Curatorial Workplace Wellbeing Survey: Report

Background

The Association for Art History began a curatorial initiative in 2019 to promote, advance and advocate for the value of curatorial work in the UK.

In response to suggestions from constituents in the curatorial community, we launched a national survey about the workplace wellbeing of art curators in November 2023. The survey was developed by the Association’s Curatorial Committee, consisting of current and former curators working for a range of organisations, and it built on the work of the Museums Association, which had undertaken a survey of the museum sector about workforce wellbeing a year earlier. Our survey, however, focuses specifically on the workplace wellbeing of art curators. 

Click here for a downloadable PDF of the full report; and here for a summary.

Wellbeing is associated with feelings of happiness, health and comfort, as well as a sense of purpose, inclusion and being valued. The workplace can have a major impact on people’s sense of wellbeing, positively and negatively. Good workforce wellbeing is an indicator of a well-functioning and productive organisation; poor workforce wellbeing is associated with individual distress, widespread low morale, reduced creativity and innovation, and a loss of knowledge and skills through individuals leaving the sector. We believe that the workplace wellbeing of art curators is therefore an indicator, albeit one of many, of the relative vitality and resilience of art galleries and museums today.

READ THE FULL REPORT

Curatorial Workplace Wellbeing Survey: A Summary

Methodology

Our survey sought to identify:

• How art curators felt about their workplace wellbeing
• Whether it had improved or worsened in recent years
• The key factors impacting workplace wellbeing, either positively or negatively
• What organisational factors affected workplace wellbeing
• Whether certain aspects of the role of art curator affected workplace wellbeing
• What more did curators wish to see done.

The survey, which ran for five weeks, was completed by 266 art curators. Respondents ranged in rank from senior managers to curatorial assistants, with the majority being curators (45%) and senior curators (24%). All types of organisations were represented, with the national museums providing a large proportion of respondents (49%).  A quarter came from a combination of university, regional, local and council-run museums and galleries. 17% worked for independent organisations, and 8% of respondents were freelancers. 81% of respondents were women, 14% were men, and 5% preferred not to say.

Engagement with the survey was particularly strong, with 1,381 comments in the free text boxes, present in 17 of the survey’s 27 wellbeing-related questions. 

Key Findings

The great majority of respondents (93%) felt that curatorial workplace wellbeing is an issue that needs to be highlighted and addressed.

81% felt that they had encountered challenges to their workplace wellbeing. Most (63%) said their workplace morale, including their wellbeing, had become worse over the last three years.

Most (75%) felt that their organisations did not take their wellbeing seriously. 66% thought talking about wellbeing problems with a line manager was ‘not very effective’ or ‘not effective’. Respondents’ comments indicated that, although some organisations had begun to address wellbeing issues for staff in general, there were many that did not, or did not do so effectively. Very few respondents felt positively about their organisation’s workplace wellbeing programmes.

A majority identified the following organisational factors as detrimental to their workplace wellbeing:

• excessive workload (70%)
• poor pay (67%)
• lack of clear paths towards career progression (59%)
• poor management (57%)
• not being valued by senior management (56%).

In their comments, respondents highlighted the impact on their wellbeing of pandemic-era staff cuts and restructuring: they felt they faced excessive work demands and were expected to work long hours without additional pay. Many regarded their salaries as not commensurate with their years of education (and associated debt), experience and skills, and some reported that they struggled to make ends meet, particularly if living in London or also facing commuting and childcare costs. Respondents also pointed to what they saw as longstanding, systemic problems with the sector, including a diminution of respect for the curatorial role and associated expertise, and misperceptions about the multi-faceted and often pressured demands of curatorial work today.

The top factors contributing positively to wellbeing were thought to be (in order): flexible working; good work relationships; and a sense of making a personal contribution. The most effective steps individuals had taken to improve their workplace wellbeing included (in order): developing knowledge and skills; making time to enjoy the collection or benefits offered by the organisation; changing their working practices; and practising greater self-care, both in and out of the workplace.

Respondents did not see particular aspects of modern curatorship as inimical to their wellbeing. They identified working with artworks, artists and the public as positive factors, although some said they found dealing increasingly with complex social and political issues emotionally taxing and others noted how much the curatorial role had changed and expanded in recent decades, creating new pressures on them.

Respondents asked the Association for Art History to continue to highlight this issue of workplace wellbeing for art curators, feeling it was not sufficiently recognised. Several asked the Association to help make the case for better pay and offer guidelines for improving workplace wellbeing for curators.

Recommendations

1. Prioritise workplace wellbeing

We recommend organisations explicitly prioritise the wellbeing of all staff, creating what the Museums Association has called, in its recommendations, a ‘culture of care’ for staff, freelancers and volunteers. In this respect, it would be helpful if, to help validate this topic as a key matter of general concern, senior figures spoke openly about the importance of workplace wellbeing and how they themselves manage this in their lives.

• Be led by the needs of curators

We recognise that this ‘culture of care’ may look different for different organisations, professions and individuals. We therefore recommend that organisations engage directly with different teams, recognising their different needs, and ask individuals what measures would help most. A one-size-fits-all approach to workplace wellbeing may seem just and efficient but misses the point that people’s experience of the workplace is likely to differ according to their roles.  

Supporting curators, we feel, requires an acknowledgement of the changes to the role in recent years and the increased pressure many now face, whether through taking on additional responsibilities because of staff cuts or engaging with sensitive social and political issues (for example, climate change and colonial legacies). This acknowledgement should encompass the provision of practical guidance regarding the role of curators in relation to such areas and advanced academic development and training for those who want or need to deepen their engagement with those topics, as well as, ideally, space for discussion with colleagues inside and outside their institutions. Furthermore, as a majority of curators feel increased wellbeing when working with art, artists and the public, a strategy that aims to improve the workplace wellbeing of curators will look to remove, or at least significantly reduce the impact of, factors that take curators away from these wellbeing-enhancing aspects of their role.

Studies show that wellbeing is associated with, for example, a sense of participating in valued activities, working towards personal goals, having a sense of agency, receiving   appreciation for achievement, and enjoying positive social relationships. Paying close attention to these factors in setting targets fosters a wellbeing-focused workplace culture in general. Concern for curatorial workplace wellbeing, however, may also require adjustments to the ways tasks are framed and scheduled to suit better the needs of curators through the different phases of their working lives. It is significant here that, of all measures taken by management, respondents showed the greatest appreciation for post-pandemic hybrid working schedules, which particularly help those dealing with family responsibilities and/or needing longer periods of unbroken time for creative thinking, research and writing. 

• Control workloads

Most of the survey respondents expressed the view that their workloads were excessive and that they were routinely working long hours. Expectations surrounding curatorial roles need urgently to be reviewed and adjusted to fit normal contracted hours. This may well necessitate some radical rethinking about what museums and galleries can deliver with current staffing, and indeed a consideration of the potential benefits of reducing contracted hours to ease stress and facilitate self-directed wellbeing measures. For their part, individual staff members need to monitor how they can best protect and prioritise their wellbeing in relation to what is expected of them, but the control of workloads is, above all, an issue requiring policy guidance and action by directors and senior managers.

• Improve pay

The Museums Association found that from 2017 to 2022 the Consumer Price Index, the government’s preferred measure of inflation, outpaced the salary growth of curators and collection management staff particularly badly – by no less than 17%. Curatorial salaries, we believe, must be raised to better reflect their professional expertise and the required investment in post-graduate education. This is often similar to that expected for academics, who are typically significantly better paid. We encourage museums and galleries to undertake salary benchmarking for curators which takes the pay for similarly-educated academics and professionals outside of the museum sector, including the Civil Service, into account. Salaries, of course, affect pensions, and without significant improvement the effect of paying curators less than similarly qualified colleagues in other spheres will be to perpetuate disparities in living standards beyond the workplace itself. As the majority of curators are women, such disparities reflect and contribute to an unacceptable gender pay gap in the UK.

• Offer paths towards career progression

We encourage the leaders of museums and galleries to recognise curators’ frustration and stress in working for institutions in which there appear no obvious routes towards promotion (beyond waiting for someone to leave and hoping to be appointed in their place). Consider creating different grades within the curatorial cadre and publishing staff structures within teams and departments so that new recruits can see how they might progress. Also commit to a programme of better preparing curators for long careers in the sector and possibly specialised management and research roles through, for example, mentoring, training courses, shadowing, secondments, academic development and greater research time. In this regard, the major national museums, may be best placed to model, on behalf of the sector, new approaches to the training and development of curators through the different stages of their careers.

• Respect curatorial work

Many curators reported feeling that their voice, knowledge and skills now count for less in their institutions than in the past. We urge leaders of arts organisations openly to show respect for and highlight the value of curatorial expertise and knowledge to help foster a workplace atmosphere that is conducive to public service and the development of expertise – as well as, crucially, the workplace wellbeing of curators. Appropriate resourcing and acknowledging that expertise requires time to be developed are significant markers of respect.

• Offer access to employee assistance schemes, including paid counselling

Work can be challenging but should not damage people’s physical or mental health. We applaud those organisations that already offer a range of wellbeing-related benefits, including optional paid counselling for staff diagnosed with work-related stress, anxiety or depression, and urge more to do so.

Next Steps

The Association for Art History will communicate the findings of the survey to leaders of museums and art organisations and encourage action to be taken to support curatorial workplace wellbeing through addressing the cultural, resource and structural issues cited in the survey’s findings.

In addition, we hope to work with partner organisations to organise workshops and discussions about the matters raised in the survey and best practices. We will continue to provide wellbeing resources on our website.

To address more systemic problems around workload and pay, we will work on our own and with partners to make the case to funders and policymakers for increased resources for museums and galleries and for better remuneration for curators. 

Finally, we will share the report as widely as possible within the curatorial community to help raise awareness of this issue, one of the survey’s prime aims. In all of this, we hope that individual curators will recognise that they are not alone in concerns they may have about their workplace wellbeing and will find this survey a useful tool in advocating for changes at an individual or institutional level. 

April 2024