Curator

By MARK STORY

Name: Chanel Clarke

Age: 30

Job title: Curator-Maori

Working hours: 9am-5pm Monday through Friday, occasional weekend or evening work setting up for events or new exhibitions - overtime paid in lieu.

Employer: Auckland Museum

Pay: Entry level for a starting graduate $40,000 through to $80,000-plus for a collections manager or museum director.

Qualifications: First degree graduates are taken on at an entry level, but master's degree or higher is preferred. After completing a master's in history I completed a post graduate diploma in museum studies.

Career prospects: Progression to management or director level within museums locally or overseas, researcher roles within tertiary institutions, self-employed consultant or exhibitor who works on contract.

Q. What do you do?

A. I look after the Maori, Pacific and foreign collections at the Auckland Museum. Key tasks include: helping to preserve collections for as long as we can, finding new ways to make collections more accessible to the public, storeroom cataloguing, and registering new objects that are on loan, gifted or bought at auction.

I also conduct customised tours for certain tertiary groups, including the Unitec weaving course. I'm often asked to provide closer access to collections for overseas researchers or visiting professors.

I also publish research work and make presentations at conferences. I'm also planning a symposium to help other Maori professionals [in this area] gain grass participation within iwi.

Q. Why did you choose this job?

A. Being chosen as a high school guide at the Auckland Art Gallery when the Te Maori exhibition returned to New Zealand from the United States in the late 1980s gave me a taste for this as a profession.

Fuelling that initial interest was the Te Maori Manaaki Taonga Trust scholarship I received - after completing my first degree - to train in the field of museum studies at graduate level.

Q. What skills do you need to become a curator?

A. Beyond the minimum academic requirements, you need good organisational skills and the ability to successfully handle many tasks simultaneously. As the financial rewards can take time, you need to be passionate about what you're doing, otherwise you'll lose interest.

Q. Best part of my job?

A. Acting as a guardian for collections that hold such historical significance for iwi and New Zealand is a real buzz.

It's really neat when people come in for the first time and see something that might have belonged to their forebears.

Exhibitions that require us to work alongside artists and weavers are always fun.

Q. Most challenging/difficult part of my job?

A. There's a huge gap between the collections we have and more recent Maori history. So the biggest challenge is working with iwi to reflect the contemporary history of Maori in New Zealand.

Underscoring that challenge is how to present the contemporary Maori story - especially to visitors beyond these shores. With people thin on the ground, maintaining such a large collection is an ongoing challenge.

Q. What sort of training do you get?

A. Ongoing training ranges from external managerial-type courses through to museum-specific training on things like how to register, handle and conserve objects.

Q. Any interesting one-off assignments?

A. Later this year I'm taking up a two-month grant funded by the American Association of Museums to catalogue the extensive Maori whaling collection at Peabody Essex Museum near Boston, Massachusetts, US.

Q. Advice to anyone interested in this career?

A. It took two years before I finally got into a museum position and another two years before I got to travel on the job - so you have to be patient.

Those who have bothered to volunteer for museum or similar work have always been the first pick of applicants when a curator's job come up. So make yourself known to museums and volunteer to help wherever possible.