What does a museum film department curator do?

Museum film departments and archives, such as the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, combine exhibition spaces and repertory movie theaters. Curators in these institutions manage film preservation, programming, and collections. While general curators oversee museum departments like costume centers or cabinets of curiosities, film specialists focus specifically on cinematic arts.

What we know

• The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive operates as a combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and film archive. [5]
• Andrew Bolton is a British museum curator serving as the head curator of the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [1, 2]
• The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford originated from Elias Ashmole's cabinet of curiosities given to the University of Oxford. [3]

Where to go next

• a case in pointWhat is the history of the Ashmolean Museum?
• how it workedHow do film archives preserve movies?
• what followedWhat role does the Met Gala play in museum funding?
• whoWho is Andrew Bolton?
• the bigger pictureHow do university art museums operate?
• an unexpected connectionHow do fantasy films portray museum operations?The fantasy comedy film Night at the Museum comically reimagines a New York museum's exhibits coming to life through magic, contrasting with the real-world administrative and curatorial work of institutions like the Met or BAMPFA.

Sources

• [1]Andrew Bolton (Wikidata Q20829853) · CC0 1.0
• [2]Andrew Bolton (curator) · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [3]Ashmolean Museum · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [4]Night at the Museum · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [5]Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive · CC BY-SA 4.0