Careers in Museums

Museums employ people from a wide range of disciplines. Some typical museum positions are described briefly below.

At the University of Michigan, students who are interested in a museum career may explore the U-M’s Museum Studies Program.

This information was excerpted from the Museums Career page of the Smithsonian Institution’s website.

Links have also been provided at the bottom of the page to information about national and international museum studies programs and to current job listings in museums throughout the country.

Curator

A Curator is a specialist in an academic discipline relevant to the museum’s collection who is responsible for the care and interpretation of the objects, materials, and specimens belonging to or lent to the museum. They make recommendations for acquisitions and de-accessions, perform research to identify the provenance (history) of the objects in the collection, and publish monographs, books, and other materials based on their research. Curators also originate exhibition ideas and manage their development.

Educator

The museum Educator develops, implements, and evaluates the museum’s educational programs with the goal of facilitating the understanding and interpretation of the institution’s exhibitions, collections, and other resources.

Registrar

Registrars are responsible for organizing and maintaining the records of the objects or specimens in a collection.

Conservator

A Conservator is responsible for evaluating the condition of objects, and for treating and repairing them to prevent deterioration. This has become a very technology-driven field, involving state-of-the-art imaging equipment and analytical tools.

Exhibition Designer / Specialists

Exhibition Designers work from themes developed by Curators to best present the contents of an exhibition to the public.

Publications—Editor /Writer

Editors/Writers oversee the development and production of printed material, including exhibition labels, brochures, and catalogs. Increasingly editors/writers must manage websites and multimedia content.

Museum Technicians / Museum Specialists

Museum Technicians work closely with curators and collection managers to research objects in the collection, assist scholars using the collection, and answer public inquiries.

Development Officer

Development Officers raise money from individuals, corporations, and foundations to support the museum's programmatic activities or capital projects.

Museum Job Listing Websites

For museum studies programs, national and international:

• The Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies web page titled Training Program Web Sites Directory: Museum Studies, Historic Preservation, Public History and Nonprofit Management

For current museum job listings, please see the following web pages:

• AAM Museum Careers
• Global Museum

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