How to Get a Job in a Museum Or Art Gallery - By Alison Baverstock Page 0,3

thoughts in the presence of masterpieces. It’s a job with a high level of kudos.

‘I was responsible for the day-to-day running of the books section in the huge Level 1 shop at Tate Modern. The fundamentals of bookselling are the same in any venue. What was different was how other people responded when I said I worked there. Tate Modern was recently identified as one of the 10 coolest brands in the UK, and friends with teenagers would tell me it was the one cultural venue they would willingly enter. I must admit I enjoyed the associated cachet.’

JANE CHOLMELEY

Why not to work in a museum or gallery

It’s a good idea too to think about the frustrations of working in a gallery or museum. If any of the following strike a chord with you, you may find this a less than satisfactory choice of career.

1. Reciprocity may not appeal

At university, did you enjoy group work? Or did you find it aggravating to hear your ideas developed and even purloined by others? At school, were you able to work with a group of people you did not particularly like, in order to achieve a pre-determined goal, or did you prefer just to get on with it and do it on your own?

Working in a gallery or museum requires collaboration and teamwork. Frankly, if you do not enjoy this, or find yourself anxious to hang on to your specific contribution and have it fully acknowledged as such, then think carefully about choosing a such a career.

2. Is it your role in life to educate others?

‘During a work experience placement our whole company, which only consisted of 15 people, was taken out to lunch in a local Italian restaurant. I was asked to go too. When we arrived there was a lot of giggling about a wall painting, and how you could see “all the man’s bits”. When I went over to have a look at what they were talking about, it turned out that the image was the world famous image from the Sistine ceiling, of God touching Adam.’

PUBLISHER

The sheer scale of the public’s lack of awareness can be daunting – their lack of knowledge about things you think you have always known (although you must have acquired the information at some stage too). Being honest, if this makes you wonder at their level of ignorance rather than feel motivated to try and make the case for their involvement, or at least tolerate what they are deriding, then think carefully about a career in museums and galleries. You will be confronted by ignorance all the time, and rather than trumping them with your knowledge and seeing their impressed reaction, it’s far more likely that you will be met with a bemused stare and confusion about why on earth you care.

This can become a particularly sensitive issue when you discover this lack of knowledge is located in those you cannot ignore. Working in a gallery or museum will require you to deal with bureaucrats who don’t esteem what you do, but who do control access to funding. You need to make links with them, patiently explore areas of common ground (perhaps your desire to put on an exhibition, theirs to see the local borough featured as a place of innovation and prestige) and tactfully maintain the relationship. You will need to become an effective communicator to defend the value of your work, making a bridge between it and those who think it is a complete waste of money, time and effort.

If you have never been exposed to this, here are two short exercises for you to experiment with:

• try explaining the value of modern art to a sceptical relative – using the example of the most recent winner of the Turner Prize is usually sufficient challenge;

• justify why museum staff should be funded by the public purse when they are so isolated from the real world.

3. Being distracted from your main work

On a daily basis you will be interrupted constantly. You will have to juggle lots of priorities, rather than just getting on with the cataloguing you had imagined would be your role for that day. And many of the people who distract you with questions will be dissatisfied with the response you are able to give them – members of the public might want to know the value of something they have had in the attic for ages, but have no interest in its date or provenance (and you are not allowed to