY) who gets an assistant curator position before filing the diss (some of them might only have a MA from Williams), and there are a lot of those folks out there. And they for the most part deserve the jobs they get because they are smart, approach curatorial problems from interesting methods, can write, are good at research, and are "donor ready", e.g., they can go to fancy events without embarrassing the institution.

 

I would caution that if you do a decade of grunt work at a house museum expecting that experience to lead to a job somewhere better, like the Met or Getty, you likely will be disappointed. Just as professors who start at a small, non grad degree granting school won't likely end up at a top ten R1. And don't resent your "Ivy League/Small Private School" colleagues for getting better jobs faster.  They may be better trained than you, or made smarter choices (and yes perhaps because they were more financially able to, sad to say). Courage grad cafers!

[Borden]

I work at a major museum in a very busy department, that's where my experience with ill-informed interns comes from. I've heard a number of them say, "Well, I didn't know it was so much reading!" because they hadn't been disillusioned about what it actually takes to put on a show or acquire a work of art, and they left the museum track because they realized it wasn't for them.

Edited March 12, 2014 by Borden

[m-ttl]

Oh I don't know whether the grind is that much different.  Professors are expected to read and write a lot too after all, plus they have to lecture and (shudder) grade undergraduates.  And deal with needy grad advisees, and serve on endless committees. I absolutely do not believe that it takes a decade of grunt work to become a curator who goes to fancy openings and curates their own exhibitions.  You should think of it like making tenure, which takes roughly 7 years.  I think that would be sufficient for a strong curator to move up to a rank with significant responsibility.  And have to put on a cocktail dress or tuxedo from time to time.

 

The advice here isn't bad, it just seems to be written from the perspective of being an intern at a smaller museum, as well as having a bit of a chip on the shoulder about the (very real) class divides in the field (which are even more an issue in the curatorial ranks). It's a narrow band of experience that might not be that of an Ivy League grad student (or those from a select group of non-Ivies like IFA or CUNY) who gets an assistant curator position before filing the diss (some of them might only have a MA from Williams), and there are a lot of those folks out there. And they for the most part deserve the jobs they get because they are smart, approach curatorial problems from interesting methods, can write, are good at research, and are "donor ready", e.g., they can go to fancy events without embarrassing the institution.

 

I would caution that if you do a decade of grunt work at a house museum expecting that experience to lead to a job somewhere better, like the Met or Getty, you likely will be disappointed. Just as professors who start at a small, non grad degree granting school won't likely end up at a top ten R1. And don't resent your "Ivy League/Small Private School" colleagues for getting better jobs faster.  They may be better trained than you, or made smarter choices (and yes perhaps because they were more financially able to, sad to say). Courage grad cafers!

 

Well I didn't have a chip on my shoulder until you implied I would embarrass my employers because I didn't spring fully formed from the head of the John Harvard statue.... [ETA: No seriously, why is this continuously brought up? I've admitted to being poor as a valid and legitimate reason for not doing unfunded MAs and recommending to others not to carelessly take on debt, and suddenly everything is about a chip on my shoulder? This is only the third or fourth time someone has implied I'm bitter, angry, resentful, jealous, or have a "chip". I got into my first choice PhD with full funding. I don't have a chip right now. I DO resent the constant micro-aggressions that I am either 1.) Wrong to criticize a classist field  or 2.) All of my opinions are somehow directly tied to and only because of my personal circumstances and that I have no knowledge outside of myself or of the rest of the field, or that I'm somehow uncultured/unmannered. Politely speaking, get it together folks - I have plenty of well to do relatives, and have sufficient "which fork should I use" manners. This is really starting to be insulting by implicating I don't know how to handle myself.] 

 

...I think we need to clarify a few things because there's a few different points going on here. 1.) I can't speak for anyone else, but I haven't only worked at small museums. I've certainly worked at much larger institutions (medium sized, but with large endowments, has collections on loan to the Met, etc) who don't officially take interns because of same-said entitled small LAC kids hoping to boost their resumes and never actually do any work. Obviously this isn't the norm but I have worked there, and I got in because I could be vouched for as someone who would work my ass off. And while I never attended a gala in my time there, I did help organize and attended a high tea and lecture for their donors and the most embarrassing thing I did was spill some of my water on my plate of fresh maracons. 

 

2.) No one is making up the "small museums are great places to get experience" thing out of some sort of class based ideology. This is advice you'll find in virtually every single museum studies book that exists, based on years of experience and hundreds of people in the field. For someone wanting to get their feet wet, a small museum makes a lot of sense because it introduces you to a wide variety of departments because they have less people, so the work is less divisive. I.E. at a small museum, you might only have one person be both the registrar and the curator, or the educator is also the grant writer, whatever. Should you spend 10 years employed at a tiny museum if you want to work at The Getty? No. But a few months interning to gain a wide variety of skills you can apply to your medium sized institution internship, and then your flagship institution or application to the Getty as an employed assistant? Might be worth considering. You can go from small to large in the museum world. But you also have to actively be climbing the ladder. 

 

3.) People with no experience generally do not "deserve" jobs, they are usually just well connected. Let's be clear here: A curatorial job is not one you will do well without any prior experience. Suggesting that a Williams grad has "interesting methods to approach curatorial methods" means you know that they....have learned what curatorial methods are. And they should, if they go to Williams because Williams has local museums and programs. If you know nothing about curatorial practice, museum practice, etc, and get a curatorial job, I do not think I am being petty or resentful by thinking you are probably not really prepared for that job. Those aren't cute side skills you learn, those are major foundational parts of the job.

 

I think somehow you are insisting that all Ivy grads are "better trained" but also may not have experience...? Look, if an Ivy grad is experienced then of course they are better trained. But simply learning at a well respected institution doesn't train you to work in a museum as a curator. You can't simultaneously have zero museum experience and be better trained than someone who does have experience. 

 

Regardless, the thread is for someone looking to break into the field, so all the advice stands. It's best to get experience in order to prepare for what you want to do. 

Edited March 12, 2014 by m-ttl

[Borden]

Building on m-ttl's second point, I got my internship that led to my current job because I had worked two summer internships at my smaller museum, and could point to the insane list of things I'd done there simply because they had a permanent staff of six people and having an intern with an art history/academic background meant they could fob things like research, gallery tours, and label writing off onto me and get on with the things they needed to do to keep the lights on and the doors open. Small museums, whether history, science, art, house, industrial, whatever, can act as fantastic intensives in what museum work is. I hated a lot of the stuff I had to do during those internships- I never want to do fish prints with a group of 30 6-year-olds in hundred degree weather again- but boy oh boy was I prepared when I got here.

 

My internship here was much more focused and narrowly defined, and was brilliant for teaching me all kinds of things that the others hadn't. In my time here it was also clear that I was working with a lot of other kids who had not been prepared, who had been told that their BA from Wherever made them qualified to move up the ranks just by having gone there, or because Uncle Bob has that same Rembrandt print in their hallway at their lake house, and who realized through the internship that they weren't actually interested in this field and re-examined their goals. I've also worked with a lot of kids from Wherever that are brilliant and going places fast, and well-deservedly, but they do it without a sense of entitlement. The big thing is to gain experience so you can either confirm your desire and gain experience, or realize that it's not for you and still have had the experience that can then inform your choices in the future. It's how I look at having TA'd- it was a great experience, but I'm not interested in making a career of teaching in a classroom.

[anonymousbequest]

I apologize that I used "you" when I should have been using "one". I meant it generally and not specifically. And I do feel that I admitted that art history can seem rigged toward those born to privilege, as well as condemned any classist tendencies in the field in my previous post.  But I stand by my assertion that there are many curators who were/are hired after the same limited kind of job "experience" that a TA/Preceptor who becomes a professor might have. Many of them went to top schools where they had rigorous art history training, and no they don't tend to have a sense of entitlement because they love art history and are in it for the intellectual, emotional, psychological feels. It is also perhaps easiest not to act entitled when one is fully a member of the hegemony. They have traveled widely because they were well funded or had means so have seen lots of the key objects in their area personally. They tend to have great networks so when putting together an exhibition can reach out to make calls to figure out which works are available, which aren't. They can learn about conservation from conservators, framing from framers, label writing from educators, acquisitions from their senior curators, donor relations from advancement, design from designers, etc... all on the job.   

 

I don't know much about educators or development or registration, because they aren't nor need to be art historians.  Curatorial and (if desired) directorships are the only museum jobs requiring one to be an art historian. Maybe there should be a separate museum studies sub forum in the Humanities? What every single museum studies book says isn't relevant to any of the jobs posted above except maybe the wonderful, whimsical Shelburne which I can see going to someone who has interned a lot and worked her/his/ze way up. But it's geographically less desirable and Tom Denenberg will I think have his hands full trying to get someone all the way up there for a term position. All the others will go to MAs or PhDs with varying levels of experience, but not a decade long slog as the curator and chief bottle washer at a house museum. The Arizona job is not art history and not curating strictly.

 

The OP's experience in fashion would be good training for a curatorial career.  There's a real art to exhibition design, and it's difficult to learn in grad school. Knowledge of color, texture, fabric, lighting all would come in handy. I would suggest as others did, to take some post-bac classes in art history until you are ready to apply for a straight MA or PhD (and know your heart is in art history and grad school).

[m-ttl]

....When were these people even hired? I don't know anyone hired in the last twenty years without an internship or fellowship of some kind under their belt to be a curator (even an assistant!). Look, I don't know how much more blunt any of us can be about this - that's not what the job market is like right now. A TA or Preceptor job is not like an internship for a museum in the amount of work you do. It's not usually a "limited experience" job. Do you honestly believe an entire museum of people busy trying to do their own jobs would jump for joy at the opportunity to baby a new curatorial hire into doing things as simple as label writing??? Expecting everyone to lay down their full time jobs to teach you how to do yours step by step is an entitlement. 

 

No one is saying "take a decade long slog at a house museum". People are saying a brief internship at a small museum can be helpful for teaching you how to do things you should ALREADY know by the time you're an assistant curator. Things that, yes, are covered in those very same museum studies books. I've dealt with cleaning up after the shoddy messes fellow art historians have made with zero museological/exhibitions training before -- let me tell you how upset the curator of special collections was because they PACKING TAPED matted printed into frames. I had to remove the tape from all the frames and mats and then re-do an entire exhibition because they were too ignorant to know how to do it properly. I also was the one to print and cut their labels (and I edited their un-spellchecked errors as well), and I hung everything because they didn't do it right the first time. They were good art historians, but terrible curators, often leaving out valuable items that needed to be in climate controlled environments for long stretches of time until the curator noticed and had a fit. 

 

Just about the only thing we can agree on is the OP's experience is already a good starting point. 

Edited March 13, 2014 by m-ttl

[GreenePony]

No one is saying "take a decade long slog at a house museum". People are saying a brief internship at a small museum can be helpful for teaching you how to do things you should ALREADY know by the time you're an assistant curator. Things that, yes, are covered in those very same museum studies books. I've dealt with cleaning up after the shoddy messes fellow art historians have made with zero museological/exhibitions training before -- let me tell you how upset the curator of special collections was because they PACKING TAPED matted printed into frames. I had to remove the tape from all the frames and mats and then re-do an entire exhibition because they were too ignorant to know how to do it properly. I also was the one to print and cut their labels (and I edited their un-spellchecked errors as well), and I hung everything because they didn't do it right the first time. They were good art historians, but terrible curators, often leaving out valuable items that needed to be in climate controlled environments for long stretches of time until the curator noticed and had a fit.

Please tell me they at least tabbed the tape (but considering they though packing tape was acceptable, I'm going to assume not)

Personally, I'm a huge fan of every museum staffer going through at least a basic museology/collections care course (first internship we spent a day teaching the curators how to properly handle objects with gloves and not to use nail polish to number the objects)

[Borden]

 

(first internship we spent a day teaching the curators how to properly handle objects with gloves and not to use nail polish to number the objects)

 

Oh god, you're giving me the vapors just thinking about this happening. We aren't even supposed to wear nail polish in case we might have to handle art.

[anonymousbequest]

....When were these people even hired? I don't know anyone hired in the last twenty years without an internship or fellowship of some kind under their belt to be a curator (even an assistant!). Look, I don't know how much more blunt any of us can be about this - that's not what the job market is like right now. 

 

No one is saying "take a decade long slog at a house museum". People are saying a brief internship at a small museum can be helpful for teaching you how to do things you should ALREADY know by the time you're an assistant curator. Things that, yes, are covered in those very same museum studies books. I've dealt with cleaning up after the shoddy messes fellow art historians have made with zero museological/exhibitions training before -- let me tell you how upset the curator of special collections was because they PACKING TAPED matted printed into frames. I had to remove the tape from all the frames and mats and then re-do an entire exhibition because they were too ignorant to know how to do it properly. I also was the one to print and cut their labels (and I edited their un-spellchecked errors as well), and I hung everything because they didn't do it right the first time. They were good art historians, but terrible curators, often leaving out valuable items that needed to be in climate controlled environments for long stretches of time until the curator noticed and had a fit. 

 

I guess we will have to just disagree.  I can think of a handful of folks hired at solid national and regional museums in the past 5 years with the kind of limited experience I mentioned, most with PhDs or MAs from just a few schools. People I know personally. But you don't know any. We know different people. I have also never been in a situation where "art historian" curators have matted or framed work, put nail polish on stuff (which I think used to be a common way to identify 3-d works, one sees it in archeology, dec arts, and natural history contexts, maybe those curators mentioned by the other poster are from a different generation) or fabricated their own labels.  Or where labels aren't collaborative and reviewed by more than one department, not to mention been proofed by a copy editor. Typically, at mid-sized and up institutions, on-staff framers do framing, or perhaps preparators.  Labels are made by communications, preparators, or the design team.  And registrars are on hand to supervise the movement of art work so that climate and light levels are maintained.  All of the above jobs are important and rewarding, but they are not curatorial. Nor should they be, because curators are doing the kind of research and scholarship they are trained best to do.  Asking them to use the scary mat cutter would be like asking the preparator to write a catalogue essay.  Each might be able to do it but not to their best, or best for the institution.  Maybe we just have experience with museums of different size, programming, budget, and endowment.  You made the point that there are perhaps more museum jobs out there for the taking than academic, which I agree with (there are like a half-dozen open searches in my field right now). There are also a lot of different kinds of museums, which grad students and prospective grad students reading this thread have a bit more info about due to this discussion.

[m-ttl]

I guess we will have to just disagree.  I can think of a handful of folks hired at solid national and regional museums in the past 5 years with the kind of limited experience I mentioned, most with PhDs or MAs from just a few schools. People I know personally. But you don't know any. We know different people. I have also never been in a situation where "art historian" curators have matted or framed work, put nail polish on stuff (which I think used to be a common way to identify 3-d works, one sees it in archeology, dec arts, and natural history contexts, maybe those curators mentioned by the other poster are from a different generation) or fabricated their own labels.  Or where labels aren't collaborative and reviewed by more than one department, not to mention been proofed by a copy editor. Typically, at mid-sized and up institutions, on-staff framers do framing, or perhaps preparators.  Labels are made by communications, preparators, or the design team.  And registrars are on hand to supervise the movement of art work so that climate and light levels are maintained.  All of the above jobs are important and rewarding, but they are not curatorial. Nor should they be, because curators are doing the kind of research and scholarship they are trained best to do.  Asking them to use the scary mat cutter would be like asking the preparator to write a catalogue essay.  Each might be able to do it but not to their best, or best for the institution.  Maybe we just have experience with museums of different size, programming, budget, and endowment.  You made the point that there are perhaps more museum jobs out there for the taking than academic, which I agree with (there are like a half-dozen open searches in my field right now). There are also a lot of different kinds of museums, which grad students and prospective grad students reading this thread have a bit more info about due to this discussion.

 

"Limited experience" is not "no experience" which is what I have been saying this whole time. ...Are you confused about that part? My initial example was someone who had NO experience whatsoever with museums saying she was unprepared to work in one as an ABD. You began to contest me on that point. That with no experience, she could still be hired. 

 

Obviously my example was one of student art historians using a university collection -- but still a real and exasperating mess because they didn't bother to ask how to do it properly. No one is saying curators are registrars, preparators, etc. No one is even saying that those jobs are curatorial. What we ARE saying is that it's absurd and entitled to start off by saying: "People debate the value of a museum studies degree" and then follow that up with, "But the registrar should teach the curator how to properly accession things, or use the database, and the educator should teach the curator how to write a label, and the grant writer should teach the curator how to write a grant for a museum..." That is miles away from collaborative work: the curator writes a label draft, shoots it to the educator, they reach a happy medium and it gets sent to the copy editor. 

 

You continue to insinuate that I have not worked in extremely well-endowed institutions (I have), and that I just "don't know" how this works. Both Borden and I have stated we've worked in larger endowed institutions, and we still have this experience to speak from. Yes, many curators have preparators on hand, and many have the registrar team around to check up on humidity levels -- but do you honestly think curators themselves never avail themselves to enter the collections areas and handle works? That they never have to pick a paint chip and debate how something should be hung? Even at a place with preparators, I still helped a curator do walkthroughs the space, recommend layouts and hangings, estimate the proper amount of space between paintings/objects, and analyze the flow of the room -- all this after the weeks of academic research and readings. We did spot checks of the labels before they got sent off to the design folks, we make sure the preparators do what we want, etc. If you, as a curator, want to work collaboratively with your museum team you should "probably" (and I mean definitely) learn their basic trade and pick up a general museum studies book so you understand how everyone else is working and where they're coming from. 

 

I'm not saying mat something yourself if you're in a massive institution and unable to do so, but you should probably know how it's done. 

 

Regardless, at this point I feel like we're having two different conversations, one where I say: "Look this is how you break in without knowing what you want to do yet, be it curator or something else, because you need experience and that's what you're looking to do, boost your application." and one where you defend the Ivy league unnecessarily (from what??) and continue to argue as if no experience = some experience, actually. 

[GreenePony]

Oh god, you're giving me the vapors just thinking about this happening. We aren't even supposed to wear nail polish in case we might have to handle art.

"It's a clear gel, isn't that what B-72/67 is?" No. No it's not.

[Swagato]

Of possible interest (probably old news by now).

 

http://press.moma.org/2013/09/museum-research-consortium-announcement/

[cleisthenes]

I guess we will have to just disagree.  I can think of a handful of folks hired at solid national and regional museums in the past 5 years with the kind of limited experience I mentioned, most with PhDs or MAs from just a few schools. People I know personally. But you don't know any. We know different people. I have also never been in a situation where "art historian" curators have matted or framed work, put nail polish on stuff (which I think used to be a common way to identify 3-d works, one sees it in archeology, dec arts, and natural history contexts, maybe those curators mentioned by the other poster are from a different generation) or fabricated their own labels.  Or where labels aren't collaborative and reviewed by more than one department, not to mention been proofed by a copy editor. Typically, at mid-sized and up institutions, on-staff framers do framing, or perhaps preparators.  Labels are made by communications, preparators, or the design team.  And registrars are on hand to supervise the movement of art work so that climate and light levels are maintained.  All of the above jobs are important and rewarding, but they are not curatorial. Nor should they be, because curators are doing the kind of research and scholarship they are trained best to do.  Asking them to use the scary mat cutter would be like asking the preparator to write a catalogue essay.  Each might be able to do it but not to their best, or best for the institution.  Maybe we just have experience with museums of different size, programming, budget, and endowment.  You made the point that there are perhaps more museum jobs out there for the taking than academic, which I agree with (there are like a half-dozen open searches in my field right now). There are also a lot of different kinds of museums, which grad students and prospective grad students reading this thread have a bit more info about due to this discussion.

 

I have to agree with this assessment.  Sure, at very small institutions, curators might fulfill a wider set of roles.  But at any of the top institutions with major collections or exhibitions programs, curatorial work is much more about art-historical training (meaning writing and research) than with the practicalities of museology.  The one exception I would give is for conservation.  In my field (contemporary) it is increasingly important to understand the very complex issues surrounding the conservation of contemporary art, which includes things like performance.  This does not, however, extend to an understanding of how labels are fabricated.   And I too know of several curators hired straight out of grad school, without the PhD, with only limited fellowship experience and little-to-no actual job experience in the museum world.  Publications, however, are another story, and diss is probably the most important thing of all.