What does a Museum Curator do?
A museum curator looks after and manages exhibitions within a museum. Responsibilities of this position include building collections, developing interpretations for the museum contents, organizing events and exhibitions, designing and arranging installations, and carrying out administrative tasks in the museum. They also need to liaise with administrators, artists, and museum visitors to ensure they have great experience with the museum.
Museum curator responsibilities
Here are examples of responsibilities from real museum curator resumes:
- Review and edit listing photography and source photographers in various markets to capture unique accommodations and cover special assignments worldwide.
- Fashion and coordinate historical costumes for first person interpretation
Museum curator skills and personality traits
We calculated that 29% of Museum Curators are proficient in Collections Management, Art Collections, and Museum Exhibits. They’re also known for soft skills such as Analytical skills, Computer skills, and Customer-service skills.
We break down the percentage of Museum Curators that have these skills listed on their resume here:
- Collections Management, 29%
Input inventories, collected data, and cataloged information into collections management software system, including current location.
- Art Collections, 14%
Conducted and organized art collection research, public presentations, and other education programming.
- Museum Exhibits, 12%
Supervised After-School Program students in the creation of museum exhibits using tech-based research
- Fine Arts, 11%
Background in the general education of fine arts, especially within the Western hemisphere since the Renaissance.
- Educational Programs, 9%
Performed a variety of administrative duties including planning, organizing, implementing and evaluating educational programs for tribal members and public.
- Cataloging, 6%
Assist curator and registrar with artifact accession/deaccessions, cataloging using Past Perfect(TM), exhibit creation and installation.
Common skills that a museum curator uses to do their job include "collections management," "art collections," and "museum exhibits." You can find details on the most important museum curator responsibilities below.
Analytical skills. To carry out their duties, the most important skill for a museum curator to have is analytical skills. Their role and responsibilities require that "archivists, curators, museum technicians, and conservators must explore minutiae to determine the origin, history, and importance of the objects they work with." Museum curators often use analytical skills in their day-to-day job, as shown by this real resume: "entered catalog data into nps museum cataloging software program ancs+. "
Customer-service skills. museum curators are also known for customer-service skills, which are critical to their duties. You can see how this skill relates to museum curator responsibilities, because "archivists, curators, museum technicians, and conservators work regularly with the general public." A museum curator resume example shows how customer-service skills is used in the workplace: "create 'playlists' to group relevant content based in audible's customer needs & feedback. "
Organizational skills. A big part of what museum curators do relies on "organizational skills." You can see how essential it is to museum curator responsibilities because "archivists, curators, museum technicians, and conservators store and easily retrieve records and documents." Here's an example of how this skill is used from a resume that represents typical museum curator tasks: "develop educational content for organizational website and social media. "
The three companies that hire the most museum curators are:
- West Virginia University2 museum curators jobs
- Town of Windsor
1 museum curators jobs
- City of Greeley1 museum curators jobs
Compare different museum curators
Museum curator vs. Archivist
An archivist is an information professional who assesses the value of information and then stores them in such a way that people can access the information and make sense of it. Archivists are required to have a great understanding of the historical context of the records, such as the relationship of a record to other records and why it was created in the first place. They must work closely with record managers and his/her torians to store and preserve perishable documents. Archivists must also organize public events such as talks and exhibitions.
There are some key differences in the responsibilities of each position. For example, museum curator responsibilities require skills like "collections management," "art collections," "museum exhibits," and "educational programs." Meanwhile a typical archivist has skills in areas such as "archival collections," "online database," "archival materials," and "reference services." This difference in skills reveals the differences in what each career does.
The education levels that archivists earn slightly differ from museum curators. In particular, archivists are 2.3% more likely to graduate with a Master's Degree than a museum curator. Additionally, they're 1.0% less likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.Museum curator vs. Historic sites supervisor
In addition to the difference in salary, there are some other key differences worth noting. For example, museum curator responsibilities are more likely to require skills like "collections management," "art collections," "museum exhibits," and "fine arts." Meanwhile, a historic sites supervisor has duties that require skills in areas such as "gift shop sales," "cultural resources," "blog posts," and "historic properties." These differences highlight just how different the day-to-day in each role looks.
In general, historic sites supervisors achieve lower levels of education than museum curators. They're 6.1% less likely to obtain a Master's Degree while being 1.0% less likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.Museum curator vs. Director of exhibits
The required skills of the two careers differ considerably. For example, museum curators are more likely to have skills like "collections management," "art collections," "museum exhibits," and "oral history." But a director of exhibits is more likely to have skills like "event management," "photoshop," "trade shows," and "contemporary art."
When it comes to education, directors of exhibits tend to earn similar degree levels compared to museum curators. In fact, they're 4.9% less likely to earn a Master's Degree, and 0.7% less likely to graduate with a Doctoral Degree.Museum curator vs. Curator of photography and prints
Types of museum curator
Updated January 8, 2025
