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This is an email sent via the SHCG List. If you reply to this message, your message will be sent to all the people on the list, not just the author of this message. --------------- Hello, This is a very interesting discussion, and I'm trying to write a piece for the journal at the moment which touches on some of these areas. I won't go too deeply into my argument here, but I think Jenny has got to the heart of the issue around the nature of 'expertise', the difference between social history curation and practice in science and technology and art, and the wholesale adoption of community engagement practice, as pioneered by SH curators in the 80s and 90s, as mainstream (as exemplified by the MA's Museums Change Lives) Three quick points. Firstly, I think we need a broader definition of curatorial expertise which recognises that the kinds of knowledge that are useful to SH curators are produced often through encounters with audiences and communities, as well as through academic or archival research. The kinds of knowledge might be different, but both are incredibly valuable to SH curators. Secondly, SH curation is profoundly different from the same activities in other museum disciplines like science/tech or art (for a whole host of reasons including the balance between the intrinsic value in the object as opposed to the provenance, the approach to 'ephemera', etc.), and therefore we should reject attempts to make us justify our practice on their terms (as might happen when one has to bid into a central acquisition budget, for example). In many respects museum ethnographers are closer to us than art curators. Thirdly, although it might seem that some of the values of SH curators have become mainstream, I think many museum managers have accepted community engagement as instrumental (for audience development, to align with a local authority's 'wellbeing agenda') rather than intrinsic to the work of SH curators. We are interested in material culture in everyday life, lived experience of people often unrepresented in the historical record, and working with communities is fundamental to developing our understanding in these areas. Michael From: Social History Curators Group email list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jenny Brown Sent: 21 October 2014 18:04 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: what is a (social history) curator? This is an email sent via the SHCG List. If you reply to this message, your message will be sent to all the people on the list, not just the author of this message. ------------------------------- Hello, This is a very difficult question - I am proud to be a curator but often feel a bit buffeted by what is expected of me. I'm not sure whether the "curator as expert" is a historical reality, to be honest, or a stick we use to beat ourselves up with. Starting out, I felt very conscious of not having a history degree but confident in my collections management role. There is a public perception of curators as experts, but this is often simply because we know more than the people we're talking to. It's enough to know how to find the answers when you don't have the exact one to hand. We do become expert in some areas as we work with, study and research our collections - and this is an important role. How else can we decide what to collect, what to keep? How else do we ensure the research of volunteers and heritage groups we may be guiding is useful and accurate? I'm all for community engagement and empowering communities to inform our work, but don't think it should reduce us to pure collections management. My biggest challenges here are a) people think I am being "elitist" to profess these views or b) there is no quantifiable output of research, so it gets sacrificed to the insistent KPIs of how many people I've talked to, how many enquiries I've answered, how much backlog I've catalogued. In terms of social history, I think it is an approach (rather than a specific type of collection) and one used increasingly by our art and science colleagues in response to the democratisation of museum interpretation. This is great news but leaves me with the feeling that anyone must be able to do it... it would be great to have arguments to hand to support the need for specific SH curators and SH research. Jenny From: Social History Curators Group email list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Crispin Paine Sent: 17 October 2014 12:31 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: what is a (social history) curator? This is an email sent via the SHCG List. If you reply to this message, your message will be sent to all the people on the list, not just the author of this message. ------------------------------- Dear Clara and all It's good to see this debate come back again - I remember it as being energetically discussed in the 1970s! In those days, the 'Curator' (i.e. Director) of a local authority museum was an important figure in the community, reporting to the Museum Committee and seeing himself (usually but not always him) as the equal of the Town Clerk. Then came Local Government Reorganisation, and museums were merged into large departments, often run by jumped-up swimming pool superintendents who styled themselves Leisure Officers, knew nothing about museums, and downgraded their curator to "manager", probably at third or fourth tier. The world has changed, but the title remains an honourable one - just as 'curate' refers to the cure of souls, 'curator' refers to the care of collections. However many other responsibilities the curator may have, even when they take up most of her or his time, responsibilities for the museum collection remains at its heart. What's more, that's how it's understood by the public. Everyone is a 'Manager' or a 'Director' these days - they mean nothing. Let's celebrate our own unique title - wherever possible the head of a museum should be its 'Curator'. Let's resist its restriction to collection-specialists, and use it for the boss! Crispin On 17 Oct 2014, at 11:30, Ciara Canning <[log in to unmask]> wrote: This is an email sent via the SHCG List. If you reply to this message, your message will be sent to all the people on the list, not just the author of this message. ------------------------------- Hi All, I know it's Friday and the end of the week isn't the best time to get the grey matter working but I'd like to get some input from SHCG members on the topic of 'what is a social history curator'. For those of you who attended this year's SHCG conference in Glasgow you might remember that we started having conversations at AGM around the term 'curator' and whether the term was helpful or whether the historical associations with the title were outdated and restrictive. What it means to be a curator seems to be a hot topic right now and it was also the subject of a session at Museums Association conference last week. The session was led by Cambridge University and mostly talking about science and fine art curatorial practice and with the time restrictions it didn't give scope to delve too deeply.http://www.artandscienceofcuration.org.uk/ <http://www.artandscienceofcuration.org.uk/> The social history curator wasn't mentioned until someone raised it as a question. SHCG members could make some valuable contributions to the discussions and as a subject specialist network, it's something we would like to actively look at with further research in the future. The historical perception of 'curator as expert' or sole repositories of subject specialist knowledge appears to be something with which some social history curators are struggling. Many social history curators interpret and look after wide and varied collections and take on broader remits including active engagement, learning and social justice work. As financial cuts continue and more roles are being amalgamated, the social history curator - rather than other curatorial specialists appears to be taking on the role of generalist rather than specialist. Also, with many people who don't have the job title 'curator' effectively delivering the same work - is social history curatorship a specialism or is it a methodology? It reminds me of a quote by Judy Ling Wong: 'Who we are and what we can achieve depends on how we see ourselves against the enormous pressure of how others see us' So we would like to open the discussion up and bring together views from SHCG members. To start things off I thought I'd signpost to some interesting reflections on the term 'curator' by Georgina Young -George is the Senior Curator of Contemporary collecting at Museum of London (MOL) but her thoughts reflect her own views and not necessarily those of MOL. withgeorgeyoung - WordPress.com <https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=r ja&uact=8&ved=0CCMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwithgeorgeyoung.wordpress.com%2 Fauthor%2Fwithgeorgeyoung%2F&ei=zeY_VKevMY3caqq5gaAP&usg=AFQjCNEyEJ7RIgj M48RTcOa544PHjL7ykA> Please share your thoughts through the list Thanks Ciara Ciara Canning Senior Curator (Community History), Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service, Museum Resource Centre, 14 Ryegate Road, Colchester, Essex, CO1 1YG Tel 01206 282935 Fax 01206 282925 email [log in to unmask] web www.cimuseums.org.uk <http://www.cimuseums.org.uk/> The SHCG list is provided for members of Social History Curators Group to discuss subjects relevant to social history in museums. To join SHCG visit www.shcg.org.uk <http://www.shcg.org.uk/> . Opinions expressed in this email are the responsibility of the author and are not necessarily shared by SHCG. To leave the list do not reply to this message but send an email to [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> with a blank subject line and these words as the body of the email: SIGNOFF SHCG-LIST The SHCG list is provided for members of Social History Curators Group to discuss subjects relevant to social history in museums. To join SHCG visit www.shcg.org.uk . Opinions expressed in this email are the responsibility of the author and are not necessarily shared by SHCG. 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