I can’t do this anymore.
Seriously considering leaving this industry all together. Buckle up cause this is a long one.
I'm an Assistant Curator at a mid-sized museum. Both my institution and boss are ambitious, unorganized, and yet expect perfection. When we have exhibitions or other projects they are planned a month in advance maximum, and we have two temporary exhibitions a year (this year we had three). Myself and my other coworkers in curatorial have talked extensively about how we are always unprepared, presented with unrealistic tasks in the short time frame, and expected to do large workloads for long hours. To give a more detailed example: two exhibitions ago, myself and my curatorial staff have not seen any didactics and did not know what objects were going to be in the exhibition until the morning of installation. That's when my boss walks in and says "Pull some objects from our archives and make case displays". Myself and the rest of the staff are left scrambling to get the exhibition up on time, working the weekend before as usual. The worst thing is, my boss in unapologetic and does not even acknowledge the short time frames. They once referred to themselves as a "planner", in which I had to hold back a laugh. It does not seem like expectations and the mindset are based in reality.
But for the first time ever, we are planning an exhibition in advance. Although, it is less than a year in advance and it is an exhibition with MANY international lenders and many objects. We are also producing an exhibition catalogue for it. The Registrar recently left, so I have had to take control of the working object checklist, loan requests, loan agreements, insurance/travel information. I am doing this on top of image sourcing for every single object in the exhibition as well as sourcing from external sites, purchasing these, and looking into specific rights. On top of this, I have also been leading in the deinstall of two other exhibitions, a week apart. I have been physcially taking down works, organizing them into boxes for shipping, and arranging all of the logisitcs. I have been doing all of these tasks at the same time and accomplishing all of them.
I go to my annual review and am given a 5/5 performance review and an 8% raise. Minimal criticism. This past week some things went wrong. I was on a zoom with our independent curator, going through her spreadsheet and inserting where we wanted certain images throughout the text. I would indicate this by typing "Figure __". What I didn't realize during the chaos of the zoom and all the information to absorb, that I was writing on a "Read Only" document and my changes were not saved. This wasn't as disatoruous as I panicked over, as we took notes of where things were in the text and I did the same on my spreadsheet. But then I realized I forgot to process some payments. I also do the processing of payments each month both on the card and through wire for the entire curatorial department.
That's when she pulled me into her office today to berate me for an array of things, including the above two mistakes, which I immediately took accountability and fault for even before the meeting, but also the following:
"I know everyone works at different paces but you are too slow. I've been holding back on giving you more tasks because I don't trust you with them." (Never missed a deadline btw. Not sure how I am slow when I am accomplishing so many things at once)
"The way you organized the information for the image sources on the spreadsheet was a mess and made no sense to me" (I made this spreadsheet of my own accord, my boss did not ask me to. I know how disorganized we are and took initiative to fix it. I organized it by lender institution as we didn't know which images matched to which figures until last week. I organized it by image, file name, caption, chapter section, figure number.) She berated me a lot for this. It genuinely felt like she wanted me to read her mind and organize it the way it makes the most sense in HER head. Which I can't do, because I can't read minds.
Berated me for not "wanting it enough" regarding this career because I said no to speaking on a panel a few days in advance of the panel when she had been scheduled to do it for months. She also asked me after I had worked for a week and a half straight, an average of 12 hours each day. I was at my bandwidth which is why I said no.
"Not interested in the history of the museum." Lol, as I led the creation of our tour guide onto a digital format and am in the process and making another tour.
"Not impressed by me" I curated my own exhibition this year which was a success, I led the shift of interpretation digitally, and I'm juggling all of these tasks and another person's job. I am at an absolute loss as to what else I can do without having a life.
The tone is which she said this was accusatory. I tried to explain to her my thought processes and why I organized information or why did the things I did, but she was unresponsive and called me "defensive". If I can't explain my workflow without being called defensive, it seems like she just wants me to agree to everything she says without question, even if it's not accurate.
I can't lie, I left the meeting in tears. I had to step out and call my family and they had to talk me down from quitting. This is my first full time job in the industry, and if all of them are like this I want out. I am still fighting the urge to quit altogether, but I know my family would be disapointed without me having another job to go right into. Please, someone give me advice and be honest with me. Is it like this in every cultural institution? Tell me to call it quits now then. My best isn't good enough and I feel like I'm about to break.