John Klausmeyer

How does one go about getting a job at a museum? What was your career path?

Getting a job at a museum is pretty open-ended, there's really no specific path you need to take, and it's neat that way. I personally have a Masters in Medical Illustration, so that demonstrated my background in science and art, but again, exhibit work is very open-ended. You just need to show that you're a good painter or have some molding experience. It's really about your skill, not so much about the degree. A job in exhibit work is a lot different than getting a research job at the museum, though. That requires a good amount of knowledge in the particular field of expertise, so having a degree is important for that kind of thing.

I know you teach a class on Museum curating—can you talk about that?

Of course. The class I teach is called Museum Methods 406. It's taught in the winter term every year. Anyone can take it—there are no prerequisites—and it can count for an elective credit if you're enrolled in the College of LS&A. We spend most of the class making molds and casts, and the last class I had we worked on relabeling a lot of the things throughout the museum.

Can you tell us more about the museum?

The Ruthven Exhibit Museum is located at the intersection of Church St. and Washtenaw Ct.. We're open all week long, Mondays to Saturdays from 9:00AM to 5:00PM, and on Sundays from 12:00PM to 5:00PM. On the weekends we also host public Planetarium shows and we also have open public tours throughout the day, which are free.

We're one of the bigger natural history museums in the country, one of the others being the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois. We're actually the biggest natural history museum in the state of Michigan, though, and we have a really weird mix of old and new things here, so it's definitely worth checking out, especially because some of our funding comes from LS&A students' tuition.

We also hire students throughout the year to be tour guides, so there are plenty of job opportunities as well. All you need is a decent background in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

John gave Bryan a tour of the Exhibit Museum. Check out his experience!
Making The Museum: Part I
Making The Museum: Part II
Making The Museum: Part III
Making The Museum: Part IV