Tell us a bit about your current job.

I work for English Heritage as Assistant Curator at Kenwood – an eighteenth-century villa on Hampstead Heath in London. I’m part of the small team responsible for the care of the extraordinary art collections; we have an internationally important collection of oil paintings including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Gainsborough, Reynolds and Turner, as well as furniture, sculpture, prints and drawings and other decorative arts. My job is about taking care of the collections both physically and intellectually, so I decide where to display the paintings and also research them, write about and give tours and talks to visitors.

What and where did you study after school?

I did my undergraduate degree in History of Art at the University of York and then went on to take an MA in Art Museum and Gallery Studies at Newcastle University.

How did you get from answer 2 to answer 1?

Taking history of art at university was a bit of a gamble – I’d never had a formal lesson in the subject, but I’d always loved history and fine art, so combing the two seemed like a good idea. I realised towards the end of the first year of my degree that I wanted to turn it into a career but for a long time I didn’t really know where that would lead. I started volunteering with the National Trust while I was still an undergrad, working with the Learning and Community Officers at two different properties. After graduating I took about 9 months out during which I researched jobs in the arts sector. I quickly realised that a master’s degree is basically mandatory if you want to be a curator and so I went back to university part-time and worked as a baker in a little café to support myself. I could have continued studying History of Art, but I wanted to develop some practical, hands-on skills that I thought might make me more employable. As part of my MA I interned full-time for eight weeks at the Bowes Museum. Among other things I worked on an exhibition of Vivienne Westwood shoes and had the best time, so after the internship was over, I continued at the Museum as a volunteer for almost a year. I then started volunteering at a tiny art gallery – the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland (where I’m from); after about 6 months of volunteering one afternoon per week, I was offered a month-long paid contract helping during the changeover of a major exhibition. I’d graduated with my MA about 4 months previously and this was my first paid role in the arts; I remember it feeling like such a huge milestone. Around the same time, I applied for a nine-month paid internship in the Pictures Department at the Royal Collection Trust, based in London. I’d always wanted to live in London and there are far more opportunities in the arts sector here than in other parts of the UK, so it felt like a natural step. It’s no exaggeration to say that the internship changed my life! I learned so much about being a curator and met so many brilliant people who’ve gone on to be wonderful mentors. Just before the nine months were up, I applied for and was offered the role of Assistant Curator of Paintings at the V&A. If the Royal Collection Trust gave me a foot in the door, the V&A was where I really learned my trade. I was there for three and half years and in that time I gained a huge amount of experience – looking after 8 permanent galleries, helping to acquire new objects for the collections, couriering loans around the world and curating my own temporary display which went on to tour internationally. I loved working at the V&A but I’m pretty ambitious and after three years I was starting to feel I’d taken everything I could from my role, so when a friend of my from the Royal Collection Trust told me that she was going on sabbatical for a year and suggested I apply for her cover, I jumped at the chance. I’d always hoped to go back to RCT, and this was an opportunity to step up to curator level. Two interviews later I was offered the job and spent a year as Curator of Paintings, in which time I worked on a major exhibition and wrote a book. It was a fantastic experience but anyone who’s done a fixed-term contract knows how unsettling it is and finding the right job to go to after was much harder than I’d hoped. I had the interview for my current role at English Heritage two days after my contract at RCT ended but the week between the interview and being offered the job felt like an eternity. Going back to be an ‘Assistant Curator’ was hard but the nature of English Heritage means that being an Assistant Curator at the V&A and Assistant Curator at Kenwood are very different things and in the last year I’ve grown and developed as a curator.

How does your formal education feed into your present career (if at all)?

Both my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees were invaluable in getting started as a curator, and as an art historian, the knowledge and skills I gained at university – both art historical and more general things like writing extended essays, continue to be useful today.

What things have you learnt outside of formal education that have been helpful to your career?

Volunteering in arts and heritage organisations throughout my university studies allowed me to gain some practical experience, which helped in getting my foot in the door when I was starting out. I also developed a lot of useful transferable skills through my part-time job in a café; working in team, managing my time and workload and interacting with the public are all things I do daily as a curator. More recently I joined the committee of the Fulham & Chelsea Women’s Institute in the role of treasurer. I’m sure that maintaining the accounts and balancing the books will be helpful when managing exhibition budgets. 

What are the really useful skills for someone in your job to possess?

Depending on what type of curator you want to be, an undergraduate degree in something like art history, history or classics, and a post-grad in the same or something like museum studies are pretty fundamental. It also helps to be a practical, can-do sort of person – being a curator is a very varied job and requires you to be able change gear from scholarly to hands-on. Access and public engagement are also really important, so good presentation skills are a good thing to develop. Most importantly I think you need to be passionate about working in the sector, as it’s notoriously hard to get into and not well paid, so you really have to want to do it. 

What does an average day at work look like for you?

It’s a cliché but there really aren’t any average days, particularly working somewhere small like Kenwood, where I must be reactive a lot of the time. Most days I’m on site I start with a walk around of the historic showrooms – checking all the interpretation is in place and generally making sure the rooms look as they should. If I’m doing object moves or supervising maintenance work in the showrooms, I try to programme it to take place before the house opens to the public. I usually do some admin and tackle my inbox, dealing with anything urgent as I go. Much of job is desk-based and I spend a lot of time preparing documents for Loans or Acquisitions Committees, writing proposals for displays or new interpretation, organising the logistics around a project or if I’m lucky, researching objects in the collection. Some days I might give a tour of the house or deliver a talk about a specific object and like almost any job, there are lots of meetings.

What’s the best thing about your job?

It might sound corny, but I feel privileged to get to work in such special places as Kenwood or the V&A.  I love being able to get up close with the collections, learning new things about the objects in my care and using that to (hopefully) bring the collections to life for visitors. Plus, museums are, in my experience, full of brilliant, passionate, dedicated people who are wonderful to work with!  

What’s your least favourite aspect of your job?

It should come as no surprise that the UK museums sector is chronically underfunded; that means organisations are constantly trying to save money while also doing things to make more money – practically that means fewer people trying to do more with less. That can often result in a very heavy workload, tight budgets, conflicting deadlines and demands on your time and energy from lots of different directions. As a colleague I always want to be helpful and supportive but I sometimes have to say no to things I’d otherwise love  to be involved in or limit how much I can help with a project because I simply have too much to do. 

What advice would you give to someone seeking a job like yours? 

As I’ve mentioned already, a postgraduate qualification is basically essential. I would also recommend starting to volunteer as early as you can and to aim to get experience with different collections in different types of museum to help to establish what sort of curator you might want to be. Getting started on this career path can be really tough so you have to be committed and pro-active; try to get to know people who are doing the job and start to develop a professional network, take advantage of short-term opportunities to build up experience and don’t get knocked back by rejection. It took me six months to get my first job after graduating with my MA, I applied for what felt like hundreds of jobs and at times I wanted to give up but I’m so glad that I didn’t!