The Storytellers
A primitive theory about why collections care professionals do not comprise many upper management positions in museums.
The persistent trend of curators filling director positions at museums continues to puzzle me. I ask myself why they would want to take themselves further away from the objects and the exhibitions that foster the intellectual curiosity so fundamental to the job. That, however, is a personal decision to which I cannot speak.
On the other hand, we could ask the more objective question, why do boards believe that someone who conceived exhibitions, built collections, and penned texts qualifies to run an organization at all?
In my mind, collections managers and registrars – operations-oriented professionals – with a history of managing projects, organizing diverse staff, and maintaining project budgets better fits an upper administration role. However, in general, we lack collections professionals in those jobs. Why?
First, collections professionals may not want those jobs. Often, we came to them because we like working directly with objects and have no interest in giving that up to climb the ranks. Most of the people I know feel this way. But why do curators seem so willing to give up that which drew them to the position?
I have a more likely theory (maybe I should actually ask a curator why): they get recruited to those positions because they are good storytellers. They craft and relate narratives around institutions, around objects, around exhibitions that inspire curiosity and devotion among donors and earn loyalty from those around them. Their role as curators requires the construction of these often abstract narratives in a way that more pragmatic roles in collections care do not. Yin and yang. Institutions require both to function.
I do not mean to suggest that registrars should pen Shakespearean tales or to Foucault their databases but simply wonder if this is actually the case. Our creativity, for example, often manifests in solving concrete problems as opposed to conjuring abstract concepts around an exhibition. We also reside somewhere on a non-binary matrix between pragmatic and abstract – between operations and curation.
This is just a theory built primarily on generalizations and the small sample size of my network of colleagues, so I remain open to your own [abstract] thoughts about it.