Citizen Curators is a work-based training programme in museum awareness and modern curatorial practice. Yes, I copy/pasted that sentence. The course is free, as in it costs zilch ... nothing ... diddly squat ... nowt ... I think you get the point. Anyone who is interested can apply for a place, of which I did just that, obtaining a slot at Penlee House Museum & Gallery along with four other volunteers. If you missed out this year, it will be running again for the next two years, so keep your eyes peeled.
I should get the official housekeeping out of the way first by saying that the programme is organised by Cornwall Museums Partnership, is funded for three years by the Esmee Fairbairn Collections Fund, and the programme leader is Dr. Tehmina Goskar, Director of Curators Institute. This year's course runs from September 2018 to April 2019.
The first session took place Friday 28th September 2018 at Penlee where we were joined by fellow volunteers from two of the other museums locally that are taking part in Citizen Curators, which is the Telegraph Museum Porthcurno and Falmouth Art Gallery.
More information about the Citizen Curators course can be found here https://www.penleehouse.org.uk/assets/file/Citizen%20Curators%20Information%20for%20Participants.docx
I thought I'd write this blog post for two reasons: I wanted to help others thinking of joining in future years get some insight into the course ... and also for myself to help get my musings and thoughts written down.
Disclaimer: all views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and do not represent the opinions of any organization, committee or other group or individual.
Basically, I wrote this myself and it's my thoughts, and I really hope it doesn't upset anyone, because that's not the aim.
Lastly, I've not covered everything from the day because, well, this is just my thoughts, not a study guide, plus, I don't have time to go super verbose.
Core Session 1
The emphasis today was on 'Curators & Collections': two topics that most of us should have some sort of insight into, no matter what level of experience we have thus far in the museum sector.
Incidentally, if you're like me and feel compulsively like you have to write down everything that is "lectured" at you, don't worry. Everything is available on hand-outs and/or will be emailed to you. That being said, I did jot down a few notes of how things flowed as, with a memory like mine, I'd be clueless to what I was thinking a few weeks later.
The emphasis for teaching on the course isn't to lecture us anyways, but to provoke your mind into thinking and invoking future discussion.
What do we have museums?
This was the first question asked to the group. It felt very much like a trick question in some respects, so naturally there was no way I was going to speak out with an answer :D As it happens, the group gradually sprung into life around me and offered up thoughts on the matter. We had an impromptu conversation about how collections were traditionally in the private care of the rich, that museums have a responsibility over ownership of objects and were somewhat custodians of cultures.
Admittedly, the history of museums wasn't a train of thought I'd initially picked up on when the question was asked, but nevertheless it's a curious one. Thinking back, I guess museums were a little like the country estates and manors we visit now, with all the wacky and expensive objects nationally and internationally hoarded within the wealthy person's building. It's somewhat amusing then that there are plenty of private houses and National Trust places (for example) we still visit now that have objects the former inhabitants paid big money for in the past, or just took on their travels. I guess there are modern museums in more modern buildings too whose initial collections might well have come from former wealthy private collectors.
There is however an answer to the question. Well, there's at least a "best-stab" answer at it for explaining what museums are about at this current point of time as things are evolving (which we talked about and will get brought up in later sessions I'm sure). The actual definition one could use to explain what a museum is was given by the Museum Association, although I see that was defined in 1998, which is 20 years ago! Given how much cultural and political changes there have been in the last twenty years, you'd think it might be time for an update?
You can read the "official" museum definition here, along with some other interesting facts about museums https://www.museumsassociation.org/about/frequently-asked-questions
Also covered under this question was the Museum Association's Code of Ethics, which I've read twice in the last three months as part of background reading for my AMA (another museum self-development course), but I'll be darned if I can remember anything specific in it now. My memory is so bad! What I do recall though is that I agreed with pretty much all of the ethical points in it, as if it was written from my heart. I also remember that I thought, in many respects, that it was all a common sense approach to museums if one wants to live in a respectful, caring and kind society. It's well worth a read. It's not full of jargon and is easy to digest. See https://www.museumsassociation.org/ethics/code-of-ethics
Lastly, mission statements. No, not "To Boldly go where no man has gone before" like James T Kirk said, but somewhat similar. Every museum will have a mission statement which defines exactly what they are all about. What is their grand vision in a nutshell? What exactly do they exist for and strive to do? It's well worth a look, because what you think a particular museum might be there for, might not be exactly what you thought ... or it might be spot on. Either way, it's worth knowing about.
Penlee's can be found here under their forward plan https://www.penleehouse.org.uk/about-penlee/policy-documents
What does a curator do?
We all wonder about this sometimes regarding our own jobs: "What is it I do exactly?" Given there was a curator in the room, actually two at the time, hopefully they weren't wondering what the answers would be too ;)
The answers given by members of the group included: conceive an idea/interpret, see what community wants, care and organise for the collection, marketing, collecting, research, accountability, accesses other agencies, finds out latest conservation techniques.
In smaller museums I'm pretty sure that a curator does all of the above and probably even hoovers the floor and makes cakes for everyone. In that, I mean, they probably have to do their fair share of other jobs to help keep the museum churning along. The question being asked here was more about the curator side of things alone, rather than other strings and bows that might be needed in certain other scenarios. For me, caring was the key point. I think if you care about what you're doing, no matter what the job really, you are set up well for whatever it is that's expected of you. Coming from the outside I guess I see it in a rather simple way: curators look after collections. If you are going to look after them, it's really best if you care about them. If you care about them, then you want the best for them, which brings you into all the other aspects previously mentioned, in that you want people to see them, you want to look after them, you want people interested in them, and you want people to know that you are looking after them for the community.
For the purposes of the Citizen Curators course, we're following Tehmina's model of what a curator is which is 50% creator and 50% communicator. Both sides fill me with a little dread :D I don't feel creative, although I will guess that creativity comes in various disguises, plus, this course is designed to get us thinking creatively, so hopefully I'll pick tips up and experience as we go along. Strangely, I don't mind the communication side much, even given my rather introverted nature, because I like a good chat and I also like getting people interested in something, so I look forward to that.
Bad curator versus Good curator
The first group task proper was for our groups to get together and draw up a list of what we think makes a good curator and what makes a bad curator. I failed to make any notes of this at the time so can't really say too much, although some of this was along the lines of 'saying the obvious'. I remember I had an easier time with the bad side of the list, although the simpler way to do any good/bad list is to do one side of the list and then just write the opposite on the other side :D
Anyhow, my first thoughts were in the negative which was that a curator should not push their own personal opinions of judgements onto others: namely what you say about objects. My best example was saying that someone who wore some clothes that are on display was a horrible or disgusting person, purely because you didn't like the way they dressed or looked etc. Non-judgemental would be a good way of saying how I feel a curator should be.
I also brought up a topic that got mentioned a few times again during the course of the day with my suggestion that a bad curator might put a jug on display and simply place a label next to it which says "A Jug". This says nothing but the obvious about the object, nor does it really create much of a reason for anyone to get excited about it, unless it's bright pink jug perhaps with unicorns and reflective stars all over :D
We do we have museum collections?
The lead in to the afternoon session saw us touch upon the topic of museum collections specifically.
This was discussed using the triangular model of museum at
the bottom, with Collection, Knowledge and Power layers on top. It seems to all come down to power from the knowledge and what we do with that power. Personally I didn't really like the word "power" especially given we was previously talking about the history of museums and chatting about how lots of museums have objects from other countries that they "acquired" questionably. "Power" reminds me of the British Empire, and pushing oneself about saying that they are right and everyone else is wrong. I guess with power, comes responsibility. Oh that's a good sentence. Don't think we've heard that before? Ok, so spiderman movie beat me to it! :) But it's true. It's one thing having power but what do you do with it? Make it serve your own needs and desires, or use it for the better good of everyone? Naturally, the sensible answer, and the one for museums is the latter option.
Do you see what I see?
The afternoon session focused heavily on the group task, where we were all gathered around a table full of various dissimilar objects (I'm not going to reveal what they all were - secret!) and had to pick between 2-5 of them before coming up with a story about those objects, be it fact or fiction (we went for a combination in our group). You also had to decide if you wanted to read out the story, act it (I was pushing for miming ... lol), or even as a poem (which I also was keen on, but time was short). There was also a collection of tools for looking at objects, from the traditional Sherlock Holmes magnifying glasses, to funky UV light, and my personal favourite (every home or museum should have one) a loupe. Basically, it's a really small magnifying glass that you hold up to your eye, much like you'd see watchmakers in the past using them. In fact, I am going to have to recommend this for where I volunteer. There were a few other tools but I don't want to spoil the surprise, and plus, I'm not 100% sure from memory what they were now :)
The group I was in ended up picking up a b/w postcard of Penzance, a blue/white striped teapot and a wartime cookbook. Given fiction was an option for the story we could tell, we came up with all sorts of wacky but plausible ideas, all centred around a little girl in the forefront of the postcard despite the fact she wasn't even looking at the camera. With me Googling for factual tit-bits about the four objects, we devised a loose story about how the girl in the photo married the person who manufactured the jug and then in later life wrote the cookbook. That was the story in the nutshell, but it was artistically told by a member of our group like something out of Jackanory as the story was padded with all sorts of extra believable but totally untrue antidotes, as well as numerous actual facts that I'd found out about the objects. It was a masterclass in storytelling if I don't say so myself.
Some groups kept simply to facts that they'd researched about the objects, where others adlib a little fiction (or should I say, plausible explanations) as to what the objects might be and how they were related to each other. I'd say the group I was in gave the most fiction, as we'd a whole story for the three objects.
It was clear to me though that there are numerous ways to spin a story, or, in this case, more than one way to tell the story of an object. Obviously no one here is suggesting curators just totally make up everything about an object, but, there's no harm in adding substance or plausible backgrounds to help flesh objects out and help make them more relevant to visitors and provoke questions. When you've got a relatively "mundane" or "mass-produced" object in a collection, what makes the object instantly more interesting is a story, or in the museum world, you can say, its providence. Who has touched this object? Where has it been? Who owned it? This information can be equally as interesting as the most static details, such as when it was created, who made it, and it's dimensions. If you have a collection of multiple objects, the story can become even more important for connecting the dots together and instantly making objects, that might previously seem dissimilar, more cohesively interesting.
Stay tuned for more blog posts - hopefully! If not, pester me for more :D
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