Museum Registrar Job Description

A museum must run smoothly, a lot of people work together to preserve its content and keep everything organized. One of the people who works in keeping the museum organized is the museum registrar. This person is assigned with the tasks that are somehow like the duties of a museum curator or a director. Museum registrars are mostly designated in a specific field in history and directly reports to the curator.

What is a Museum Registrar?

A museum registrar must be keeping track on the pieces of arts and ensures that it is safely kept. It is significant because a lot of the artworks are aged and delicate to handle, and also very priceless. It is also their duty to ensure that the historical piece travels safely. For special exhibitions, museums usually send their historical piece to other museums, so that other people from different places can see that certain historical piece and enjoy it’s history.

Duties of a Museum Registrar

• Museums registrars are responsible for cultivating certain documents, like who is the donator, the age of a historical piece, whether the historical piece is on loan, and the estimated value of the historical piece. Additionally, museum registrars are also tasked to evaluate some files in order to create a statistical report, like calculating the exhibition’s popularity.
• Museum registrars create records for the pieces, photograph the item, inspect it for damage, and prepare packages for shipping. Keeping track of all these historical objects is portion of a museum registrar’s duties. Museum registrars are also responsible in assisting in moving items from and to the storage of the museum to ensure the proper handling of it.
• Museum registrars must stay current with museum trends and be knowledgeable as possible about potential museum artifacts. Including research on related subjects, the past owner, and value. When a museum obtains a new historical object, museum registrars search about the origin of that certain historical piece before the museum officially acquires it.

Work Condition of a Museum Registrar

• Work takes place in a museum that includes an office setting, storage facility and exhibit areas. There must be no hazards exist in an office setting to avoid mishandling of artifacts.
• The ongoing responsibilities of a museum registrar include planning, installation and rotation of artifacts.
• A museum registrar must understand museum methods and techniques used in historical research. The ability to plan and review the work of staffs and a good working-relationship with others is also needed to become a museum registrar.

Educational Requirements of a Museum Registrar

Educational requirements to meet by a museum registrar; must have a degree of museum management, history major, arts major, or studio arts major. At least two years of experience in a museum or art gallery.

Occupation and Progress of a Museum Registrar

Museum registrars always have several kinds of ongoing legal paperwork to do, as well as incoming and outgoing loan contracts. Museum registrars supervise the assistant registrars who do a variety of tasks, especially when taking the inventories of different art collections.

Today’s museum registrar must have good computer skills, including word processing, database management, spreadsheet, and digital imaging. Museum registrar enjoys the variety of work, and has the satisfaction of taking care for irreplaceable pieces of arts.

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