Case studies: Art gallery officer: Yvonne

In her current post, Yvonne is responsible for both the art gallery exhibitions and events programme and for the permanent fine art collection. She also line-manages three members of staff, volunteers and freelancers.

I graduated with a BA Hons in History from Durham University in 1999 and went on to study an MA in Museum Studies from University of Leicester, graduating in 2001. I first decided I wanted to work in museums and galleries after a sixth form work placement in a museum. My choice of degree was linked to pursuing this. I liked the idea of working with real objects.

I have been in my current post since 2004. This job follows other posts working in museums and galleries. Working in quite small venues, I gained quite a lot of varied experience in a fairly short amount of time which was crucial to getting my current post.

Gaining some kind of unpaid work experience in museums/galleries is usually the way in. I did my sixth form work placement as well as another placement at the Museum of London which I organised in the summer holidays during my undergraduate degree. My MA course also had a compulsory work placement element for two months. If you want to pick up a range of experience, I would recommend working in smaller venues as you usually get to be involved in a variety of activities. Working in a large venue tends to be more specialised.

The main transferable skills from my undergraduate degree are research and writing skills. Knowledge of a particular historical period is also useful for setting the context for when a painting was produced and knowing more about what is depicted.

My MA was a mixture of the theoretical and practical and has been useful to build on once working in the sector.

There is an increasing emphasis on audience development and working with communities across our local borough. We have to tie in with strategic agendas for the borough such as increasing health and well-being, community cohesion, improving community safety and so on. Working in partnership with other agencies and organisations is an increasingly important way of delivering our work.

In my current post, I am responsible for both the art gallery exhibitions and events programme and for the permanent fine art collection. I line-manage three members of staff, volunteers and freelancers. A large part of the role is essentially project management.

I also do work curating exhibitions. This involves research, working with the artist/s, commissioning new work, putting together the interpretation for the exhibition, managing budgets, fundraising, marketing, devising events for specific audiences such as families, and installing exhibitions with the art gallery team.

My work managing the permanent collection involves working with the collections management database, arranging loans to other institutions, arranging conservation of works from the collection, improving storage of the collection, answering enquiries and so on.

I really enjoy the variety of my role. There are elements which are very hands-on (installing exhibitions, working with the collections in storage) and elements which are desk-based. You are working for the good of the local community and bringing art to new audiences. In terms of less favourable parts of the job, I would say that quite often there is too much to do and not enough time!

In the future, I would consider moving to a larger institution to a role such as head of exhibitions.