When we visit an art gallery or a museum, we can appreciate many works. The people who help the viewers to appreciate the works and plan an exhibition are curators. In Korea, curator is not a familiar job. However, curators do various work such as planning exhibitions and preserving many works or artifacts, and curators are classified depending on their function. Also, to be curator, qualifications are needed. Therefore, we’ll look into the job of a curator.
Curators plan and host exhibitions in a museum or art gallery, and also they purchase, collect, and preserve works or artifacts. Curators don’t explain the works. Depending on the curator’s function, curators are classified into museum curators and art gallery curators. Museum curators preserve all the artifacts in a museum, host exhibitions, and also participate in excavating artifacts. On the other hand, art gallery curators decide on the theme of an exhibition and select the artist and the works.
A curator requires qualifications. Curators are classified into assistant curators and regular curators of levels 1, 2, and 3. Assistant curators have to pass a qualifying examination and require experience working in an institution such as a museum or a gallery. The common subjects of the qualifying examination are museology and a foreign language, and the optional subjects are archeology, art history, and the study of art. Among these optional subjects, you select two subjects and have to pass the test.
A level 3 curator has to have a Ph.D. degree, a master’s degree related to history, archeology, or art, and 4 years’ experience. A level 2 curator has to have more than 5 years’ experience as a level 3 curator. A level 1 curator has to have more than 7 years’ experience as a level 2 curator.
If spending on culture and the arts continuously increases, jobs for curators will also increase. Also, museums and art galleries lack manpower. Curators can solve the problem of lack of manpower. Therefore, because of increasing demand and the problem of lack of manpower, curators will be needed.
