Curator, Powerhouse Museum

Everyone has to start somewhere in a career and for Peter Cox that meant spending his first few months at the Powerhouse Museum sitting in a room writing descriptions of Matchbox cars.

Cox is now the curator responsible for Australian history and society at the Powerhouse Museum.

“For months I was sitting in a little room writing down descriptions and assigning numbers to Matchbox toys. It was a historic collection of Matchbox toys going right back to the beginning in the late 1940s,” he recalls. “I got to learn quite a bit about the history of Matchbox toys. Having catalogued them I knew all about them so they got me to curate the exhibition.”

Until that point, Cox had no museum experience. He had originally planned to become an academic. “I tried it and I enjoyed it but I wasn’t cut out for it,” he says.

“I didn’t know what path I was meant to follow and I think that you just need to try something and you might just fall into your niche.”

As a curator, Cox is responsible for identifying and acquiring objects for the museum’s collection. “We get offered things every day as donations, and I would say 98 per cent of them we have to politely decline because we have a very selective policy for how we add to the collection,” he says.

“Once you bring something in to the collection it has to be stored forever and it has to be properly looked after, documented and conserved. You have to make sure that something is worth putting those resources into before you put it
into the collection.”

The other part of his job is putting together some of the museum exhibitions. This includes determining the content as well as how the story will be told to the audience.

“You really need at least 12 months to develop the content,” he says. “For the first six months it’s usually just the curator who is developing the content but the closer you get to when the exhibition opens, more people join the team.”

“It’s quite a varied job and the thing I really love about it is going from one project to another that involves a different subject and learning about a subject that I might not have learnt about otherwise.”

Cox says volunteering can be a good way to start if you are interested in working for a museum. “If they are any good quite often it leads to employment,” he says.

Cox is currently working on an exhibition dedicated to the 50th anniversary of Australian television called, On the Box: Great Moments in Australian Television 1956-2006.

“I hope people leave this exhibition thinking, ‘Gee, I didn’t know Australia had such a rich history of television entertainment,’ … and they will come away being more familiar with some of the really great moments of Australian TV.”

How to be…
a curator
It is recommended you complete a degree in Arts or Science. It helps to have a Masters or PhD in Museum Studies or Arts Administration. Internships or work experience will give you an edge. For further details phone 02 9358 1760 or see mgnsw.org.au