Typical activities include: researching and planning different types of exhibitions; ensuring all exhibitions and displays have a definite link to the museum's other collections and overall theme; ensuring the design meets the brief and the budget; and making sure that the exhibition is compatible with the museum's own materials and conservation requirements.
The work involves travelling to other galleries and museums to find exhibitions to buy in; ensuring exhibitions, whether bought in or curated in-house, are of the right size and quality; liaising with curatorial staff to produce outline plans (to specification) and supporting material, such as catalogues.
You would also be working with members from other areas of the museum, such as marketing, education, conservation, front of house and, most crucially, the curator; liaising with graphics and other designers, audio visual and animatronics experts, graphic video producers and multimedia specialists, even actors, to create a sensory experience for the visitor; attending regular meetings.
You would be networking with other museums and designers; using custom-built software packages; ensuring opening deadlines are met; working on the re-display of some exhibitions, reviewing mistakes, updating ideas and displays; in a more senior role, supervising contracts and controlling budgets, submitting tenders for forthcoming exhibitions; and planning for future exhibition events.