A curator is responsible for overseeing and caring for a collection of items, which can include documents, artifacts, works of art, plants, animals, buildings, and websites. Curatorial jobs can be found in museums, historic sites, educational institutions, and government positions. Curators can catalog, analyze, organize, and maintain the items in their care, as well as manage and market the museum to the public. They may also specialize in acquisitions and interact with the public through the museum’s website.
The word curator comes from the Latin word curare which means “to take care of”. A curator is someone who has the responsibility of looking after and/or overseeing something or some collection of things. Curating jobs can be located in a wide variety of locations and involve servicing and overseeing a wide variety of things.
Curatorial assignments can be in museums, at historic sites including villas and museum landmarks, or in local, state, or federal government positions. They may also work in educational institutions such as colleges and universities, for example, or care for the living inhabitants of botanical gardens, aquariums, zoos or nature centres. The items they select can include documents such as transcripts, photographs and records; artifacts such as stamps, fabrics, musical instruments and coins; works of art, such as paintings and sculptures; plants and animals, living or preserved; buildings; and entire websites.
By keeping an eye on the items in their care, people in curatorial jobs have the opportunity to care for them in a variety of ways. They can catalog items to keep a record of them, carefully describing them. They can also analyze their collection and organize items from the collection for exhibitions, as well as organize the exhibition as a whole. Curators can also contribute to the maintenance of the collection under their care, along with conservators and technicians, and oversee storage arrangements.
Museum director is a curator’s job that involves management and, in a large institution, may involve overseeing other curators as well as marketing the museum to the public to increase participation and solicit donations. In a large institution, there may be a specialist curator responsible for each division of the collection. In a small institution, on the other hand, a single curator may handle multiple tasks or all of the curator’s work.
Some trustees may specialize in acquisitions. In this case, the curator may be called upon to travel to find and evaluate items your institution is considering acquiring. Curators can also run surveys to support upcoming showings or to discover more information about items in their collections.
The curator can also be the public face of the museum, interacting with the public in person and through the museum’s website. If the museum publishes a portion of its holdings for viewing online, this is another area the curator can work on.
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