Five years of the Ministry!

You may have noticed that we’ve been a little bit quiet for the last few months, whilst we've still been tweeting and instagramming our ability to keep up with the website has definitely waned. Can you blame us though? When we started the Ministry, we were just two early career museum professionals trying to make sense of work, friends and life in London. Nowadays we found ourselves (dare we say it?) mid-career professionals, our just about. While we don’t talk too much about our work places on the blog itself, in the past two years we’ve been working hard to level up in our respective careers. It’s certainly been a bit of a slog - Kristin has been doing her PhD and recently returned to curatorial work (at the same time!) and Terri has been working her way up to a Collections Manager role in a National.

Since 2012 the Ministry has been our platform to discuss what’s going on in our career-driven and museum-loving world. Five years on in 2017, we find ourselves in a bit of a different position. It’s been a steep learning curve but lots of fun (obvs). Whilst we want to continue to advocate for early career professionals (and in particular getting into museums), our own careers have moved forward and so to our experience of the museum world. Things change, and so now must the Ministry!

Through our blog we will continue to be sassy, opinionated, strong champions of women in museums and collections care - sharing our thoughts through commentary pieces on the blog once a month. On insta and twitter you’ll find our experiences of exhibitions and behind the scenes adventures (so please do follow on those channels!). While our ability to blog  may have dwindled (we don’t want to stress ourselves out too much about posts with our time commitments), our devotion and passion for the industry certainly has not.

So after five years in the blogging game (yes five whole years!) we hope you will continue to follow us on our journey, be inspired, stay motivated and keep on loving museums! Thank you so much to all of our lovely followers who have been there with us along the way. We look forward to many more discussions -  sharing thoughts, ideas and pet peeves for years to come.

Thoughts on museum blogging - be kind to yourself

Back in May we co-hosted Museum Hour with the wonderful Tincture of Museums – go check out her page it’s a museum loving feast with an eye to autism in museum.

One of the biggest concerns for those who wanted to start blogging was about finding the time to do so. In one sense this was reassuring as it meant that there were so many of you out there who have something to say about museums and want to get your voice heard. Yet  in another,  it was concerning to hear that museum lovers felt the need to put themselves under some pressure to get access to the museum blogging community, with the strains of temporary work, low paid and more competitive job market many are seeking to blog as a way to stand out from the crowd. In some respect blogging has been helpful to us but in others it has been a hindrance and why you’ll rarely hear me speak about my place of work. Blogging is ultimately meant to be an enjoyable and loveable experience.

We’re not going to lie, here at The Ministry we know how hard it is to keep on writing, finding content and putting it all together into a presentable format is time consuming. You’re probably aware that I work in a national museum as a sort of exhibition registrar and Kristin is studying for her PhD, so sometimes we do go a little bit quiet on the blog. It’s not because we’ve fallen out of love with doing so it’s just because sometimes our work life and personal life can be a bit more demanding that we had expected.

Museums are wonderful places that are often are static in their displays and in other times so fast moving that it’s hard to keep up. Working in South Kensington I often promise myself that I will visit that gallery/new exhibition across the road in my lunchbreak. Sometimes I do manage to venture out, other times I completely fail and realise I haven’t seen a new gallery in my own museum since it opened two years ago because it’s not on a route to a meeting room.

Then there’s the upkeep on social media, I do try to keep quite active personal profiles and keep up with what’s going on in the museum world. But often whole conversations about museum life go amiss on my timeline because I’ve been stuck in a two hour meeting or a cinema and suddenly we’re left feeling like I’m  the worst museum blogger because I haven’t engaged.

Sometimes it feels like the museum world is guilty of other museum enthusiasts a bit of FOMO (fear of missing out). There is now so much content and so much opinion that it can feel like an exhibition has opened, its content debated and closed within a heartbeat and you’ve missed it all. Branding on marketing posters rate permanent galleries as immediate ‘must sees’ and exhibitions posters now have stickered reminders of ‘last few weeks’. The countdown begins and suddenly you’re reminded more of what you haven’t seen than what you have.

Perhaps we’re not giving ourselves enough time to appreciate that museums are often little pockets where time can stand still. Often new permanent galleries are made to last upwards of thirty years, just because your friend or colleague has gone to comment on it doesn’t mean that you’re missing out. You’ll just be there when the crowds have calmed and it really can be that location of sanctuary that we often speak about.

As for social media, it’s a never ending stream and we’re never going to be able to catch every conversation, every debate and every single comment, but check in times like museum hour really help to focus attention. It’s great to spend the 8-9pm on a Monday engaging with the conversation and feeling like you are part of the community for the hour or a couple of minutes of it. Then there are great functions like storify that many bloggers use to capture the information that interests them into one stream. It’s a great way of reading up on the tweet s that has just disappeared into your timeline.

Perhaps this article is more of a reminder to be more gentle on myself. Sometimes it’s more important to leave the office at lunchtimes but sometimes you have to let life get in your way and miss out on the latest trend. I hope it can serve as guidance for us museum lovers and part time bloggers to not put too much pressure on ourselves and just take a moment. Blogging is there to enjoy and not to encapsulate at the end of the day most of us are not getting paid for it! Blogging is not a race to a the next opening, take some time to enjoy reading our fellows interpretations and thoughts or take advantage of museums online accessibility and when you have a moment pop in.

But remember when you are there physically or digitally, take it all in and enjoy.

Peace out  

Why do museums need to think about Copyright?

Mentioning copyright law to anyone working in the creative industries and they shudder and immediately dismiss it with 'I don't get it' and 'it's too complex' and to some degree yes it is but it's there to protect the intangible in the tangible being of artistic works.

Is this how you feel about copyright? 

Edvard Munch - The Scream 1910.

 Fortunately this came out of copyright this year. 

The Museum’s very being lies in its duty to protect and care for collection of physical objects. We're used to displaying, packing, storing and conserving tangible things but when it comes to the intangible idea of copyright Many museum professionals will quickly claim ignorance, yet copyright law in its basic state is simple – a material object can be owned by a museum or gallery but its intellectual property right, its intangible, immaterial  rights can belong to another. In the UK Copyright is assigned to the author of the work at the moment it is created, it can be literary, dramatic, musical or artistic provided that the work is original.

It is difficult to get your head round at first, especially at the introduction of infringements and fair dealings, but the very notion that guides museum professionals experiences with objects are based in the non-physical information an object can give us - it's scholarly value, it's provenance, it's associated costs and the information it tells us about a time or a culture. So should we really find it such a daunting law?

 

Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902) 

Well, there is no denying that copyright law can be complex; it has many layers that mean that you can be liable for infringement by taking a picture of a painting in an exhibition or downloading an image from a website for use on social media such as in the case of National Portrait Gallery vs Wikimedia. But what does this mean for museums? As the owners of the physical artistic works they do not always own the copyright too, this makes creating exhibition catalogues, images for collections online and press and marketing a bit more difficult than you may have first though. Along with strict checks on due diligence and provenance registration staff  often have to ask copyright holders permission to ensure that we can take images of the artwork when it is on display,  unfortunately this can sometimes even having to spend hours seeking out the correct copyright holder or licensee to ensure that they are not infringing on its copyright.

Up until last year it was infringement for a museum to even take preservation copies of works i.e. taking photographs for records management or condition reports. Thankfully the changes in June 2014 last year have helped museums considerable and a fair dealing law that makes it possible to preserve any type of copyrighted work held in the permanent collection. Additionally a new clause that institutions can allow access to all types of works by electronic means at a ‘dedicated terminal for research and private study’ however I’m yet to see an institution do this?

Description of the points system for judging English rabbits, from The American Pet Stock Standard of Perfection and Official Guide to the American Fur Fanciers’ Association (1915)

Have patience though, copyright does not last forever. Duration generally last the lifetime of the author plus seventy years - so I doubt we will still be around when Hirst or Emin's work ocomes out of copyright. But once out of this time frame the works enter the public domain and each year the fantastic online journal the public domain review (http://publicdomainreview.org/)  pick their fave authors whose work will enter the public domain that year the class of 2015 includes Mondrian, Ian Flemming and Munch.

We as museum professionals love to look after collections property rights so don’t shy away from looking after their intellectual property rights too they can be just as important.

 Please note that this article is not a full breakdown of copyright. Check out the Act for details. 

The Ministry Explains It All: Getting into museums

Recently it was the annual #Askacurator day, when twitter was flooded with questions from the public aimed at museums elusive behind the scenes staff. Questions ranged from how do museums utilize social media to what’s your favourite object in the collection, but the one question which came up again and again was, ‘How do you get a job in a museum?’

So young, so naive...

It’s a question that comes up a lot, and one which has been at the centre of a lot of debate of late. Do you need a museums studies degree to work in a museum? Is there really another way to get into the sector besides being able to do years of unpaid internships? Do you need to have an art history background? Are there any early career jobs even available in museums?

It seems every year the museum job market is flooded with a new generation of bright young things, fresh from degrees in art history, archaeology, history and museum studies who all seem to be asking the same question: what do I need to do to be a museum curator?

The almost universal response is: do a lot of voluntary work, followed almost immediately by some facts about how badly paid the sector is, how few and far between jobs are, how limited your career trajectory will be. But none of this will stem the tide of the number of people keen to work in museums. Why? Because working in museums may be underpaid and frustrating but it is absolutely brilliant.

So now we’ve given you the realistic down to earth warning about working in museums. Are you still there? Still think you have what it takes to make it in museums? In that case, the Ministry have created for you two brand new pages that bring together all our advice and insider know how.

The 'Top tips for getting into museums' page provides the Ministry's top 10 pieces of advice for how you can get yourself a museum job. We aren't saying its easy, or that we know best, but we thought it would be best to share and share alike our own experiences of working in the industry.

And if that wasn't enough, we've also pulled together a list of Ministry Resources for Museum People to bring together information from across the web that you'll need to know to get into museums or to just move up the ladder. You can look forward to links to museum job pages, details of subject specialist networks, more info on museum databases and much more.

We hope you enjoy the pages and please let us know if you have any tips you think we've missed out! 

Exclusive Interview with the Glass Jar of Moles

The Ministry has obtained an exclusive interview with the one and only Glass Jar of Moles: Grant Museum icon, twitter celebrity and political activist. In order to honor this surely momentous occasion, we have opted to record a short podcast in which we read out the moles replies just for you. Interview hosted by Steve Cross of Museums Showoff and Bright Club fame, mole voices played by The Ministry’s own co-founders Kristin and Terri.

This podcast has it all: Terri doing a Victorian match-girl impression, Kristin doing a Honey Boo Boo impression, moles talking about zombie zoos and their dead willies, Steve laughing with disbelief and embarrassment at having been involved at all.

To listen to the interview follow this link: https://soundcloud.com/songsfromtheshows/glassjarofmoles

You can follow the moles @GlassJarofMoles, Steve can be found @steve_x or @MuseumsShowoff and as always, the Ministry via @curiositytweet

In case you were a bit distracted by the ridiculous accents, here is a transcript of what the moles had to say...

Do you feel that you represent spirit of the Grant Museum?
In the sense that we are a jar of dead pickled moles we feel we completely represent the spirit of the Grant Museum.  Not only do we keep absolutely still during working hours to ensure the museum does not transform from a zoology museum to weird zombie zoo. We also love science, adventure, history and providing experiential learning to humans.


Why do you think you have become so popular on twitter?
Let’s be honest, when moles are alive they are not loved. We are more likely to be panged with a shovel to the head than ever be on a ‘cute’ youtube video. But when we are dead, pickled and in a sweet jar suddenly we are well loved. Its a mystery to us modest moles why we are loved so much, and we do have such great followers. We can only suspect that it is our unusualness, our #molefacts, our cheekiness, our rants and the initial publicity provided by Claire Warwick (@clhw) through her Digital Humanities conferences that draws in so many lovely people.


What do you hope people take away from your twitter musings?
We hope to spread a bit of kindness and silliness, we do this through our love of writing #molepuns and #molefacts. As a mixed jar of moles, promoting equality whether gender, fur colour or position in the jar is important to us. We look at humans and we can’t see the same sort of empathy for others that is present in our equal jar. Often instead we see suffering. We hope that we can set some sort of example that humans should develop equality  amongst themselves and stop being so rotten to each other. Wealth and education would be a good place to start.

How do the moles feel the current government's attitude towards
heritage funding?
As moles we’re not really experts in the area of funding, though we are very sad that other exhibits like us might have to disappear from sight. But more generally we do worry a lot of what this government is doing to British humans. They have an ideological agenda that is causing a lot of suffering, only set to get worse after April. We optimistically hope that this government is just a horrible blip and that with time humans will understand the importance of their wellbeing and bringing the richest and poorest closer together in bringing about their happiness.

If the moles could change one thing about the world what would it be?

Global inequality (or if we can’t have that it would be great to stop Chris mole’s curry habit. It would be nice not to have to jacuzzi in the jar all of the time).


What does the juice that the moles are in taste like?
Day to day the juice tastes like death and sea water. Not pleasant. But of a weekend a close friends help us to fill it with Gin, tonic and lime. Keeps us afloat and happy.

Which Grant Museum objects do you hate and resent having to share space with?
We mostly love all of our pals in the museum, though the stuffed fish are a bit up themselves. Our best friend in the museum is half-faced chimp, he has only half a face, half a brain and no hands. Life is a bit tough for him as his remaining brain often falls out, but we read each other stories and often debate politics.
Oh and we hate all naked mole rats, horrible things they are. Never compare us to them.


How many of you are there?
Official Grant Museum figures say 18. We say 32, plus 4 roaming guests. We have developed one collective twitter consciousness.

What’s the scariest jar in the Grant Museum? #museumfear

Some say the anaconda skeleton, but we just use it as an adventure playground.

What historical figure would you like to bang? ( Terri expects
conflicting answers)
Hm... It is very difficult with our dead willies and dead vaginas to bang anything these days (If you are unsure of what that looks like do visit the Hunterian museum and look for the pickled syphilitic penis). Gross.

In the mole world of history we would love to bang the moles that took important roles in human history. Our favourites include Stalin’s mustache, Lady Godivas foof, and that birthmark that sat on Gorbachev's head.

Thank you from the Ministry (plus creepy taxidermy)

Today we mark a very special occasion. This is our 50th post in the 5 months since we embarked on this crazy scheme to explore the fun side of museum life. We have 500 followers and our site has over 5,000 views. We can't express how much it means to us that you all read our ideas, chat to us on twitter, write brilliant posts for the site, come and say hi at events, and in general support the Ministry and our mission. 

What we have learned then is this: museum people are f**cking brilliant. You crazy beautiful bastards you. We can't get enough of your thoughts and opinions, your dynamism, your cheekiness and of course your intelligence. London has such a thriving museum community and we are just so excited to be a part of it.

So here's to many more event postings, crazy hash-tags, exhibition reviews and snarky comments to come. Keep reading, spread the word, submit your post ideas and as ever get curious!

Lots of love,

The Ministry

And now for your viewing pleasure and in no way directly inspired by Museums Showoff (cough) here are some pictures of ridiculous taxidermy: