Meriel Jeater: Curator

Profile

Name: Meriel Jeater
Job title: Curator
Department: Early London History and Collections

What is your role as Curator?

I have a wide variety of elements to my job as curator in the Early Department. I assist the senior curators with the development of the Museum’s galleries, such as the Medieval London Gallery. I also curate temporary exhibitions – my most recent project was the London’s Burning exhibition about the Great Fire of London, which I also project-managed.

I contribute to the Museum’s events programme with a number of different talks, tours and object handling sessions for adult and family audiences. I also talk to external bodies about London’s history and museums, speaking at conferences, local society meetings, and school or university career days.

I am the volunteer coordinator for my department, so I interview potential volunteers, schedule in their placements and supervise them while they are here.

I help to care for and catalogue the collections and provide access to items for researchers. I support the Conservation and Information Resources departments with the organisation of loans to other institutions, and sometimes courier objects when they are sent to external exhibitions.

I answer enquiries from members of the public and identify objects brought into the Museum.

I write articles for magazines and other publications and talk to the media about aspects of London history – for example, last year I was the finds expert on the Time Team Big Royal Dig at Buckingham palace in August 2006 – I got to help dig up the Queen’s back garden!

Gallery maintenance is another part of my role – helping to clean the displays, checking for insects and other pests and arranging for repairs.

What were you doing before this?

I studied archaeology and ancient history at the University of Birmingham, decided that I didn’t like digging (too much like hard work) so went into museums instead. I did an MA in Museology at the University of East Anglia and went on to get a part time job at London’s Transport Museum. This was very good experience but not really my area of interest – I was cataloguing Jubilee Line extension posters, which prepared me very well for the tedium of museum documentation.

Why did you decide to become a Curator at the Museum?

When I saw the job advertisement for an assistant curator in the Early London Department I jumped at it. It was my ideal position - great museum with an international reputation, fabulous collection and a fascinating and varied job. It meant also I could work with beautiful archaeological and historical objects without having to get my hands dirty or get sunstroke digging them up.

Have you always wanted to do this and why?

From about the age of ten I wanted to be an archaeologist and I’ve always been interested in history since being dragged around Greek temples and medieval churches by my parents as soon as I could walk. I can’t imagine doing a job which wasn’t history-related.

What do you love about your job?

So many things! I love the variety, the fantastic objects in the collections, being creative, working with lots of different departments across the Museum and the fact that I am constantly learning new things everyday. In my job I have the opportunity to undertake research so I am adding to my knowledge of London’s history all the time. I also enjoy working with the public - no tour group is ever the same and the children especially are endlessly entertaining.

A lot of my work is quite challenging - I frequently have to do things I have never done before, which can be scary but also a great experience. One of my favourite parts of my job is working on exhibitions, particularly the interactives - I think that exhibitions should be fun to visit (depending, of course, on their subject matter!) so getting the chance to develop games and websites is brilliant.

What do you hate about your job?

Not having enough time or money to do everything I want.

What is the strangest or funniest thing that has ever happened to you in this job?

I can tell you the most revolting thing that’s happened to me! There used to be a stuffed duck in the Roman gallery kitchen display that was always getting infested with moths. It was looking particularly bedraggled one day so I took it off display to put in the Conservation department’s freezer (this kills the moths). As I carried the duck through the galleries I looked down and to my horror a maggot crawled out from behind its eye. My instant reaction was to throw the duck across the gallery but fortunately I managed to not to and it emerged mothless from the freezer two weeks later.

One of the silliest things I’ve done was putting on a replica Tudor headdress and having my picture taken to advertise the medieval gallery. Lots of people didn’t recognise me in the photo and thought I was a teenager.

What was your best day like?

I’ve had so many great days here but the most recent one was probably when the London’s Burning exhibition was finished. The two weeks beforehand had been a stressful nightmare but finally everything came together at the last minute, even though we were sticking up a text panel ten minutes before the first school group arrived. Walking round the complete exhibition was wonderful – it looked just like the designer had promised – I almost didn’t want to let the visitors through in case they broke anything!

My other best day was meeting Ray Mears, my ultimate survival hero! I took along a prehistoric antler mattock to the Cambridgeshire fens where they were filming his ‘Wild Food’ series. When I arrived he was paddling around in a kayak pulling up roots from the water. He gave me a very damp, peaty handshake and then enthused about the London Before London gallery and Mesolithic hunter gatherers - he was fab!

Where are you going in the future?

This is a tricky question to answer. I would like to curate more exhibitions and take on more responsibility. Ultimately I would like to be a senior curator or in charge of my own museum somewhere (not a national! I was thinking more in the lines of a local museum).