Open Forum

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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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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Original Message:
Sent: 01-07-2025 02:39 PM
From: Paul Thistle
Subject: What is the best educational background that best prepared you for what you have encountered in your job?

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

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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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
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-08-2025 01:56 PM
From: Barbara Franco
Subject: What is the best educational background that best prepared you for what you have encountered in your job?

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
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 1/8/2025 1:57:00 PM
From: Barbara Franco
Subject: RE: What is the best educational background that best prepared you for what you have encountered in your job?

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
------------------------------

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
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-09-2025 10:27 AM
From: Ann Prentice Wagner
Subject: What is the best educational background that best prepared you for what you have encountered in your job?

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

 

 

Original Message:
Sent: 1/8/2025 1:57:00 PM
From: Barbara Franco
Subject: RE: What is the best educational background that best prepared you for what you have encountered in your job?

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. 

------------------------------
Barbara Franco
Consultant/Independent Professional
[Harrisburg] [PA]
GettysburgGettysburgGettysburg
------------------------------