tenure for museum curators

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The International Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship (1985), 4, 3 17-328 Tenure for Museum Curators DOUGLAS A. JOHNSTON Many people, including curators themselves, express surprise at the notion of tenure for curators. This surprise is based upon a subjective feeling that tenure is unique to the academic environment (and is a product of the status of the academic professions). This need not be true; nor is it justification for denying tenure to curators. First, the historical development of academic tenure does not suggest that the practice is exclusively the domain of college and university faculty. Second, the rationale for academic tenure is equally applicable to curators. Third, the general objections to tenure, which are applied to college and university faculty, are based upon misconceptions of the nature of tenure, and how it would work in the museum context. What follows describes these three factors and supports tenure for curators with parallels between the rise of college and university tenure and current developments in curatorial work. The article then reviews situations of undue influence over museum curators, clears up misconceptions about tenure which have been used to deny tenure to curators, and concludes with an examination of why tenure alone is not enough to preserve curatorial independence. Historical Development of Academic Tenure The position of college and university teacher has not always enjoyed the reverence it does today. Francis Lieber, one of the better-paid professors in the antebellum south, was once heard to exclaim, after plunging over a pile of bricks on a nocturnal chase after some aberrant students: ‘Mein gott! all dis for two tousand dollars’. Prior to the Civil War, tenure had depended on local custom. A professor held office indefinitely on good behavior, but had no legal status and could be fired at will, without a hearing. In these earlier years of the development of American colleges and universities, tenure was not so necessary: professional standards of faculty were low, and the rewards were correspondingly miserly; teachers could come and go more easily than in modern colleges and universities; and faculty members did not experience the same demands of commitment to the teaching profession. In addition, the costs of preparation for teaching were low in time and in money. This made transition to other fields, like law and the ministry, not such a sacrifice as it would be later. The costs of career ‘opportunity’ foregone in order to prepare oneself for a position as college or university faculty member were not nearly so high then as they have come to be today. By 19 18, Thorstein Veblen, in The Hirelings in America, could argue that business influence on universities had reduced the professors to the status of business ‘hirelings’, the college or university was no longer a community, and the faculty was no longer a body of peers. Reflecting business practices, the university became a bureaucratic organization. Despite the rigidity and other problems associated with bureaucracies, its business organization scheme enhanced the opportunities for faculty. It required the writing of rules that defined the rights and obligations of the managers (university trustees) and the hirelings (university faculty). This set the stage for formal institutionalization of tenure. Business influence on academic institution organization 0260-4779/85/04 03 17-12 103.00 @ 1985 Buttewonh &Co (Publishers) Ltd

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Page 1: Tenure for museum curators

The International Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship (1985), 4, 3 17-328

Tenure for Museum Curators

DOUGLAS A. JOHNSTON

Many people, including curators themselves, express surprise at the notion of tenure for curators. This surprise is based upon a subjective feeling that tenure is unique to the academic environment (and is a product of the status of the academic professions). This need not be true; nor is it justification for denying tenure to curators. First, the historical development of academic tenure does not suggest that the practice is exclusively the domain of college and university faculty. Second, the rationale for academic tenure is equally applicable to curators. Third, the general objections to tenure, which are applied to college and university faculty, are based upon misconceptions of the nature of tenure, and how it would work in the museum context. What follows describes these three factors and supports tenure for curators with parallels between the rise of college and university tenure and current developments in curatorial work. The article then reviews situations of undue influence over museum curators, clears up misconceptions about tenure which have been used to deny tenure to curators, and concludes with an examination of why tenure alone is not enough to preserve curatorial independence.

Historical Development of Academic Tenure

The position of college and university teacher has not always enjoyed the reverence it does today. Francis Lieber, one of the better-paid professors in the antebellum south, was once heard to exclaim, after plunging over a pile of bricks on a nocturnal chase after some aberrant students: ‘Mein gott! all dis for two tousand dollars’. Prior to the Civil War, tenure had depended on local custom. A professor held office indefinitely on good behavior, but had no legal status and could be fired at will, without a hearing. In these earlier years of the development of American colleges and universities, tenure was not so necessary: professional standards of faculty were low, and the rewards were correspondingly miserly; teachers could come and go more easily than in modern colleges and universities; and faculty members did not experience the same demands of commitment to the teaching profession. In addition, the costs of preparation for teaching were low in time and in money. This made transition to other fields, like law and the ministry, not such a sacrifice as it would be later. The costs of career ‘opportunity’ foregone in order to prepare oneself for a position as college or university faculty member were not nearly so high then as they have come to be today.

By 19 18, Thorstein Veblen, in The Hirelings in America, could argue that business influence on universities had reduced the professors to the status of business ‘hirelings’, the college or university was no longer a community, and the faculty was no longer a body of peers. Reflecting business practices, the university became a bureaucratic organization. Despite the rigidity and other problems associated with bureaucracies, its business organization scheme enhanced the opportunities for faculty. It required the writing of rules that defined the rights and obligations of the managers (university trustees) and the hirelings (university faculty). This set the stage for formal institutionalization of tenure. Business influence on academic institution organization

0260-4779/85/04 03 17-12 103.00 @ 1985 Buttewonh &Co (Publishers) Ltd

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coincided with a saturation of the academic labor market at the turn of the century. This increased the demand for tenure as job holders felt less secure since they were more easily replaced. It found support in the movement for job security in civil service and government, and seniority by employees in industry.

Yet the movement to develop the practice of tenure in the academic world involved more than the financial demands of the more trying economic situation for teachers. Fundamentally, the movement did not gain focus until development of the power and prestige of faculty associations, notably the AAUP in 19 15. When trustees were persuaded to cooperate with faculty, then the bargaining position was formalized in a way which allowed progress to be made; however, this was not without a fight. How far faculty had to go at this time is illustrated by the case of a faculty committee’s effort to obtain information about a colleague’s dismissal. Their question to the President of Lafayette College in 19 13 was: ‘May we express the hope that you will be good enough to let the committee have, from yourself personally, some more specific statement in regard to certain facts in this case’. The question was perfunctorily answered by the President: ‘I trust you will pardon me if I say that your committee has no relation to me personally which would justify my making a personal statement to you with regard to these matters’.

The efforts towards tenure were slow to yield results, winning a battle here and there. During the twenties, much time and energy was spent formulating a code of academic freedom and tenure. Nevertheless, most colleges and universities did not incorporate such a statement on tenure into their bylaws except in very rare instances. In fact, it was rejected by one board after another as a violation of their charter provisions. Although many presidents and trustees accepted the spirit, they baulked at the formal machinery, and it was estimated that by 19 3 9 only six or seven boards of trustees in the entire United States had adopted the statement formally. It was not until 1938 that the probationary period of six years was specified after which the teacher, if retained, was to be entitled to permanent tenure. These efforts have led today to the AAUP’s endorsement of collective bargaining, and its affiliated chapters are to be found on most campuses of colleges and universities.’

Today’s Historical Parallel of Curators with Academics

Unlike American professors, curators have no imagined record of an original pristine high estate.* However, today’s curators find themselves in a position no different from academic faculty after the turn of the century in three important respects: (1) characterization of their professional status as hirelings; (2) employment in the museum business organization; and (3) recognition of the need for a collective association and code of professional employment standards.

Although the development path of curatorial professionalism has not been as clearly charted as the academic, its members’ characterization as ‘hirelings’ is not so far from the truth. Many curators feel insecure and find themselves easily replaced. Their inquiries today about questionable practices of museum management in relation to matters of professional concern would probably be met with the same incredulous reaction as that of the President of Lafayette College in 1913. As museums grow more businesslike and sophisticated in their bureaucratic organization and professional practices, the standards and responsibilities of curators have been growing. Curators can come and go less easily than their predecessors. Professional career decisions of curators require commitment and extensive preparation without ready transfer to other fields of work. The idea that tenure protects the investment of people who have paid a high cost in education and career opportunity to be available for employment applies with equal strength in the case of curators today.

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DOUGLAS A. JOHNSTON 319

Yet why have curators made no concerted move to establish tenured positions for themselves? The fact that they may lack the organizational mechanism to develop their own power and prestige may be the reason for this. However, it is not in itself a reason to dismiss the need and propriety of tenure for curators: the legal and philosophical bases of academic tenure apply equally to curators, and illustrate clearly why tenure is justified for the profession.

Applicability of the Legal Basis of Academic Tenure

‘If men were angels, no government would be necessary. Experience has taught the necessity of auxiliary precautions’ (The Federalist).

In college and university administration, legally enforceable tenure is a critically important ‘auxiliary precaution’. The dangers, common to the faculty of universities in a business-oriented culture, now exist for curators. The business standard of museum operation will rate curatorial skill, like scholarship, only by its quantity, not its quality; it will relate curatorial personality only by its docility, not its imagination; curatorial services only by their cost and not their contribution to understanding and appreciation of art. This is simply the result of a business cost- effectiveness determination. Therefore, it is imperative that legally enforceable tenure should be set as a counterpoint against it. From a legal perspective, it is the only effective safeguard. Review of the legal status of faculty tenure gives a sound basis for comparison of the likely legal context for curators. Early professors argued that they had a ‘free hold’ in the corporation with which they taught. This concept of tenure for life was based on English common law of a free hold in land by which a tenant, in return for services to the lord, had certain rights in the property. When tested in court, this common-law doctrine was rejected in its application to the position of professors, Professors were held to have no legal ownership interest in the university or college corporations which they served.r

Then, in 182 7, the visitors of Phillips Academy in Andover removed James Murdock from his professorship. The court held that it was the obligation solely of the college to decide whether reasons existed for dismissal The court reviewed the matter to see that the professor had his common-law right to a fair hearing. In doing so, the court implied that a professor was something more than an employee: ‘We hold that no man can be deprived of his office, which is valuable property, without having the offense with which he is charged, fully and plainly and substantially and formally described to him’ uames Murdock v. Phillips Academy in Andover, 24 Mass. Reports (7 pick) 303 (1828)]. Unfortunately this notion of a professor being ‘more than a professor’ did not outlast the Civil War. In fact, in some post-Civil War cases, the professors themselves actually sought status as employees as a means to have contractual protection against the abolition of their offices by legislators or trustees.4

By the turn of the century, the law came to state simply that the board of a college could remove any professor whenever the interest of the college required, and this became a condition of the employment of each professor. As tenure provisions of varying sorts began to appear in public and private colleges and universities, the courts began to uphold the rights of these institutions to enter into tenure agreements with faculty. At the same time, it was made equally clear that faculty possessed no inherent right to tenure as a consequence of their position. About this time, the issue of academic freedom became involved in court decisions involving tenure. Court decisions connected the notion of academic freedom with freedom of speech and freedom of association. This was a means by which the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association were used to bolster the notion of academic tenure.’ Nevertheless, today it is fairly safe to say that tenure can be legally defended where an adequate contract has been entered into and the Board of Trustees, making that contract, has been given clear authority by the legislature to do so. This means that tenure is rooted both in contract and in constitutional

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provisions. At the same time, both freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are protected rights under the constitution and may be used in tandem to defend faculty job security. These constitutional defenses are also employed by way of certain civil rights acts.

There is therefore nothing inherent in the legal basis of academic tenure which would preclude its application to the museum context. Legally, that argument of a valid contractual arrangement between employer and employee is as justified in the museum context as it is for faculty. Moreover, the supporting argument of freedom of association and speech is likely to deserve defense as much in the museum context as in a faculty context. The question then is whether from a contractual point of view tenure provisions are as justified for curators as for faculty. Examination of the philosophical basis of academia reveals that they are.

Applicability of the Philosophical Basis of Academic Tenure

The issue of academic freedom, raised in court cases, has been the primary justification for tenure. In addition to the preservation of academic freedom, there are two other justifications for tenure: the first lies in the long-term commitment of college and university teaching; and the other, closely related, is the sense of belonging in the university atmosphere. Each of these basic philosophical justifications is equally applicable to museum curators.

Academic Freedom

In the college and university context, it is argued that academic freedom means that professors, who are more independent, are thus more willing to take risks in their academic efforts and more willing to be innovative in their approaches to studying critical issues. At the same time, peer review motivates them to higher levels of achievement and performance. The traditional academic freedom function of tenure is expressed as an effort to encourage and maximize the freedom of the professional scholar to the benefit of his professional community through dissemination of innovative perspectives without the pressure to accommodate one’s work to conventional wisdom. An individual who is subject to termination without showing professional irresponsibility or incapacity will hesitate publicly to expose his own perspectives.

Threats to academic freedom come from political pressures by state legislators and from pressures brought by the financial benefactors of private colleges and universities. For university administrators, the loss of the support of either can be viewed as a critical loss. They therefore may put a variety of pressures upon faculty members to conform to standards and notions commonly accepted by the public at large and by those who hold economic power over them.

Long-term Professional Commitment

Set against these pressures, tenure encourages the development of specialized learning and professional expertise by providing a reasonable assurance against the risk of summary termination. After completing the full gamut of .professional preparation, an individual appointed to the faculty of an institution has a legitimate interest in assurance of employment. Individuals who are subject to termination will hesitate to expose themselves to loss of job at the point where they have developed their skills and made an extended commitment in one discipline, which will have diminished their opportunities to do something else with their lives or to start all over again in a wholely different kind of career. The counterpart loss to society in this situation is to deprive it of whatever innovations and new discoveries such professionals would have had to offer.

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Sense of Belonging

DOUGLAS A. JOHNSTON 321

Related to this is the importance of a sense of belonging in employment in colleges and universities. Studies in psychology show that interest in work, and consequently productivity, tend to be higher when the workers feel that they are an important part of the organization which they serve. People in the professions are equally influenced by this simple human desire. It is especially true with work that is non-routine and depends upon the enthusiasm and imagination of the employee. But a sense of belonging depends upon an assurance that the basis of service is deep and that service will be continued as long as reasonable standards of adequate performance are maintained. The best form of this assurance is tenure.

Application to Curatorial Professionals

These three rationales-(I) academic freedom, (2) professional commitment, and (3) need for a sense of belonging-are all equally applicable to the task of curators.

Museums, like colleges and universities, may be used as political footballs. Curators may champion unpopular causes in the arts. They are therefore susceptible to pressure from the same legislators as are faculty members in public institutions. Even more so are they subject to pressures from private benefactors. This is true in public as well as private museums where the selected boards of trustees are often large, if not prime, contributors to the financial support of the museum. The public museum curator simply has a double source of pressure as compared to his private museum counterpart. Likewise, the second basic justification of academic tenure, that of long-term professional commitment, applies to the curatorial profession. Like the professions of law, medicine and academics, the curatorial professions require an extended period of preparation. The curator gives his entire person to his field of service, not merely a technical or manual skill. Having entered a lifetime profession, a person should be given adequate opportunity to practice his art and to demonstrate his capacities.

Once admitted to the profession, a medical doctor or lawyer or academician is given full permission to practice, and is subject to disbarment only for the most serious of professional errors and after full and open hearing. Curators, with approximately the same amount of training required, should be given the same rights. Like teachers, curators are faced with a basic difference in the economic character of their service. The curator serves individuals in groups rather than as single clients, and the income received is in the form of salary. They, therefore, must be associated with a museum and the opportunity to serve is dependent upon authority vested in one person or a small number of persons.

From the legal point of view the curator who received an appointment and is paid a salary, like a professor, is looked upon as an employee of the institution rather than as a professional servant. The right of dismissal has been looked upon as inherent in the administrative structure. In many places that point of view is supported by statute. The unfortunate result is that curators may be barred, in effect, from practicing their profession because of the judgment of a few individuals without a hearing and possibly on the basis of scant evidence.

Like academics, curators accept the necessity of securing an appointment in order to practice their profession. They accept the requirement of a probationary period in their work. They accept the idea that they cannot insist upon establishing a practice wherever they please or where they are not invited. But the preservation of a professional status and the maintenance of high standards of performance require a security of tenure not available if administrators and governing boards can exercise arbitrary power to dismiss curators.

Closely related to the principle of professionalism is the importance of a sense of belonging. The curator’s work is critically dependent upon imagination in its development. The curator

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who is unaffected by factors that diminish his feeling a part of his museum is rare. Highly productive efforts in collections and research are dependent upon the existence of a general feeling among curators that they are part of the institution, that they can identify their interest with its interest, and that their successes are its successes. But a sense of belonging depends upon an assurance that the ties of service are deep and that individuals may retain their association with a museum as long as their service meets reasonable standards of performance. As with colleges and universities, assurance does not come from satisfying one person or committee, but through the judgment of ones peers. The tenure system provides a means whereby each new member of a museum’s curatorial staff may become fully associated with the museum upon critical evaluation by peers. Amongst a curator’s peers the risk of abuse in making such a decision is least likely to arise. Certainly it is understood that a peer committee can be intolerant. However, given the fact that a decision must be made according to some standard, the alternatives to peer group hearings seem worse. Additionally, the peer group method provides significant checks and balances (Boyd, 1985).

Undue Influence over Museum Curators

How real is the concern about undue influence over museum curators? In ‘The Scramble for Museum Sponsors: Is Curatorial Independence for Sale?’ (Art in America, January 197 7) author Lee Rosenbaum cites several extant examples of potential for interference. Rosenbaum says the growth of outside support for museums from corporations, foundations and governments may influence what we see. Museums which previously paid for most exhibits and other activities out of their general funds would now be unable to function without support for specific projects from the likes of Alcoa, Exxon, Phillip Morris, various state arts councils and the National Endowment of the Arts and Humanities (NEA).

In ‘The Great Curatorial Dimout’, Lawrence Alloway (Art Forum, May 1975) identified numerous pressures on curators including: (1) the desire to get along with the artist; (2) the necessity to keep good relations with the artist’s representatives and dealers through the necessity of maintaining collector contentment; (3) taste expectations emanating from the trustees and director; and (4) taste expectations of other members of the curator peer group. Due to the extent that museums are exhibiting the work of living artists there is a loss of control. In a 1963 arrangement of a Morris Lewis exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, Alloway stated in the catalog the number of paintings left by Morris Lewis at his death. His dealer had him change the figure to the phrase ‘a great number’ since his paintings were being sold at the time in terms of scarcity. A small example, yet another source of pressure for museum curators and one which undoubtedly one could not expect tenure alone to protect.

Henry Geldzahler defines the new role of director and curator as a Yiddish word schnorrer. Geldzahler explains ‘it means beggar’. He finds that sponsors may introduce a host of non- aesthetic considerations in the planning of museum programs. Corporations sponsor shows to enhance their public image, and federal and state agencies try to stay free of political pressure. Both may compromise artistic or scholarly excellence, and reduce the likelihood of adventurous shows and those that are high-profile or provocative. Selection panels go for the lowest common denominator, and fear supporting exhibitions that shock. Although disavowing any fear of controversy, NEA bureaucrats express relief when shows which ‘shock the hell out of the locals’ are never reported in the media: ‘Luckily we didn’t have to answer irate letters from congressmen or outraged citizens’.

Sponsors, when initiating exhibitions, can call the tune indirectly by denying museum curators the chance to modify their proposals. Mario Amaya of the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk told of the time when a corporation approached him to do a show of Venezuelan Indian

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DOUGLAS A. JOHNSTON 323

crafts. He proposed an alternative scheme, but it was rejected. Although a choice of alternatives is still within the discretion of the curator, the insistence upon preconceived notions of what sponsors may prefer may carry undue weight. If museum exhibitions show signs of sponsor influence, it is very conceivable that such influence will be felt in other areas as well, such as

acquisition and staffing. Some museums accept outside sponsorship of specific curatorships. When these professionals

owe their salaries to non-professionals, the potential damage to a museum’s integrity is great. Seattle Museum of Modern Art’s Charles Cowels was feared to be ‘coming to cram New York art down their throats’, a fear which he did little to allay with one of his first acts in Seattle, that of cancelling the museum’s annual juried show of Northwest Art. Cowels also turned down every item on the patrons’ suggested list of museum acquisitions. Cowels was successful in winning their support, but had he been unable to win them over, ‘I suppose my position would have been in some jeopardy’, he conceded.

Edward Fry, in ‘The Dilemmas of the Curator’, has stated that the museum curator, with regard to the structure of society and social institutions, is very much like a university professor, partly in and partly out of active society. He identifies three roles for a curator:

1. Caretaker-custodian of the nation’s cultural heritage-responsible for preservation, documentation and promulgation of the heritage;

2. Assembler of Cultural Traditions; 3. Ideologue-aiding a collection to demonstrate the development of modernism and the

structure of art.

Despite the overlap of each of these areas and the question of priority given to any of them, it is clear from his article that each is only effectively carried out where curatorial independence can be maintained. He shows that directors often make decisions without curatorial consultation, as a result of which the curators find themselves charged with responsibilities foreign to their own abilities and intellectual viewpoints. He describes the practice as implying ‘a view of the curator’s role as being purely technocratic and is comparable to the unlikely situation of a university departmental chairman treating its professors as research assistants’. Fry says:

. the museum curator is very much like a university professor . . the similarities between the curator and the professor are particularly evident in the caretaker phase of the museum’s existence. To the extent that a curator deals with modern and contemporary art, however, he is very much in the world and bears the responsibility of knowing not just art history but also the diverse issues and disciplines of modern life. Here, however, he stands at a tremendous disadvantage in comparison with his academic counterpart. Lacking the job security of tenure . . the museum curator is faced with the dilemma of overwhelming information input with insufficient time and facilities for evaluation. The result is all too often a form of capitulation either to an extension to the mythologies of art history, or to current art critical doctrines, or to the related pressures of the commercial art market. In all cases, however, the curator in this dilemma is impelled toward an abdication of his own intellectual faculties in favor of a role very similar to that of a stockbroker executing the commands and ideas of others in the manner of a technocrat. If museums are to function as one of the several, objective, disinterested foci for the ongoing cultural life of society, this structural dilemma must be resolved at least to the extent of establishing parity between the museum curator and the university professor.

Examples of interference with curatorial prerogatives have been documented by Muriel D. Christison in ‘Professional Practices in University Art Museums’ (Museum News, January 1980). These incidents resulted in requests for the replacement of the professional museum director.

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Other curators are subject to the same sorts of pressures. Included in the list are situations where:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

A non-museum department head secured an additional appointment as museum director and curator and then exercised his authority in ways that violated professional practices and ethics.

An oversight committee, composed almost entirely of non-museum-trained academics, was imposed upon the museum and without the sensitivity of a proper museum board of trustees restricted, delayed and competed with the curator’s professional judgments.

University fund-raising and public relations officials accepted unsuitable objects for the museum’s collections in order to oblige influential alumni.

Works of art were requisitioned for use in decorating personal offices and other areas where there was insufficient security and climate control.

Demands were made of the directors or curator to teach courses in other units, although this meant postponing and neglecting important museum duties, such as research, or cataloging, or collections.

Faculty have insisted on presentation of inappropriate exhibitions within the museum and have demanded to use the museum as a facility for the presentation of one-person faculty exhibitions with accompanying catalog.

There have been demands at short notice from faculty for display of museum objects without regard for the condition of the objects or staff time to arrange them properly.

Individual faculty members bypass the museum director in making recommendations to the university regarding allocation of museum purchasing funds.

The problems in the university situation have their counterparts in public and private museums because of the conflicting interests of those with influence over the museum’s operation. Miss Christison points to three circumstances which handicap professional practices in university museums:

1. Few university museums have their own boards of trustees to establish museum policy; rather the small museums are a part of the larger institution.

2. Many academic administrators realize that museum practice is a separate profession with policies, responsibilities, procedures and ethics necessarily somewhat different from those that govern the teaching profession, yet art museums have often found themselves under the authority of the head of an art department or school of art rather than a professional art administrator.

3. The peer structure that characterizes university organization creates an unstable situation for museums because of the pressure from other faculties to compromise on matters affecting museum professional standards.

In 19 7 9, the American Association of Museum Directors adopted personnel standards calling for the director to appoint his own staff and have equivalent rank and salary with faculty members having the same professional qualifications. Whether tenure should be likewise available to those curators selected by the director as part of meeting the requirement of entitling staff to equivalents of rank and salary with faculty members having the same professional qualifications in their own fields of specialization is left unsettled.

The case for tenure in university museums is supported by the purpose of university museums. In her article, ‘University Museum Staffs-Whom Do They Serve?‘, Mary Elizabeth King, Keeper of Collections at the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, urges university museums to serve as examples for other small and medium-size institutions. They should be leaders in museum research and particularly in museum training. Their staff should be

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professional. It seems logical therefore that the university museum staff curators should take a pre-eminent role in the movement to establish tenures at least in their own museums and then in other museums for which they are setting the standard. Currently curators of some university museums have academic appointments within the university. A small number of university museums employ curators who hold academic rank and tenure, even though they are not required to teach. In light of the points made in the above articles, it is clear that curators are not to be ranked with librarians or technical assistants, but rather with teaching faculty as far as salary and tenure are concerned.

Misconceptions of Tenure

Although it can be shown that (1) there is nothing inherent in academic tenure to make it exclusively applicable to faculty, and (2) the rationale of academic tenure applies with equal force to curators, curatorial tenure still faces the same objections as academic tenure. A large part of the objection to tenure for curators is based on a misconception of what tenure actually is. The demand by curators for tenure is fundamentally a demand for employment rules-specifically a contractual definition of the functions of the curator, uniform procedures for dismissal, and uniform standards for promotion.

Tenure lays no claim whatever to guarantee life-time employment. Rather, tenure provides only that no person, after having fulfilled a probationary period, may be dismissed without adequate cause. A presumption of competence must be rebutted by the employer. In this sense, it is unlike the civil service where the employee may file a grievance upon dismissal, though in practice even in the civil service the sympathetic review board often puts the burden of proof upon the employer. The standards of adequate cause, which are the basis for accountability for tenured professionals, are solely within the prerogative of the museum to determine through its own published rules, so long as the principles of tenure are not violated. A museum may provide for dismissal for specific misconduct or for failure to meet a specified norm of affirmative conduct. In short, there is not now, and never has been, a claim of tenure that insulates any professional from a fair accounting of his professional responsibilities within the museum. Incompetent curators are thereby shamed into quitting, while the fear of review motivates them to higher levels of achievement and performance.

In this sense, academic tenure is little different from the protection afforded civil servants, judges and private employees through collective bargaining agreements. Some curators have what amounts to civil service protection for their jobs, but this is not the same as tenure. It lacks the incentive to meet the standards of professional competence as applied by one’s peers. In this respect tenure is to be preferred to civil service protection by both directors and curators alike.

Safeguards of Tenure

There are numerous other safeguards within tenure in addition to the pressure of peer review. A museum director, like a department chairman, may veto tenure. The lengthy term of probationary service will provide the museum with sufficient experience to determine whether the curator is worthy of the presumption of professional fitness. Thereafter the burden shifts to the institution to show why, if at all, that curator should be fired. The presumption of the tenured curator’s professional capability is rebuttable exactly to the extent that the individual has fallen short of established standards.

Moreover, there are two circumstances where it would be appropriate to dismiss a tenured curator without finding fault with his capabilities. In a time of declining public support, the demand for curatorial services likewise declines, and the curator, although he possesses tenure,

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may have his services terminated. Not only may termination be based on financial closing of doors, but there may also be programmatic changes in the museum’s operation with which the tenured professional is either unable or unwilling to retrain and equip himself to be competent, as the museum adopts new programs. Tenure does not prohibit institutional change nor diminish avenues of coping with financial distress. Tenure is a limited statement that each employee, receiving it after a stipulated period of probationary service, is thought worthy of a rebuttable presumption of professional excellence in continuing service to the institution. Thereafter, when termination of services is sought for any reason inconsistent with that presumption, it requires only that the burden of justification be fairly discharged under conditions of due process by those with whom the decision properly rests (Van Alstyne, 197 1 a).

Tenure Alone Is Not Enough

The advancement of curatorial performance calls for curatorial freedom, security and place in the museum. Tenure is only one of the tools to ensure that. It is an important tool and a beginning, but while it is clear that tenure is not a guarantee of lifetime employment, the same limits of tenure make it clear that tenure alone is not the answer to all the needs of the professional curator as a museum professional. Curatorial freedom can be suppressed by means other than the threat of firing. A professional spirit for curators requires fair compensation, recognition of achievement, and opportunity for professional development. Their absence can have a detrimental effect just as surely as the absence of tenure.

Other conditions, such as lack of a role in decision-making, can result in a feeling that one is merely working for an institution, not a part of it. Academics have witnessed a transfer from exclusively trustee decision-making to shared control, with faculty bodies and faculty participation in all decision-making. The absence of this feature in the art museum reduces the likelihood of the acceptance of tenure as an important concept in improving the museum environment. It is as an explanation of why professors have tenure and are able to assert themselves to obtain tenure. It demonstrates the need for curatorial staff to consider the same organizational efforts.

At the same time, curators must be willing to accept additional burdens of their own. They must establish their own evaluative criteria for acquisition of tenure, including:

advanced degrees teaching experience research capacity publications professional organization participation compatibility with museum service to community

They must be adaptable, sensitive to diversity and receptive to innovation if they are to be allowed the comfort and security of tenure. If they are sincerely trying to enhance their museum’s work by securing a professional environment, then tenure must be viewed as a reward system and not just protection. Conversely, if tenure is viewed as a reward system, it increases the obligation of the curator to promote the advancement of his museum’s work. Although it has been argued above that this is precisely what tenure will enhance, it leaves with curators the obligation, as a peer group, to monitor and strictly enforce the peer group standards.

Conclusion

Museum directors analyze, rationalize and agonize before committing themselves to a work of art requiring an investment of $50000. Yet, in comparison, after the initial selection process,

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DOUGLAS A. JOHNSTON 327

the evaluation and making of recommendations regarding the training, compensation and career

path of a curator typically requires one piece of paper, reluctantly prepared in half an hour once a year. This difference in priorities is puzzling, particularly when one recognizes that a museum’s collection is simply the embodiment of its professional staffs skill. As with any expensive investment, choosing retaining curatorial employees requires considerable analysis and investigation as well as commitment to their support. Because a museum will limit the number of curators, it must ensure their independence and productivity through careful judgments about tenure.

Notes

1. See Henry M. Wriston, ‘Academic Freedom and Tenure’, AAUP Bulletin, xxv, June 1939, p. 329.

2 Hofstader shows that it is ‘a specious reading of the record to say that American professors fell from a pristine high

estate. Before the Civil War, courts refused to hold that professors were officers of the corporation with a permanent

right to their position’ (pp. 460-462). After the Civil War, professors claimed to be employees for the protection of

contractual obligations. But by the turn of the century, the contractuaI rule was that unless a statute provided

otherwise, the trustees of the college or university were empowered to dismiss professors at wiU and without a hearing

whenever the best interest of the college or university required (p. 465). At no point did professors hold a special

‘status’ in the eyes of the law. In fact they were put in a more helpless state with respect to their contractual power and

bargaining position with colleges and universities.

3. This argument was made in 1790 in the case of Reverend John Bracken v. William & Mary College. The court

accepted the position of the college that it was a private corporation and the person who composed it had no property interest in the corporation. A second attempt to use the free hold argument was made by Daniel Webster in the

Dartmouth College case in 18 19. Here, Webster was not defending the interest of professors against trustees but the

interest of the trustees against the legislature which had repealed the Darmouth charter and changed the composition

of the board of the college without its consent. Webster admitted that professors were accountable to the trustees and

could be hired and fired for good cause, but he argued that the legislature by appointing persons other than original

trustees to exercise this power over professors had deprived the professors of their ‘free hold’. The court ignored his

argument and the free hold argument was rarely heard from again. It cropped up in the minority decision of Judge

Dent in Hatiigan v. West Virginia University, 49 W.Va. 14 (1901).

4. In Butler v. Regents oftbe University (187 3), a professor sought to obtain status as an employee in order to recover

his salary. The court declined to declare him a public officer in any sense but did recognize that any obligation was

contractual.

S. A debate has arisen on whether there is a constitutionally protected right of tenure under those rights of speech and

assembly. Wilkey concludes there is. Van Alstyne is less confident of a constitutional basis for academic freedom.

Most courts concentrate on the employer-employee relationship of the institution and faculty member. Two recent

cases, Roth v. BoardofRegions (University of Wisconsin-OSHKOSH) and Sinderman v. Odessa Jr College in Texas, test

the legal protection of academic freedom outside of tenure.

See also Beck v. Communication Workers of America ( 19 79) and Abood V. Detroit Bdg Ed. ( 19 7 8) for the principle that the rights of free speech and association are rights common to any employment context.

The case of Harry Beck V. Communication Workers of America (March 16, 1979) held that a union collecting or

spending compulsory fees, for purposes other than collective bargaining, violated the constitutional rights of an

employee who objected. This holding was based on the view that spending mandatory ‘agency fees’ paid by the

employee was an infringement upon the rights to free speech and association. Similar protection exists for public

employees: Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1978), a US Supreme Court case. It appears from these cases, as weU as from Sinah-man, that the rights to free speech and association are principles common to any employment context

which, notwithstanding performance of the job, can be shown to have a relation to the need for free speech or

association.

References and Further Readings

AUoway, L. (1975). ‘The Great Curatorial Dimout’, Art Forum, May. Boyd, W. L. (1985). Personal communication from President of the Field Museum of Natural History to D. A.

Johnston, 9 July. Christison, M. D. (1980). ‘Professional Practices in University Art Museums’, Museum News, Iviii, p. 30. Fry, E. (197 1). ‘The Dilemmas of the Curator’, Art in America, xix, pp. 72-77.

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328 Tenure for Museum Curators

Hofstader, R. and Metzger, W. P. (1955). The Development of Acaakmic Freedom in the United States. New York:

Columbia University Press.

Ring, M. E. (1980). ‘University Museum Staffs-Whom Do They Serve?, Museum hkos, Iviii, pp. 24-29.

Rosenbaum, L. ‘The Scramble for Museum Sponsors: Is Curatorial Independence for Sale?‘, Art in America, lxv, pp.

10-14.

Stene, E. 0. (1955). ‘Bases of Academic Tenure’, AAUP Bulletin, xh, 584-589.

Van Alstyne, W. (197 la). ‘Tenure: A Summary, Explanation and “Defense” ‘, AAUP Bulletin, Ivii, pp. 328-337.

Van Aistyne, W. (197 1 b). ‘The Rights of Teachers and Professors’, in 7’be Rights ofAmericans: What Tbcy Are- What 7Ibey Should Be (N. Dorsen, ed.). New York: Pantheon.

Wriston, H. M. (1939). ‘Academic Freedom and Tenure’, AAUP Bulietin, xxv, p. 329.