Museum Work is Professional Work
- Sydney May
- 21 minutes ago
- 9 min read
How grassroots preservation became a profession—and why local knowledge still matters
"...being born in a community is not a professional qualification by itself."
We would not ask whether a doctor was born in our county before trusting that person to care for a patient. We would not insist that a teacher must have grown up in our town before teaching its children. We would ask whether that person is educated, ethical, attentive, and accountable—and whether they are willing to understand the people they serve.
Museum work is different from medicine and teaching in important ways. Museum professionals are not generally licensed by the state, and local knowledge holds a particularly important place in the study of community history. Still, these fields share a broad pattern. Each began long before today’s systems of formal education and professional standards. As the work became more complex and its responsibilities to the public became clearer, training, professional associations, ethical expectations, and accepted practices developed around it.
Museums followed that path, too. Many local institutions began with community members who cared enough to save what was being lost. That grassroots work remains essential, but good intentions alone cannot answer every question about research, ownership, preservation, interpretation, safety, or public trust. Professionalization did not replace community knowledge. It gave museums stronger tools for protecting that knowledge and using it responsibly.
Most visitors see only the public side of this work: an exhibit, a program, a tour, a social media post, or a conversation at the front desk. Behind it are research, documentation, planning, collections care, and ethical decisions that may remain entirely invisible.
Perhaps that is one reason museum work is still sometimes mistaken for a hobby rather than recognized as a profession.
To understand why the work requires more than simply knowing local stories—or having grown up nearby—we first need to consider what history actually is and how historians produce it.
First, A Quick Lesson in Historiography
That begins with a distinction that sounds simple but matters: the past and history are not exactly the same thing. The past is everything that happened before now. History is our effort to study, explain, and interpret that past using the evidence that survives.
That evidence can include letters, government records, newspapers, photographs, objects, buildings, oral histories, family records, archaeological materials, and much more. Every type of evidence has limits. A newspaper can contain errors or bias. A photograph shows only what was inside the frame. A government document reflects the purpose and viewpoint of the office that created it. A personal memory may preserve details found nowhere else, but memory can also change over time.
Historians do not simply collect facts and repeat them. We ask who created a source, why it was created, what it tells us, what it leaves out, and how it compares with other evidence. We build interpretations that must remain grounded in verifiable information.
Historiography is the study of how history has been written and interpreted. It asks how different historians have approached the same subject, what evidence they used, what questions they considered important, and how their conclusions changed over time. Interpretations can change when new sources are discovered, when old sources are reconsidered, or when researchers finally ask about people whose experiences earlier historians ignored.
That does not mean history is merely a matter of opinion. The American Historical Association distinguishes historical interpretation from unsupported opinion: historical claims must be tested against evidence and debated through accepted methods. More than one interpretation may fit the available evidence, but not every claim is equally well supported.
This matters in a museum because museums do not simply display the past. We make choices about what to collect, what to preserve, what to exhibit, and how to explain it. Those choices shape the histories visitors encounter. Responsible museum work makes that process evidence-based, transparent, and open to correction.
Museums Began with People who Cared
Many local museums and historical societies began because ordinary people recognized that photographs, documents, buildings, objects, and stories were disappearing. Families donated collections. Volunteers opened the doors, created exhibits, led tours, and kept important pieces of community history from being lost.
We still depend on that kind of care. Local history could not survive without residents, volunteers, descendants, donors, and community members willing to share what they know.
As collections grew, however, the work became more complicated. Who legally owns a donated object? What information needs to be recorded when it arrives? How do you safely store paper, textiles, photographs, metal, wood, or leather? What happens when an object contains mold, lead, arsenic, or another hazardous substance? Which stories are supported by evidence, and which have simply been repeated for generations? Whose experiences were never collected in the first place?
Good intentions do not answer those questions. Training, research, policy, and professional judgment do.
Edward P. Alexander's Museums in Motion, first published in 1979, offers a useful way to understand this development. The book first traces the histories of different kinds of museums and then turns to their major functions: collecting, conserving, exhibiting, interpreting and engaging, serving and acting, and sustaining professional practice. That structure makes an important point. A museum is not defined only by the objects inside it. It is also defined by what it does with those objects and by the responsibilities it accepts in doing that work.
The title itself is useful: museums are always in motion. Their missions, methods, audiences, technologies, and ethical responsibilities continue to develop. Professionalization is part of that movement.
The Field Became Organized
Museum workers began organizing nationally more than a century ago. The American Alliance of Museums traces its history to 1906, when museum leaders came together to exchange knowledge and develop better practices. The American Association for State and Local History grew from a conference established by the American Historical Association in 1904 and became an independent organization in 1940.
Those organizations connected museums and historical societies that had often been working alone. They helped establish shared expectations for collections care, research, governance, education, interpretation, and public service.
In 1971, the American Alliance of Museums granted its first accreditations. Museum accreditation is a peer-review process that examines whether an institution fulfills its mission and meets accepted standards. In 2009, AASLH created the Standards and Excellence Program for History Organizations, better known as STEPS, to help small and mid-sized history organizations assess their work and improve over time.
Professional standards were not created to separate museums from their communities. They were created to help museums serve those communities responsibly.
What Museum Professionals Actually Do
There is a great deal of museum work visitors may never see. Depending on their role, museum professionals may:
Research and interpret local history using reliable evidence.
Collect, catalog, preserve, and protect historic objects and records.
Develop exhibits, educational materials, tours, classes, and public programs.
Work with students, teachers, researchers, families, and community organizations.
Provide outreach through traveling exhibits, presentations, festivals, and partnerships.
Recruit and coordinate volunteers while building relationships with members and donors.
Raise funds through memberships, grants, sponsorships, and special events.
Manage communications, marketing, social media, visitor services, finances, facilities, and daily administration.
Evaluate the museum’s work, respond to community feedback, and plan for its future.
The International Council of Museums defines museums as institutions that research, collect, conserve, interpret, and exhibit heritage. It also states that museums should operate ethically, professionally, and with the participation of communities. The American Alliance of Museums requires interpretive content to be based on appropriate research and expects primary research to follow scholarly standards.
These standards matter in very practical ways. A mislabeled photograph can give a family the wrong identification for generations. Poor storage can permanently destroy a document. An artifact with no recorded history can lose most of its research value. A dramatic story repeated without evidence can eventually be accepted as fact. An exhibit based on only one viewpoint can leave entire groups of people out of their own community's history. Professional museum practice cannot eliminate every mistake, but it gives us a responsible way to prevent, identify, and correct them.
Training Matters—But So Does Humility
Museum work draws from history, public history, archives, education, anthropology, archaeology, conservation, nonprofit administration, communications, exhibit design, and many other disciplines. Professionals may enter the field through graduate programs, certificates, internships, apprenticeships, or years of supervised experience.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that archivists, curators, and conservators typically need a related master's degree. Museum technicians generally need a bachelor's degree. AASLH's 2025 National Survey of History Practitioners found that more than two-thirds of respondents held either a master's degree or a doctorate.
A degree does not make anyone all-knowing, and professional training should never become an excuse to dismiss the public. At its best, training teaches us how to ask better questions, evaluate evidence, document uncertainty, care for materials, recognize ethical problems, and keep learning.
That last part is important. Museum work is never finished. Preservation science advances. Laws and ethical standards change. Technology changes how collections are recorded and accessed. New research challenges older conclusions. Communities ask better questions about whose stories have been saved and whose have been ignored. A good museum professional should be willing to learn from all of it.
Do You Have To Be Local To Tell Local History?
This question comes up more often than people may realize.
Local knowledge is incredibly important. Longtime residents carry memories, relationships, family histories, language, and an understanding of place that may never appear in an official record. Museums rely on residents to identify photographs, donate collections, share oral histories, correct mistakes, and point researchers toward sources they might otherwise miss.
At the same time, being born in a community is not a professional qualification by itself. Being born somewhere else does not prevent a person from researching, preserving, or interpreting that community’s history responsibly. After all, one of America’s enduring ideals is that people should not be limited by where they were born or by the circumstances of their birth.
There is no major national museum-workforce study that tells us how many museum professionals were born in the county where they now work; at least, none that have been found by this author just yet. The available studies focus on education, experience, professional roles, pay, workplace conditions, and commitment to the field. AASLH's 2025 survey included nearly 3,700 history practitioners, and nine in ten said their work was meaningful.
Museum professionals regularly work with histories that are not personally their own. Our responsibility is not to claim ownership of those histories. It is to research carefully, listen to the people who do have lived experience, document our sources, invite participation, acknowledge what we do not know, and remain accountable when something needs to be corrected.
Local knowledge and professional expertise are not opposing sides. The strongest local history depends on both.
Being a Profession Means Being Accountable
Respecting museum work as a profession does not mean museum professionals should be above criticism. Actually, it means the opposite.
Museums should be able to explain how they know what they claim to know. They should have policies for collections, ethics, emergencies, and institutional planning. They should document decisions, welcome credible corrections, and protect the objects and information placed in their care. They should remember that collections are held for public benefit, not personal use.
Professional organizations developed standards and codes of ethics because museums hold public trust. The American Alliance of Museums explains that ethics and standards promote accountability, strengthen decision-making, and demonstrate that an institution is worthy of that trust. AASLH also describes history organizations and practitioners as working in the public trust.
So, no, professional respect does not mean accepting every museum statement without question. It means recognizing that responsible museum work follows methods and obligations that can be examined, tested, and improved.
We Need Each Other
Local museums still depend on the grassroots energy that created them. We need volunteers, residents, descendants, donors, members, researchers, teachers, students, and visitors. We need people who remember, people who ask questions, and people willing to tell us when we have missed something.
Professional staff are part of that network, whether they were born nearby or came to the community later. Their work is not simply to repeat familiar stories. It is to preserve evidence, investigate questions, care for collections, make history accessible, and sometimes complicate what we thought we knew.
Done well, museum work connects memory with documentation, and community knowledge with professional responsibility. It protects what has been entrusted to us while making room for better research and a fuller understanding of the past.
That is important work. It is skilled work. And it deserves to be respected as a profession.
Sources and Further Reading
Alexander, Edward P., Mary Alexander, and Juilee Decker. Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums. 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.
American Historical Association: Criteria for Standards in History
American Alliance of Museums: Ethics, Standards, and Professional Practices
American Association for State and Local History: About AASLH
American Association for State and Local History: History Workforce
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Archivists, Curators, and Museum Workers
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