Consider these scenarios:
For the Museum: Most cities have few museums. Jobs often have low turn over. With the dearth of jobs, professionals don’t leave museum jobs lightly. The manager, confronted with an open position, sees the chance to (finally) make real change. They are looking across the field for the BEST person. The manager has their pick nationally. Rather than focus on investing in and promoting within, the manager can look for a new person.
For the Job Seeker: The job seeker, on the other hand, knows that they will need to seek nationally because the options are small in your own town. You will likely need to leave home if you want to get a higher position. The chance of internal promotion is low. Moving is a requirement for promotion.
Being a Museum Professional
Museum professionals invest huge amounts of money into their education. Unlike other professional fields, only a fraction of museum professionals will earn high-level salaries. Going into the field is a huge gamble.
- Success is hard to quantify: People go in and work hard. But, hard work is not enough to ensure success. In some fields, hard work is easily connected to success. Accountants who can churn out tax returns like machines are seen as more successful.
- Success is subjective: Museums want to be able to bring in more visitors for less money while being the most academically rigorous (and ideally garnering an article in the Times), basically the Holy Grail. The path to this endpoint, however, is complicated, confusing, and subjective. Despite the many meetings where a colleague suggests they have the “right” answer to accomplish the grail, there is no single path to improving museums. There are good answers, better answers, and terrible answers–but there are no perfect answers. Museum professionals often feel like they are being measured against this idea of perfection that doesn’t exist.
- Success doesn’t mean profit: Museum professionals might impact millions of visitors over their lifetime. Their pay for this service is usually good vibes, and potentially professional street cred, but rarely money.
- Success often means placing the field ahead of family: In order to move into a higher pay grade, most professionals need to move. There are financial costs in moving, often not included in the hiring package. While moving can increase your earning potential, you need to have the stability financially to do that. (See graphic). There are many hidden “costs” to moving. You need to uproot your family. You need to be willing to live away from your family. You have to be willing and able to travel to see family.
The Effect on the Field
The Museum Hiring Culture:
- Develops a Split with Local Audiences: People who move to work can either grow bonds with their or feel disconnected/superior to their new community. Many museum professionals remain siloed in their work, surrounded by transplants such as themselves. Therefore, they might find themselves supported by people who are not connected to the community. Their work can be affected by an innate superiority about the local community. This individual attitude becomes infused into the work the museum produces.
- Promotes bad management: Museums are small networks, so a truly terrible person will never be able to escape their mistakes. But, average bad managers and self-obsessed jerks profit from a culture that eschews internal promotion. In the first couple years of work, most professionals are given some latitude for their failures. About three years in, their colleagues start to judge them. This is the point at which they can improve or leave. Instead of promoting a culture of self-improvement, the hiring culture effectively promotes people leaving (for more money) before improving.
- Depletes the Field: People might not be willing to move for promotions, and live in small markets, without the availability of local options. People might feel exhausted by the workload requirements. People might not be able to afford to do museum work, as the remuneration is often not a living wage.
- Prevents Diversity:
- Museum professionals without families are therefore more likely to be willing to move for a job (though their transitions are not without the stresses of developing new roots.) Managers then are often people without local roots and without children. They don’t understand the personal obligations of staff, demanding long evening and weekend hours. Therefore, the field unfairly supports those who are willing to put their job ahead of their family. (Remember diversity is not about race, and professionals with families is a form of diversity).
- The cost of moving means that people who have a greater buffer from families are more likely willing to move. The net result is that executive positions are more likely filled with those from higher economic classes.