Photo: Sam Gehrke
To pay it forward—recalling the inaugural post of this series—is an ethos, action, or opportunity ever present in our lives. For me, the concept was internalized while in the midst of training for the medical field. Thoughtful mentors spent time and attention imparting what wisdom they had gained throughout their varied careers. Now on a different career path, new guides, like today’s guest, continue to lay the foundation for emerging museum professionals to grow.
Laurel V. McLaughlin (she/her/hers) is a Curator and the Director of the Collective Futures Fund at Tufts University Art Galleries. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Nick Nemeth (NN): My first question here, just to get us started off, is, can you provide background on what brought you to the career you’re in today? What’s your timeline that brings you to the present—education, work, experiences?
Laurel V. McLaughlin (LVM): Thank you for inviting me. So, with regard to a timeline, I was grateful and privileged to have the opportunity to go to museums as a kid. I grew up seeing exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and I’ll never forget the first time I heard a curator giving a walk-through on an audio recording, and I thought: “Oh, that’s so amazing. What is this career? Who gets to do this?” I was a precocious kid, so I just went to the visitor services folks, and I asked: “Is this your job? Where can I do this job?” I was a little young to really know about higher education, so they very graciously told me about the processes and various roles in the museum. Later in college, one of my first positions was an archives intern at the Barnes Foundation in the summer. I worked with the correspondence of Dr. Albert Barnes. His collecting practices piqued my interest since they seemed both troubling and intriguing. I became really curious about the motivations of institutions and why works are in permanent collections, who cares for them, and how publics are engaged through exhibitions and programming.
From there, I attended Wake Forest University. I double majored in English and Art History with a minor in Linguistics while on a Presidential Scholarship for Vocal Performance. While studying art history, I participated in internships at the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, which was an institution in the Winston-Salem region of North Carolina. When I came back home to Philadelphia in the summers, I applied for internships at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and also at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA)—the first museum and art school in the country. Those assistant positions and internships led me to apply to graduate school at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London for a specified Master’s focusing on global conceptualism. When I returned, I finished another master’s in the PhD program at Bryn Mawr, from which I just graduated in 2024.
NN: That’s incredible, thank you Laurel. Going off that, you elaborated on this a little bit, but throughout this process, was curatorial work the number one thing on your mind, or were there other ideas, particularly within museums, that pulled your attention at times, or did you always stay the course?
LVM: I think I was intrigued by curating because of the collaborative work with archivists, registrars, scholars, artists, and preparators. I considered other career paths, but once I got to the PhD program, I was pretty firmly set in curating—which was also an unusual choice because Bryn Mawr had historically produced professors. Some people even asked me, “Why are you in this program?,” because it’s so theoretically rigorous and materially driven. For me, the research and theoretical groundwork felt necessary for curating, in order to provide the kind of rigorous “care work” that contemporary art requires. I say care because “curate” etymologically means care, and this extends to the object and its material and conceptual integrity, and also to the artist! I always add that this was my path, but I think all walks in our field should contribute to curatorial practice. We need educator curators. We need artist curators. We need organizer curators. We need curator curators—or folks from curatorial programs. And we need art historian curators. For me, it just felt that I wanted to do the PhD. I wanted that chance to go back into archives as a scholar, and really do that research, which is what the PhD usually affords.
NN: I think that is interesting, though, to touch on too. Moving onto the PhD, the choice between curation and professorship. I guess it depends on what you’re interested in curating, but the choice of being a curator, and having to pursue a PhD versus an MA. I’ve heard such different things from so many people. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.
LVM: I think historically, unfortunately, there was a good amount of elitism—you shouldn’t be hired as a curator unless you had a PhD because that’s the highest level of education. I also encountered perspectives in academia, especially in art history departments, that curating is actually seen as a step down from professorial work. But tides are shifting—however slowly—as art history programs are becoming more open to the incorporation of curatorial work within their field of study.
Now, in terms of whether an applicant needs an MA or a PhD? It depends on the kind of institution that the person envisions working with. Generally speaking, in encyclopedic institutions, they typically want to see a PhD to do deep research on collections and original exhibitions. In places like university art galleries within an art school, like TUAG, it could be a PhD, or an MA, or a curatorial studies program, because they’re interested in experimental contemporary practices and engaging students pursuing artistic practices. And then there are myriad other ways to participate in curatorial ventures.
NN: Continuing that throughline of curation, and this is something I think every student who’s interested in curation wants to know, is the things you love about it. The kinds of things we’ll maybe say aren’t as obvious, versus the pitfalls that, again, are not things that people may think of when wanting to pursue curation.
LVM: I talk about this a lot with colleagues. One thing that’s not expected for folks who are interested in a curatorial career, is admin work. Most curators I know say that it’s about 60% of their work. Some people I know also say it’s closer to 80%. For me it’s about 60% and that’s a decent breakdown, especially within an institution that has so many layers like Tufts University. It can certainly compete with research and working with contemporary artists. But I try to see each admin decision and negotiation as an opportunity to advocate for artists and their work—which makes admin work more attuned to my goals. Of course, we can and should critique institutions and their bureaucrazy, but I think there was a time when I was more motivated to work outside of them to dismantle them. I learned about myself over the years that I’m more interested in reconfiguring them from the inside.
NN: Speaking of the museum as an institution, for this new generation of people coming into museums, how do you see them changing from ten or fifteen years ago?
LVM: I was thinking about this the other day–I guess my first internship was in 2011. First of all, things have changed. Labor conditions have changed. Institutions now acknowledge that an internship is labor, and you need to have HR regulations and pay. But also, from generation to generation, I think priorities have shifted. The field has thankfully become more open to interdisciplinary work, which is meaningful to me as a scholar pursuing research concerning performance and new media that often relies on the fields of performance studies and cultural studies. Speaking more to labor conditions, cultural workers are ready to acknowledge the collaboration and labor involved in museological work. For the latter for instance, we still need efforts to recognize highly skilled professionals, such as preparators, educators, and mountmakers—these people have trained in many different ways. They have vast experience that they bring to the profession, which makes exhibitions possible and their labor should be acknowledged and compensated fairly.
NN: I do have one final question, for the students entering the museum field, what are some life lessons you have for them at this point in your career? What should they be prioritizing now in a graduate program? Or even for the people who have graduated, or are searching for jobs, what would you recommend or say to them?
LVM: For those in graduate school, try to see both the internal system and view education as a tool. Do not get wrapped up in the internal politics, but try to recognize the larger community. So, if you’re here at Tufts University for instance, explore the connections it has to Greater Boston and the New England region, which is a vast network. Really try to connect with other colleagues in the region, because it’s very easy in an art history program to be insular. Go out and see screenings and exhibitions, apply to conferences, and introduce yourself at openings—even if it’s awkward—try to create lasting bonds. Because I really do think our field is very relational and built on trust, and the more people you can meet, the better you know how your practice and you as a person fit within it.
I would also say, as a student, even though you have the rigor of the program, there are external opportunities to which you should apply, like arts writing, which can help you develop your own perspective and voice within the field. Pitching to platforms like Boston Art Review, BOMB Magazine, and the Brooklyn Rail. Seek out mentors, both mentors who are further ahead of you in your professional track, but then, also peers. Peers can be mentors too. People who you admire in their writing and trading writing to be able to review. If you can create a peer review group—it’s something that I still lean on today, some of which I started in my first year of grad school—do it! So, I think maintaining those ties and helping each other out, because this field, frankly, has a lot of inequities that are really hard. If you have a supportive network, both within the field and then also outside the field then you can navigate through it. A nurturing network is so important.
And finally, I wanted to plug our current exhibition Ulises: Assembly on view through November 10th focused on the labor of bookworkers—speaking of labor! And then coming up, we have an exhibition, an archive and/or a repertoire, January 29–April 20, 2025 activating the Tufts Archival Research Center’s Mobius Inc. Collection through new commissions, responses, oral histories, and newly-digitized performance documentation in a reconsideration of the archive in light of the repertoire—what Diana Taylor understands as that which is potentially lost, erased, or left out of the archive. Stay tuned, and join us for these exhibitions and their programming!
