Hi Janet,
Congratulations on re-opening your museum - this exciting.
Our museum instituted a Duty Manager responsibility for all senior level and mid level staff. We have approximately 11 full time and part time staff in those positions. Each one of us will take approximately 1 weekend day per month. Every so often we each will get a month without a weekend shift. In essence, our Executive Director, Collections Manager, Curator, Finance Office, Marketing Personal, and Registrar are scheduled along with our Visitor Experience leads. Each month, our Operations Coordinator will send out an email asking for availability for the upcoming month. Once that is known she works with our Visitor Experience team to complete the schedule. That team will pick which days they expect to be needed for special programming or extra events and then we work all the other staff around it.
We created this work schedule shortly after we had reopened after major renovation and found that our senior level staff was disconnected from the public during our busiest days of the week. This also provided much needed support to the front end staff, as questions and inquiries that often had to wait to Monday could be addressed immediately. All Duty Manager staff are also expected to be able to give a tour of the museum to our visitors if needed. For all staff, they were able to see and learn directly from this time spent focused on the reason our museum is open and operational - the visitor. This responsibility, that is shared by all senior team has allowed us to respond quicker to our community, grow our programming, provide greater access to our collection and learn and share new stories.
Best,
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Kimberly Verrier
Coordinator of Visitor Experience
Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery
Red Deer AB
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-24-2018 08:00 AM
From: Benjamen Salata
Subject: Curatorial staff evening and weekend schedules
As a Curator my primary responsibilities were collection management and driving exhibition content (including programming). Anytime I was pulled away to lead a tour, supervise operations, or host at an event took me away from my primary purpose. It was not the best allocation of museum resources.
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Benjamen Salata
Project Manager
Luxam Inc.
Coral Springs FL
Original Message:
Sent: 07-23-2018 05:04 PM
From: Kiersten Dittrich
Subject: Curatorial staff evening and weekend schedules
Hi Benjamen,
I know that taking staff away from other projects can be difficult but I agree with Janet that it is a wonderful resource for visitors to interact with content experts. I disagree with the premise of your second sentence, and I would argue that visitor services staff also promote the organization's mission. Claiming otherwise furthers an "us and them" rhetoric between front and back of house staff and pushes us into silos when we should be collaborating. Having curatorial staff out on the front lines is a win-win-win-win situation: your visitor services staff get extra hands, your curatorial staff have an opportunity to interact with visitors and better understand the audience they serve, your visitors get an enhanced experience, and your organization becomes a more collaborative work environment.
To Janet, I would recommend some reflection about when your audience would most benefit from this added resource. Maybe you have a lot of school groups (that have a lot of questions) that come in on Wednesday afternoons or perhaps you have a larger concentration of curious tourists on summer weekends. The name of the game is flexibility. Try something out and if it doesn't work, make the necessary changes to the schedule.
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Kiersten Dittrich
Special Events Manager
Folger Shakespeare Library
Washington DC
Original Message:
Sent: 07-20-2018 09:38 AM
From: Benjamen Salata
Subject: Curatorial staff evening and weekend schedules
When I was an institutional curator I always thought working nights/weekends was a double-edged sword. Why it is beneficial to have a curatorial professional available at these times with visitor services, it takes the professional away from curators' primary duties of creating content and driving mission.
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Benjamen Salata
Project Manager
Luxam Inc.
Coral Springs FL
Original Message:
Sent: 07-13-2018 04:45 PM
From: Janet Gallimore
Subject: Curatorial staff evening and weekend schedules
Dear Colleagues:
Wondering if anyone has any successful business or program models for strategically rotating curatorial and other professional staff into weekend museum hours? As we plan for opening our new Idaho State Museum, we are interested in understanding the most successful use of such expertise and public impact/engagement benefits from such time, including curatorial tours, conservation workshops, exhibition evaluation, etc.
Thank you so much!
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Janet Gallimore
Executive Director
Idaho State Historical Society
Boise ID
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