A museum is one of the most interesting places you could set foot in. Every artifact on display tells a complex and compelling story, a lot of which you won’t learn in school textbooks.
That said, working in one should be rewarding, especially if you love nerding out. And as this list may prove, being a museum employee could be one of the more underratedly cool jobs anyone could have.
We collected these posts from various internet forums. If you’ve ever worked in a museum (or still do), we would love to hear from you, too!
#1
My super nerdy one even by museum standards is that the American broom industry was started by Levi Dickenson of Hadley, Massachusetts in 1797.
Image source: themuseumuse, Edal Anton Lefterov
#2
art conservation fun fact – there’s a painting from the 1800’s in the Brooklyn museum where excessive burnt umber (?) pigment in the oil paint prevented crosslinking, and the painting slowly started to slide right off the canvas – they tried hanging the painting upside down to stabilize it, but that didn’t work
Image source: rangerdanger_2012, Alina Chernii
#3
Former museum worker…we had little textile munching bugs so we brought in teeny tiny parasitic wasps and a giant, sub zero freezer to get rid of them.
Image source: hlh_art_mn, cassius cardoso
#4
I worked at the Truman Library in collections. It was my first month and a coworker needed photos of an artifact. Told me the location but not what it was. President Truman’s teeth. One got stuck to my glove and I nearly gagged. And that’s when I learned people hang on to things. His dentist donated the teeth years after he passed.
Image source: stephanie.marie05, kaboompics
#5
The Earth Globe and Moon wall display at the Clark Planetarium were hand-painted in the 1950s! That’s why we don’t have the dark side of the moon in our display. We didn’t know what it looked like yet!
Image source: clarkplanetarium, Lev Lazinskiy
#6
I’m a volunteer at a museum.
Jimi Hendrix was very clean and tidy. He vacuumed every day.
Image source: b.macadventures, Original photographer unknown
#7
Museum employee here – boxes of fossil fragments were stored under the University of Oklahoma football stadium for over 50 years before someone looked at them. They ended up being the skull of Pentaceratops, the largest skull of a land-living animal ever found.
Image source: josie_thered, Ryan Somma
#8
Taxidermy likely had arsenic in it, old mirrors have mercury, and a lot of stuff has lead in it 🙃 museum collection workers really need more research done for occupational safety than exists rn
Image source: curly_rachel_, Maya Ali
#9
Cherry pitters used to be the most indispensible kitchen gadget. They were the microwaves of their era. There is a practically a sedimentary layer composed just of cherry pitters in the Earth’s crust, they were once so ubiquitous.
Image source: jasperdyne, Barbara Olson
#10
The museum I work at was built over where there used to be a cemetery… over 80 years later they started construction to make an underground level, the builders found bodies and to this day people have all kinds of stories and fears about the place
Image source: pecasdemuseu, Magda Ehlers
#11
Franklin Pierce was likely the first US President to display a Christmas tree in the White House.
Image source: reverse_prophet, JFK Library
#12
Submariners during WWII/The Cold War smelled so bad after a tour that it was often easier to just buy new clothes than try to wash what they had onboard.
Image source: its_not_d*ad_its_french, Ron Lach
#13
The saying “goodnight, sleep tight don’t let the bed bugs bite” comes from the rope bed and straw filled tickings (mattress) of the early settlers.
Image source: penelopepots, JoJan
#14
Most museum fires are electrical fires that start in their own building(s).
Image source: madamgiraffe, Artem Makarov
#15
There are multiple sets of the Gone with the Wind dresses and the items on display in an exhibition are often copies so the originals stay safe.
Image source: anneaholaward, Filipa Rodrigues/KUT
#16
Worked in a science museum. It’s not exactly not public, but when the museum was closed or on slow days we used to test out ideas we found on the internet for science activities. Anything from liquid nitrogen hurricanes to green and purple fireballs – if we had the ingredients, we could try it.
Image source: Hipo_campus, Blackcurrant Great
#17
I worked at the Biltmore House for a few years. My favorite things were the two sets of samurai armor. Between that, some of the wall hanging, a few books and the katanas I always thought Vanderbilt was a bit of a Japanophile. Plus the rooms in the sub basement with the bared gates, that was fun to go check.
Image source: drsnowbear, biltmore.com
#18
A couple of times, I was in Charles Lindbergh’s pants. Also Neil Armstrong’s boots. Also saw Buzz Aldrin’s underpants.
Image source: skyedivin, Smithsonian Institution
#19
I got to hold a pair of Roald Amundsen’s skis.
Image source: skyedivin, Anonymous
#20
Victorian hair art. So disturbing we didn’t have any on display at that museum. As one classmate said, “that’s not art, that’s the shower drain!”.
Image source: skyedivin, Walter Robertson
#21
There were airplanes made out of plywood.
Image source: skyedivin, Eric Friedebach
#22
The one I learned yesterday is that it is illegal to hunt whales in Kansas.
Image source: themuseumuse, Neil Ni
#23
Volunteered in a museum call center… you have no idea how many people expect museums to have the funds and staff to travel to their homes and “check this thing out .. I think they’ll want it… how much will you pay for it, etc”
Also, it was a safe place for seniors, people with unique perspectives (re: conspiracy heavy) to chat.
I really enjoyed that gig. Great group of volunteers and staff
Image source: presidentialtodolist, AI25.Studio Studio
#24
That canisters of Zyklon-B are still terrifying even if they are encased in Lucite.
Image source: misslourab, unknown
#25
Franklin Pierce’s Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, formed the US Camel Corps, which was a success until the Civil War ended it. The Rio Grande River valley wasn’t successfully fully mapped until an expedition used camels.
The herd had somewhere between 70-80 animals. They were used to transit and explore the Southwest between Texas and California (and also the aforementioned Rio Grande expedition). They were pretty successful but no one wanted to continue the experiment after the war and the camels were cut loose.
Image source: reverse_prophet, Abell-Hanger Foundation and the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum
#26
The dermestid beetles at AMNH are descendants of the original colony discovered in an elephant-sized box which had been shipped from across the ocean. Not much evidence of elephant left.
Image source: unpainted_paintings, Didier Descouens
#27
That the San Fransisco 49ers were named after the CA Gold Rush of 1848 also known as the greatest migration in American History! Also why their color is gold to pay homage to that era! CA also became a state in 1850 and quickly enacted the Foreign Miners Tax (1850) there was so much money being made, local and state governments quickly implemented property, yield, and gross revenue taxes on mining claims! -Discovery History Museum Docent, circa 2006-2008
Image source: ailedirb, Sumeet Jain
#28
Museums like to boast about what makes them different. Example- I used to work at the South Street Seaport Musuem. The former curator loved to tell people that the museum had the 3rd largest collection of scrimshaw. (I thought the 1885 schooner was the real star of the Musuem’s collection…)
Image source: cranfordhighlibrary, Jim Griffin
#29
I recently learned about The Gourd Patch Conspiracy. A group of loyalists during the American Revolution tried to [end] Governor Richard Caswell in 1777. He was our very first governor (Also governor a second time) and was elected 6 times to office.
Image source: callmeshifty, Unknown author
#30
There’s like 800 species of hermit crabs. I would guessed like 10
Image source: suzannahwilson, Ashley Coates
#31
a Lewis and Clark original map of the Pacific Northwest, kept in the Library of Congress archives because it’s too fragile to display
Image source: erissays, wikipedia
#32
Didn’t work there but visited a friends uncle who was a professor of anthropology. He took us ‘behind the scenes’ at Sydney museum to see weapons and decorations/jewelry made from creatures that were now extinct.
Image source: TelestrianSarariman
#33
SPACE SUIT STORAGE. It’s like a morgue but better. Fun story – one of the best ways to transport space suits is in coffin boxes. Always tripping over coffin boxes everywhere on shipping days.
Image source: skyedivin
#34
A drum hand-collected by Margaret Mead that’s one of three like it left in the world (iirc).
Image source: skyedivin
#35
Teddy Roosevelt’s samurai outfit, gifted to him at a state dinner by the Japanese ambassador. He then drunkenly put it on and ran around the White House in it, iirc.
Image source: skyedivin
#36
The super secret Egyptian temple buried in the bowels of the Field Museum.
Image source: skyedivin
#37
My museum has an entire collections room full of Galapagos tortoises. I was awe-struck when someone brought me in there when I first started.
Image source: PacificKestrel
#38
There are photoreactive minerals that change colour permanently when exposed to light for more than a few minutes. You literally can’t put them on display.
Image source: bobreturns1
#39
Did some work experience in a local studies library, they had some of the most amazing maps locked away in the basement. It had never occurred to me that I’d never seen an ancient map in person but the hand drawn details are astounding
Image source: CityReject
#40
Competitive barbershop music started in Tulsa, Oklahoma. At SingUnited Headquarters, you can see dolls dressed in handmade costumes of all the quartet and chorus champions going back to 1947. They MIGHT come alive and sing in four-part harmony at night. We aren’t sure. (I hope they do!)
Image source: dr.s.e.pratt
#41
The Virginia Museum of Transportation had so many cool railroad bits and bobs floating around in storage, especially while they were working on the restoration of the 611 steam engine.
Image source: erissays
#42
135 laxatives previously belonging to Charles Lindbergh. Fun story – Jane Addams used the same kind of laxatives.
Image source: skyedivin
#43
Used tissues. Used bandaids. Random trash. Unidentifiable fragments of wood. A board that was supposed to call cats to it or some weird hocus pocus like that. All things we had to take very seriously and treat with the same care we did everything else because some dumdum decided to accession everything.
Image source: skyedivin
#44
A very wide range of baccula, aka [“manhood”] bones.
Image source: skyedivin
#45
Dinosaur storage, need I say more?
Image source: skyedivin
#46
I once had to help mop out the vault that stored the excavated remains from a Fort Ancient site where I volunteered as a teen. We got to see what was removed from the graves. It was a pretty intense and somber day.
Image source: TheShadyGuy
#47
Pickled deformed babies, in big jars of formaldehyde. In the closed section of the Otago University Anatomy Museum.
Image source: James_New_Zealand
#48
A woolly mammoth foot.
Image source: liquorlanche
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