KELSEY ALPAIO: You know that part
at the end of every episode where
I ask for your career crush?
For this episode, we took one of your suggestions, museum
curator.
I love museums, but the last thing
I'm thinking about when I'm walking through one
is the person who hung the frame up on the wall,
or the person who wrote the description
next to the masterpiece.
Turns out that's actually a good thing.
And I learned that when I started to dive into what
museum curators actually do.
In this episode I learned that it's really
about helping artists bring their ideas
to a general audience.
And although that's a noble mission, it's not always easy.
This is an extremely competitive industry,
and a fair salary can be hard to come by.
But if you're passionate about art,
and those challenges don't scare you,
keep watching to find out if you might
be a good fit for this career.
NATALIE BELL: My biggest pet peeve
is people who are walking backwards
while holding their phone without paying attention
to what's behind them.
Don't do that.
You'll break something.
KELSEY ALPAIO: That's Natalie Bell.
She's the curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center,
a contemporary art museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
So what exactly do museum curators do?
NATALIE BELL: One way of thinking about curatorial work
is, OK, you're a midwife.
You're helping an artist bring something into being.
You're also a translator.
You're maybe taking something that is primarily visual
and helping put it into language.
You're also telling a story and helping
people enter into something that might be new,
might be difficult, might be challenging.
But there's a story to be told there.
And it's your job to make them interested, and make them care,
give them a reason to care.
KELSEY ALPAIO: As a museum curator,
what does the day-to-day look like?
NATALIE BELL: The day-to-day can really range.
Most days I would say are desk days,
where I'm doing a lot of emailing, a lot of planning,
a lot of correspondence with people.
Conversations with artists are kind of one
of my favorite parts of any day.
KELSEY ALPAIO: As you can imagine,
there is a lot that goes into making an exhibit.
There's overseeing the transportation of the art.
There's making sure it gets installed properly.
Of course, there's making sure that the art
doesn't get damaged.
I wonder what in her mind makes a good exhibit.
NATALIE BELL: I'm often thinking about how the exhibition is
laid out, how it's organized.
That's sort of the basic thing.
Oftentimes I'm looking at who lent the work, where
has this come from.
Oh, wow, they loaned this from Japan.
Oh, this came from so-and-so's collection.
Spending a lot of time with the language around an exhibition.
How are they interpreting the work?
I also like watching what other people are doing in the space.
Are they spending lots of time with a certain thing?
What's catching their attention?
What are they connecting with, basically?
KELSEY ALPAIO: Natalie began her career by making art.
But she realized that she was better at interpreting it
than creating it, which is what led her to museum work.
NATALIE BELL: I'm not somebody who studied art history
or studied curating.
I did degrees in philosophy both times,
which is a little bit less conventional.
KELSEY ALPAIO: What is a fair starting salary?
What is typical in this industry?
And then what should you actually kind of strive for?
NATALIE BELL: It depends what city you're in, I think.
The American Association of Museums
has done a salary survey of the industry for a number of years.
That's a useful resource.
KELSEY ALPAIO: Got the survey.
Starting from if you're just entering the field
as a curatorial assistant, it says
in the low range is around $25,000,
and in the high range is around $46,000.
For assistant curator, low end is $31,000,
high end is $68,000.
And then senior curator, $42,000 is on the low end, $105,000
is on the high end.
And then for chief curator, which seems like the top dog
here, it's $34,000 on the low end,
and $107,000 on the high end.
How do you live off of $25,000 in a metropolitan area
or a city where a lot of these museums are located?
It just doesn't even seem possible.
And how do you do that?
Internships are an entryway into the museum world,
and Natalie herself interned at the New
Museum and the Guggenheim.
NATALIE BELL: I ended up doing internships
at both places at the same time.
Historically, internships have been really important
and a valuable stepping stone.
They've also been really difficult,
I think, for lots of people, because they've been unpaid.
That's changing now.
I think more people are committed
to paying their interns.
In my case, I was waitressing a lot,
and that was my other means.
KELSEY ALPAIO: Unpaid internships are tricky.
I took one in college, too, and worked at Old Navy on the side.
You do it for the experience and for the line on your resume,
and that's the trade-off.
But over the last few years, ideas around unpaid internships
have changed a lot.
And people are wondering if that trade-off is really worth it.
Someone who's interested in this profession
wants to take an internship, but it's unpaid.
Would you suggest that they take it for the experience,
or work somewhere else?
NATALIE BELL: You know, it's a personal choice.
I would say no.
And I wish I had held the line years ago,
but it was just not--
it was not something that people did at that time.
And I was really accustomed to just trying
to make things work, irregardless
of how difficult it was.
But yeah, it's a personal choice.
I think it depends on your own situation.
You might do an internship where you're just
researching provenance, or you're
looking at the images for a catalog that
will be published in two years.
And you're writing artist biographies for a show
that you'll never get to see.
So internships can give you some insight
behind the scenes in an institution,
but you might not really get hands-on experience
making a show.
What I would caution is that, in this industry,
starting salaries can be very low.
And one way that you get accustomed to that
is by starting out by not getting any salary at all.
KELSEY ALPAIO: So for these types of roles,
what do hiring managers really look for in candidates?
NATALIE BELL: Writing skills.
They look at, as with any job, a desire, and an interest,
and some evidence of that commitment.
One thing I've often told people who are interested in curating
but don't know how to get a start
is that you don't have to have a space.
You can curate a show in your apartment.
I want to make a show.
How can I make a show?
And then make it happen.
Get some friends together, and paint
the inside of your parents' garage,
and hang some of your friends work.
And then it's up to you if you want to take it further.
Do you want to write a press release for it?
Do you want to make a little chat book?
Do you want to invite somebody from your local paper to come?
All of these things then start to get your work off the ground
and give you also the confidence to know
that you have the capacity to do these things professionally.
KELSEY ALPAIO: This job can definitely
give you the creative fulfillment and connection
to art that few other careers can.
This industry is far from perfect.
It's a profession where you really have to love the work,
love what it means, and love what it can be.
So it sounds like it was a ton of work
for you to kind of keep going, to take
these unpaid internships, to waitress on the side.
What kept you, what motivated you to stay in this industry?
NATALIE BELL: Because I love art, and I love artists.
I can't picture feeling as fulfilled
working in other fields.
I think it just has this vast capacity for learning.
And I take pleasure in that, but I also take pleasure
in transmitting that through making exhibitions,
supporting the work of artists, and hopefully bringing
that to the public.
KELSEY ALPAIO: Thanks for watching.
Do you have a career crush?
Tell us about them in the comments,
and we'll see if we can talk to them for you.
Subscribe to our channel to see more interviews with people
actually living the dream.
Bye.