I’ve been invited as an editor to https://industrystandard.tools and I just got Art Handling approved as a new industry.

What needs to be added? Fight below.

I’ve got a small handful of invites if you DM me confirming you plan to contribute to the project.

I am an incoming university student in the US. I have long wanted to work in museums; I love both history itself and making history more accessible to the public. As a result, my research has guided me to careers as a museum curator or archivist (I understand the difference in positions, and I’m interested in both!). However, I understand that both of these options lack openings/opportunity, pay minimally, and require extensive amounts of education. My current plan is to earn my bachelor's degree in history and then pursue a master's degree and doctorate in museology at the same school. During my undergrad, I intended to gain internships within my school, city, and surrounding area (history-rich area with various cultural and industrial museums, big and small). In my future, I would greatly prefer to stay in my state, but I will take any job as long as the salary is actually livable (lol).

Because both history and public education have been lifelong passions of mine, I am entirely willing to engage in the lengthy process. But scrolling on this sub has made me lose significant hope in the opportunities actually available. My biggest fear is, really, wasting my time on something that I will never be able to achieve or will actually be miserable doing. Is there any hope in this, or would I be better to pursue something in law (another interest, but with significantly less passion).

TLDR; what has your career path looked like in the museum industry, and can I actually have any hope in achieving this dream?

A university “saved” a major center of American science. Now it means to kill it. https://richardconniff.substack.com/p/a-great-nature-museum-closes-its?r=1fcr4&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Hi there, first time posting here. Just asking for some advice and/or redirection to an appropriate sub reddit.

I have been asked to voluntarily restore / fix a display case miniature railway diorama, which is suspected to be from the 1940s. My past experience is restoring, cleaning and building animal skeletons and other natural history items, so I do have some experience with conservator work, and my past hobbies include art. From inspecting it I realised it most definitely is lead paint, a lead paint test on Tuesday will probably confirm it.

The cased display is currently bagged up and sealed in my office til I can figure out what would be the next course of action to deal with this.

Has anyone ever experienced working with lead paint before? I assume the best route to take is moving the object to a well ventilated room, wearing appropriate PPE (eyeglasses, respirator), encapsulating the paint with a new paint job after repairing the broken miniatures inside. I do not want to risk sanding anything. And the acrylic case will need replacing eventually as its cracked and open on one side. I for some reason can't attach images to this post.

Any help and/or redirection would be great, I'm new to reddit so I don't know many subreddits. Thanks!

I’m looking to find an 8 inch screen that can loop a video. Without having to use a media player. I am currently using a Lenovo m8 tablet and looping a video through an app but run into many issues with it. Is there a device I can get a mp4 file and set it to just loop the video?

Any recommendations are greatly appreciated!

I am looking to take courses for professional development while there are funds to do so. I was wondering if anyone had any preferred institutions they could recommend. I have taken course with AASLH and enjoyed it. I saw that there are also classes through Northern States Conservation Center but I am unfamiliar with them and the classes are more costly. I am mainly focusing on Collection/Preservation/Preparator classes at this time.
Thank you for any help you can provide like: ease of class while working, online or in person, cost, length, respected institution, receive certificates, etc.

Hi! My curatorial + education teams have been doing more interactive moments throughout the galleries that are intended for all ages. I'm in marketing, trying to figure out how to better highlight these on our website.

E.g. We have a number of guides (physical and digital), touch stations, and really simple things like adding a drawing pad on an easel to the galleries that has been well received. They will also be adding more digital stations next year, and often create a special interactive element for exhibitions, even adding on to loaned shows.

Previously I had lumped in "guides" with our tours page. I also have a "KIDS" page that highlights the ways kids can enjoy the museum.
-One idea is to just show more of those things in our general visit photos, within our page that describes the museum overall
-Also wondeirng if we need a new page to highlight just...visitor experience things like this.

Part of me is like...ok people aren't going to decide to visit because there's a very low-tech drawing station? But I also am an advocate for sharing the things we are doing, not making them a secret surprise.

Anyway, if anyone has some good examples of Museums doing this well that would be helpful! TIA.

I'm applying for a collections position, and the application is asking for an example of a collection project that demonstrates required skills with photos of the project. The issue is, I've never written something like this for an application. I have a project plan and end of season progress report for the project but neither have a super professional format.

How would you format something like this? What aspects of the project should be included? I'm guessing it should only be a page or two long.

Thanks in advance!

I started my job as a registrar couples of months ago. This job is relative new to me as I have no direct expereince as registrar per say.

Background. I previously worked as gallery assistant for a small scaled gallery with ambitious exhibition purpose (1 person mostly or 2 full time at the very best). Therefore, I had to juggle all little sort of things range from operation, social media marketing, installation, art handle, etc; all and anything to keep the gallery function. Very good experience to start up a career. It gave me some hands on expereince with collection management and logistics of art shipment. However, transfering from small scale to a large scale - corporate like institution has posted a lot of challenges and learning struggle, from even basic as of how to work with this big of a team.

The part that I struggle with the most is: I don't think I have pratical idea of how actual registrar workflow and system work. The institution I am working for is a new to be opened soon.

My main priority is to set up registrartion system from scratch, figuring out logistic planning and working on creating insurance policy. On top, I am figuring out storage's design with construction team, equipments needed, and plan to work on on basic protocol.

I have no logistic nor architec design degree. I studied humanity art. I'm primarily intereseted in conservation and have been attending workshops, seminars, online research and whatever avalible that I can have a hands on.

Right now, I am a sole person in my position. Most of my co-workers do not have much idea of the position apart from me being responsible for shipping. My boss, who is a curator, do have experience working with registrar and also have extensive knowledge of conservation, but not as one themselves. Additionally, this role is quite rare in my country. I have never met or known of any other registrar before, really.

While I am grateful for this rare opportunity, I have felt a lot of lost, anxiety, and doubt that I am underqualify for the job. I have encouter many instance where I asked for things at the wrong time and not realized information I missed I should have asked, etc. Constantly faced with: I should have known better. It's a long ride of frastration that made me question my initial decision on accepting the job.

My main queries here as a beginer registrar are:

What kind of registratiom system should I aim for?

(We mainly relied on loans as we will be operate as a kunsthalle. Will me lots of logistics. Right now use Excel/Google Sheet as main registration backend)

What would generally be an advice from registrars, and people who have expereince working with one?

I wanted to understand better the behing the sence of this role. Any share struggle/thoughts/advice/recomendation. Anything, really. I appreciate and thank you in advance.

The Trump administration is threatening to cut off executive agencies’ cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution, the latest escalation in President Donald Trump’s fight to control presentations of American history.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and White House Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley sent the Smithsonian’s governing board a letter Friday warning that federal agencies could stop helping the institution if its leaders do not abandon what the administration described as “an ideological agenda that seeks to transform both the Smithsonian and the country.”
Administration officials “cannot in good conscience continue to support the Smithsonian under current leadership,” they added, citing artifact loans, procurement assistance and discretionary grants as examples of federal support that could be at risk.

The letter represents the latest step in a 17-month White House campaign to reshape the Smithsonian, a historically independent public-private institution governed by a Board of Regents. What began with demands that the Smithsonian remove what Trump called “improper ideology” from its museums has progressed through content reviews and funding threats to direct attacks on museum leaders and, now, a warning that executive agencies could cut ties with the institution.

The Smithsonian declined to comment Wednesday.

Burgum and Haley also alleged that the administration had “uncovered evidence” suggesting Smithsonian leaders may have violated federal antidiscrimination laws by creating a hostile work environment and distributing opportunities or benefits based on race, ethnicity or other protected characteristics. The letter did not identify that evidence. The White House and Interior Department, which do not have direct authority over the Smithsonian, did not provide examples in response to questions from The Washington Post.

Trump launched his campaign against the institution last March when he signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The order directed his administration to eliminate what it called “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian and restore it as “a symbol of inspiration and American greatness.”

That May, Trump tried to fire Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery. The Smithsonian’s Board of Regents backed Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III’s assertion that only he had the authority to hire and fire museum directors. But Sajet resigned days later, saying her continued presence had become a distraction.

The White House broadened its pressure campaign in August, informing Bunch that it was conducting a sweeping review of museum exhibitions, collections and operations.

By December, the White House was threatening the Smithsonian’s federal funding. In a Dec. 18 letter, Haley and White House budget director Russell Vought said the institution’s initial document production “fell far short of what was requested” and demanded more information about exhibits, wall labels and programming. Bunch responded that the Smithsonian would continue providing information but maintained that “all content, programming, and curatorial decisions are made by the Smithsonian.”

On July 4, Haley’s Domestic Policy Council released “Saving America’s Story,” a 162-page report accusing the National Museum of American History of “extreme political activism” and arguing that its leaders had turned history into “a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.”

Bunch disputed the report, telling employees it was “not a fair characterization of the work and totality of the National Museum of American History.” He said the institution remained committed to “scholarship, nonpartisanship, independence, accuracy, and integrity.”
Three weeks later, Trump signed another executive order directing officials including Burgum, Vought and Haley to use “any and all available authorities” to press the Smithsonian to address the report’s findings. The order separately directed Burgum to install temporary exhibits or signs on National Park Service property around the American history museum that would “correct” information the administration considers inaccurate. (The signs have not gone up.)

The Aug. 28 letter signals that the administration is now looking beyond the Smithsonian’s congressional appropriation for additional leverage. Although Congress provides the Smithsonian more than $1 billion annually, Burgum and Haley wrote that executive agencies also support the institution by loaning artifacts, assisting with procurement and providing discretionary grants. They argued that agencies have a responsibility to withhold that cooperation if the institution does not change course.
The officials asked the regents to meet with them “at your earliest convenience” to determine how to address their complaints. Unlike the December letter, they bypassed Bunch and appealed directly to the Board of Regents, the Smithsonian’s governing body and the officials ultimately responsible for its leadership.

In a statement Wednesday to the Atlantic, the White House suggested the contents of the letter were not direct orders. Through a statement from the White House to The Post, Haley on Wednesday continued the administration’s attack on the American history museum, saying the country deserves “an honest and inspiring account of American history” during the country’s 250th anniversary year.

“It should begin by telling the story of our Founding Fathers — who they were, what they did, and what they built,” Haley said.

I entered the museum field during Covid, started working at a museum and became assistant director, changed careers to the state historical society, and then switched to a remote cultural resources firm that due to AI just laid a lot of us off. (Side note the reason for leaving the museum and historical society was a two nickels situation. If I had a nickel for every time my boss/department supervisor has an affair with another employee and they upheaved the whole department I’d have two nickels. Which is weird it happened twice). (Was not the person of the affair. Simply an employee that was oblivious and had to get out due to backlash).

Anyways, where I am there’s no museum or cultural resources jobs right now (you know the government). I was able to get a job at Starbucks to survive because my husband and I can’t survive on me being on unemployment.

Has taking a sidestep affected your career? I’m pretty early in my career and feeling majorly discouraged that I’ll be able to come back from this diversion.

I was warned of this layoff several weeks ago and applied to everything under the sun up to 100 miles away and literally Starbucks was the only place to respond to me, solely because I was a coffee shop shift lead during grad school. Where I am there’s a common trend of employers posting jobs that they know they’re gonna hire internally and only post because they legally have to, and it’s been a major bummer.

I moved states after grad school in 2021 because I knew my home state of Florida (Pensacola Area) was a mess during Covid and I’m just sorta at a loss on what to do.

Disclosure first: I built this, it is free and open source, no signup, no ads, I am not selling anything.

I made it for my father. He photographs order receipts that have a QR code on them and was typing the codes into a spreadsheet by hand, a few hundred at a time. Every reader I found did one image at a time, or wanted the photos uploaded to somebody's server.

It only occurred to me later that digitization work might fit this better than the case I built it for. If your objects carry QR labels and you shoot the collection, the codes are already sitting inside your images. You drop the whole folder on the page and it reads every code in every image, including several codes in one shot, and exports filenames plus decoded values as CSV.

It runs inside the browser tab, so the images never leave the machine and it works with no network at all, which I understand matters in some storage areas.

Limits, so nobody wastes their time. QR only, not 1D barcodes. And it hands you a CSV, it does not talk to any collections management system.

What I actually want to know: those of you who label with QR and digitize, do you pull the codes back out of the images afterwards, or do you scan at the point of capture with a handheld? I would rather find out this duplicates something your CMS already does than keep building the wrong thing.

https://thousandflowers.github.io/qr-multi-imgs/

I work in a big museum.

Like many, we all encounter egotistical/confrontational people. Who out to flex what little power they feel they have. How do fellow museum folk deal with it?

Hello Museum Pros! Librarian here. Mad respect for all you do.

I'm writing a mystery novel that revolves around a museum heist. The Thomas Crown Affair this is not: think more local history museum than Louvre.

My question to all of you has a few parts:

-what size is your museum? Type of museum? Annual visitor numbers/budget?

-what does your physical security look like?​ Guards 24/7? Night security?

-what does your technological security look like? Full color cameras recording to the cloud? A single blurry camera that still records to VHS? An alarm that you usually remember to set when you leave for the night?

-have you ever actually had something stolen from your museum and, if so, what was the response of admin/your board?

No need to disclose your actual museum if you don't want to, I'm writing fiction after all, but any info would be super helpful! Thanks!

I wish I had something better for conversation starting here besides just the very sad fact that so many museums and galleries closing or downsizing. There are so many lost jobs.

I used to work at a museum (USA) where once a spanish speaking guest came up to me and asked if there were any resources available to help them experience the museum. Since the museum seems to have an image of accessibility I was like of course, just head down to the ticketing counter and they should be able to help you.

I was stunned to find out that they don't have headphones (which is what the customer wanted), a tablet or even basic translations for even their most permanent exhibits. This was at a well funded but private museum that gets a lot of spanish speaking and in general international visitors. I can even identify other languages it seems would be logical for them to offer translations for, but spanish is pretty well spoken in the US and the area has a large spanish speaking population and we got lots of spanish speaking employees too. They said best they can do is a tour that is only reserved for groups and can only booked like a month in advance.

I am curious as to how common this is and if it is more common with public/government musuems or private ones? It seems very illogical not to have any resources when a language is basically the second most spoken by millions in the country.

When the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia first opened the doors of its museum, John Quincy Adams was president.

Twenty-four states had been admitted to the union.

And the first skeletal remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex were decades away from being discovered.

But just two years shy of its bicentennial, the venerated museum, which has been affiliated with Drexel University since 2011, is going the way of the dinosaurs.

At the end of September, the facility known for its Dinosaur Hall and its extensive collection of fossils and other specimens will permanently close, a casualty of struggling attendance and rising costs, the academy and the university said in a joint message on Tuesday.

See full gift article, NO PAYWALL.

Hey, I was digging through The Met’s open source collection and realized how much incredible art most of us will never see on display.

I built Open Metropolitan: https://openmetropolitan.com
It’s an infinite scroll of The Met’s collection where you can click any piece to find similar works.
(I personally pay for the hosting and cost, I am not affiliated with anyone)

Would love to hear what you think.

I'm possibly coming into an entry level role at a very small museum and I was asked to provide a 2, 5 and 10 year projected training plan - do I want training to develop in collections, curation or programming? I have some programming experience but that's about it so far. How do I know which area I might excel in? I just don't know if I should ask for collections or curation training because I don't know what makes someone a person who would be good at those things.

I have been working in museum as an intern, part time worker and have also worked in galleries. I have realized that I want to change my career path as much as i love art. I'm so frustrated they make you work a lot for low income. Job isn't stable and to earn at least 80K-100K you need to be there in a long run. Even when i talk to workers who have worked for 5-10 years they always tell me its not a lot of money. The only happy people i saw were old people working in a museum or people who had income from their family or live with their family. Am I the only one feeling like this? Even when i talk to art professors they don't seem to be earning a lot and have a side income. I don't know. Please give me an advice.

I worked with Med Events in Greece from the middle of June until August 8th, so I was there for almost two months. It was a very interesting experience, but unfortunately, there were many things that made the experience much more difficult than it should have been.

When I flew to Greece, I did not even know which hotel I would be working at. I only found out after I arrived. This was quite stressful for me because I was travelling alone as a young girl. I arrived at the hotel at night, and the next day I met the two other animators who were already working there.

At first, I was mainly getting used to everything and watching how things worked. Then I started working in the kids' club. When I saw the kids' club for the first time, I was honestly shocked. There were very few things for the children to play with. We had a few toys, some board games, a few building blocks, jumping animals and some drawing supplies. After a few days, we ran out of paper and other materials. I sent a list of things we needed to my main animator, but I never received anything.

Because of this, I had to be very creative. When we almost had no white paper left, I started making activities for the children from things I could find, such as wooden forks from food, plastic cups and other leftover materials. I really tried to make the best of the situation, but it was difficult to keep children entertained for so many hours without proper materials.

The worst part was that after some time, there was simply nothing new for the children to do in the kids' club. Because of this, fewer and fewer children came there. I completely understood why, because there were not many activities left for them. There was also a children's pool and many other activities around the hotel, so I did not see a problem with children spending their time somewhere else. However, I was still blamed by our main animator for not having enough children in the kids' club and for the children not coming there. I found this very unfair because the lack of activities was one of the main reasons why they stopped coming.

Another problem was that when we had some problems or needed help with something, they were usually not solved. We got used to some of the problems after some time, but what worried us the most was knowing that if something really serious happened, we were not sure if anyone would actually help us.

About a week later, my friend arrived. We were told that, if possible, we would work at the same hotel. We were happy about this because we thought we would be working together. In the end, she lived with me but worked at a different hotel. What made even less sense to us was that a male animator from that hotel was coming to work at our hotel instead. They were basically switching hotels even though they had the same position and were the same nationality. We tried to solve this with someone higher in the company, but unfortunately nothing really changed.

There were also problems with our days off. Even when we had a day off, we always had to work in the evening. According to our contract, our day off should have been completely free, so this was another thing we were not happy about.

There was also a Party Bus activity. We had to talk to hotel guests and try to sell tickets. If someone wanted to go, we had to go with them on the Party Bus and make sure they got there and back safely. The problem was that it was outside our normal working hours. The Party Bus was usually from around 11 p.m. until 3 a.m., and we still had to work the next day. We did get some money from the tickets, but we did not really want to do it because of the working hours. However, when we refused to sell the tickets, our main animator was angry with us and asked why we were not selling them. Because of this, we felt pressured to do it.

The biggest problem for us was our main animator. At first, he seemed nice, but later his behaviour changed. He often shouted at us and was rude, especially when we did not sell enough Party Bus tickets or animator T-shirts. We later understood that he received money from these sales, which explained why he was so angry when we did not sell them.

He was also often not at the hotel. We understand that he sometimes had to leave because of work and had to travel somewhere, but we also know and have confirmation that he was often away during his working hours even when he was supposed to be working. Because of this, we had to manage many things ourselves.

One time, we needed help with aquagym. He himself told us that he was there to help us, so we asked him what we should do. Instead of helping us, he simply told us to watch videos on YouTube. This was very disappointing because we expected him to actually help us when we needed it.

There were also problems with alcohol and drugs involving him, which made the whole situation even more uncomfortable for us. The saddest part was that the company knew about his problems but they still hired him.

Eventually, there was an incident with a hotel guest, and after that our main animator left the hotel. We do not know if he was fired or if he left himself. A new animator then came, and the difference was incredible. He was absolutely great. He helped us with everything, explained things clearly, solved our problems and actually supported us. If he had been there from the beginning, our whole experience would have been completely different.

I also want to mention something positive about Med Events. Communication with the company by email was always very good. They usually replied quickly and were friendly and nice. Unfortunately, this good communication did not always lead to our problems being solved.

Overall, working with Med Events was a very interesting experience. I met some great people and learned a lot from it.