Mary Guyatt, Curator of Jane Austen's House Museum

For the first time in my museum career, people seem to get what I do for a living. Admittedly I receive the odd email addressed to the ‘Creator of Jane Austen's House Museum’ but the fame of Austen is so great, and the house itself such a part of our literary heritage, that people seem to comprehend what the Curator’s day to day responsibilities might be.

I hadn't in fact run a house museum before.  Instead of being a functional gallery space to be filled with choice objects, here the site is the exhibition, and much of what we all appreciate are its most intangible and ephemeral features. Parts of the experience of being here are the views from the windows, the smell of floor polish, the stirrings of people and the light streaming in on an autumn afternoon. I'm seeing that maintaining this very special atmosphere is more important than worrying whether we all agree on the choice of wallpaper.

 

 

She keeps a nice blog: janeaustenshousemuseum