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  • 1.  What is the best educational background that best prepared you for what you have encountered in your job?

    Posted 14 days ago

    Dear All

    What is the best educational background that best prepared you for what you have encountered in your job? During my internship I worked something called a Study Table witch had objects on it that visitors could touch and ask questions about. I understood because of my grad program that engagement with the public is vital and gives the community to be apart of the museum. I look forward  your responses. 

    The museum is the museum of the eye a medical history museum in San Francisco.

    Thanks,

    Rachel



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    Rachel Alschuler
    Museum Education/ Visitor Experience
    San Francisco CA
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  • 2.  RE: What is the best educational background that best prepared you for what you have encountered in your job?

    Posted 13 days ago
    Dear colleagues:

    With a M.A., B.Ed. & B.A. (all essentially in social sciences) under my belt, unreservedly, I now understand that my museum studies / museology programme courses after completing a certificate programme was the most useful to me operating in the museum field.

    Respectfully yours

    Paul C. Thistle






  • 3.  RE: What is the best educational background that best prepared you for what you have encountered in your job?

    Posted 12 days ago

    Dear Paul

    Hum, it is interesting what ends up being important. 

    Thanks,

    Rachel



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    Rachel Alschuler
    Museum Education/ Visitor Experience
    San Francisco CA
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  • 4.  RE: What is the best educational background that best prepared you for what you have encountered in your job?

    Posted 12 days ago

    While museum studies provided practical information about collections care, education, etc.,  grounding in the disciplines of history, art history and anthropology are the skills that I have most used in exhibitions and interpretation.  Every research and exhibition project has required the tools of those disciplines in some combination or another--aesthetic, historical or social sciences. 



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    Barbara Franco
    Consultant/Independent Professional
    [Harrisburg] [PA]
    GettysburgGettysburgGettysburg
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  • 5.  RE: What is the best educational background that best prepared you for what you have encountered in your job?

    Posted 12 days ago

    Dear Barbara

    I an understand how those disciplines would be helpful to museum work and collections management and exhibition devolvement. 

    Thanks,

    Rachel



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    Rachel Alschuler
    Museum Education/ Visitor Experience
    San Francisco CA
    ------------------------------



  • 6.  RE: What is the best educational background that best prepared you for what you have encountered in your job?

    Posted 11 days ago

    I took my museum studies classes at Boston University in the mid-1980s – things in the field have changed an awful lot in the last forty years. My internship in the Print Department of the Boston Public Library and my research on the workings of the MFA, Boston, were the most informative parts of my studies, providing the most practical information. My work on the MFA, in particular, introduced me to the interactions of curatorial and conservation. I've been building on that knowledge ever since. Another great opportunity was when I was a University of Maryland fellow at the National Gallery in Washington. Every Friday afternoon the interns and fellows got to tour and meet people from various departments, including curatorial, conservation, education, development, the director, security, climate control, and the greenhouses. We all learn a LOT about the specialized areas in such a large museum. I particularly recall the head of security saying that he had been in the Secret Service previously and had assumed that providing security for objects would be much easier than guarding people, since objects don't move. Then he arrived and learned how wrong he was! "It's insanity!" he said. Joking, and yet not.

     

    Best to all,

    Ann

     

    Ann Prentice Wagner, PhD

    Museum Director 

    Bradbury Art Museum

    Arkansas State University

    P (870) 972-3687

    www.BradburyArtMuseum.org

    awagner@astate.edu

     

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  • 7.  RE: What is the best educational background that best prepared you for what you have encountered in your job?

    Posted 11 days ago

    Dear Ann

    So good to know, it is a good thing to learn about all aspects of museum work because knowing about others jobs helps you collaborate.

    Thanks,

    Rachel



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    Rachel Alschuler
    Museum Education/ Visitor Experience
    San Francisco CA
    ------------------------------