How to work in museums: useful hints for finding a museum job

One of the questions we are asked most often is, how can I work in a museum? The question does not have a simple answer, because it basically depends on the type of museum to which you aspire. We are therefore publishing a small, quick guide that we hope will help you in your search for a museum job. Working in a museum is possible, but that does not mean it is easy. You need appropriate qualifications, you need predisposition, passion and love for the subject of the museum, and you also need a little luck.

Let’s start by saying that museums are divided into public museums, private museums, and church museums (we do not deal with the latter in this post). Public museums can be operated by all state agencies: ministry, regions, provinces, municipalities. And public museums are accessed exclusively through competitions. The problem is that competitions are not held very often, and you always have to check official sources. As for museums run by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, there is a page where you can find all the competitions that are about to start or are taking place: click here to access. On the other hand, for museums managed by regions, provinces and municipalities, we advise you to regularly monitor the web pages of the competitions of the entity where you want to go to work, knowing that in any case the competitions are also published in the Official Gazette: at this link you will find the list of the official gazettes, which, as far as competitions are concerned, come out every Tuesday and Friday.

There are also public museums that are managed not directly by the entity that administers them, but by investee companies or sometimes by private companies that take care of ancillary services (such as bookshops, educational services, catering, and so on). So we suggest you keep an eye on the pages of Zètema, which takes care of Rome’s civic museums; Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, which, again in Rome, manages the Scuderie del Quirinale and the Palazzo delle Esposizioni; Fondazione Musei Senesi, which works on several museums in Siena and its province; and Coop Culture, which manages the services of many museums throughout Italy (Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, Turin, Siena, Genoa... ).

Another way to get a job in a public museum is through external outsourcing: in this case, these are mostly short-term and very circumscribed assignments (e.g., cataloguing, writing cultural heritage records, etc.), but they can be a first step to enter a museum with a more stable position. The museums of the Polo Museale Fiorentino have a web page, which is constantly updated, where they publish all the assignments under contract, and there are several every month. A number of public agencies use the assignments, so you have to monitor the appropriate pages on the websites. We list some of them below: Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (you can register at any time, by sending your resume, to the list of collaborators for entrusting technical assignments), Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei, Soprintendenza per i beni archeologici dell’Abruzzo, Soprintendenza per i beni storico-artistici delle province di Venezia, Belluno, Padova e Treviso, Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Pompei, Ercolano e Stabia.

There are also several public museums that host students for internship and apprenticeship periods. We list some of the superintendencies that have links for internships and apprenticeships on their websites: Lazio, Naples and Caserta, Venice and Lagoon, Pisa and Livorno. Also, don’t forget that many superintendencies apply directly to universities when they need interns: so consult the appropriate pages of your university regularly.

As for private museums, that is, managed by foundations or private companies, these hire through direct recruitment, so our advice is to consult the works with us page of the museum where you want to work or, if it is not present, get in touch directly with the institution to find out if there are any open positions (many private museums leave the possibility of sending your resume even if there are no open positions at the moment and selections are closed). The following is a list of private museums that have a “work with us” section: Ca’ la Ghironda - Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology - Children’s Museum of Rome - MAXXI - Gucci Museo - MaRT Trento and Rovereto - Museion in Bolzano - Pino Pascali Museum - Forte di Bard - Montalcino and Brunello Community Museum.

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.