Wanted: Fathomable Job Title
“Yeah, but what do you
really want to do?”
“People do that?”
“Oooo, so you get to
play with dinosaur bones?”
All three of these comments were taken from a dinner party I
attended last week, where upon asking what I did for a living, the answer
produced three of the four most common responses. (The fourth is a simple “Oh,
cool.” and nothing else, because quite simply, the speaker has no clue what a
registrar is and are pretty sure it would be something rather boring that they’d
rather you not expound upon.)
Curious if this was a trend amongst museum professionals, I
posed the questions to both my co-workers and to a museum list-serve. Of all
the responses given, these three (or some variation thereof) were among the
front runners. T.H. Gray, a fellow museum colleague, had this to say:
“Museums
are experienced in interpreting history, art, and science to non-professionals.
Unfortunately, we are not so adept at interpreting ourselves. We throw around
unfamiliar terms like interpretation, deaccession, and ethics to describe what
we do.
This
jargon extends to our job titles. The standard term is museum professional.
It’s kind of like “medical practitioner” – it could mean a medical doctor or a
witch doctor, you don’t truly know. There are the old standards of educator,
curator, registrar, collections manager, and director, but these ignore the
influx of non-traditional employees such as the marketing department. Curator
came close to being an encompassing professional term. Once there were curators
of collections, curators of exhibitions, and curators of education. Then the
idea of curators became synonymous with wicked stepmothers, the ones who locked
treasures (be they stepdaughters or not) away. So, like the stepmother, the term
was cast aside in favor of director (as in director of exhibitions). Just as
well. Could you take the curator of development seriously?
Of
course, there was a perceived need to establish our authority. This gave us the
pseudo-scientific “museologist.” It also inspired other fun and meaningless
titles including museum technician (white lab coats, anyone?), interpretive
specialist (what language do you speak?), and museum specialist (an ingenious
combination of the previous two).
You
may not think our current titles are a problem, but have you ever tried to
explain what you do to a stranger at a bar? You usually wind up saying
something like you work with artifacts, prompting them to make an Indiana Jones
reference (they get points for quoting the “mommy” lines from Temple
of Doom). This is further proof that no one really understands
museums because we can’t explain it ourselves.
So
in an effort to live up to our ever changing role as cultural steward and/or
inspiration and honor the etymology of the field, I humbly suggest we reclaim
the title Muse. As in, “What do you do?” “I am a Muse.” It would certainly make
casual bar hook-ups more interesting. Until you have to explain what a muse is.
PS
For those of you not content with being a muse you can always be an oracle.”
Problem solved. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to see
Elaine about getting my business cards changed to read “Muse.”
