Editorial Introduction: Making Museum Professionals

Access to museum careers and the nature of a “successful” career is shaped by individuals, communities, and global historical forces. This special section explores the exclusions, practices, negotiations, and reshapings that have impacted museum workers’ professional identities and professional trajectories over time and in different parts of the world. This introduction identifies key themes illuminated through the articles and commissioned “In conversation” pieces selected here: we show how identities are relational, as museum workers are made—and find both support and disadvantage—through their relationships inside and outside the museum. We identify the histories and legacies of the hierarchies and power relations implicit in the very idea of the “museum professional,” deconstructing notions of amateurism, expertise and authority, and examining the intersection of the professional and the personal.