Meet museum curator Owen
Owen looks after the Eyam Museum collection as a curator.
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I’m Owen Roberts and I’m the curator of Eyam Museum in Derbyshire.
Well I’ve been working in the heritage sector, for about ten years or so. And prior to that, I’d worked in the NHS for many years in public health in a range of different project management and programme management roles. And it was that experience that I was able to use to move into a different sector.
Using history, looking at history, finding inspiration for today and the future through what’s happened in the past that I’m particularly interested in, and bringing stories to life from the past that I really enjoy about being a curator.
My primary role is to look after the collection, which is what we call the number of objects that the museum own.
Things need to be kept securely in the appropriate packaging. Also need to be kept the right sort of temperature. Different objects need different environments as well, and different handling. So for example, you’ve probably seen examples of people wearing gloves to touch things in museums.
So the sort of skills that you need to be a curator, a lot of them are about administration.
So if you understand record keeping and you appreciate the need for it, then you’re already part of the way there, because a lot of the role is about documentation.
It’s about knowing what objects you have in the collection, knowing where they are, knowing who gave them to you, knowing when they were given to you. That becomes very important for the interpretation, because it’s the story behind an object that will help bring it to life for visitors.
There’s a lot of detailed knowledge, but it’s detailed knowledge that you can learn.