Cool Job: EMP senior curator Jacob McMurray

Cool Jobs

December 6, 2011

Cool Job: EMP senior curator Jacob McMurray

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Jacob McMurray (right) meets funk singer Bootsy Collins (center) as part of his job as senior curator at the EMP Museum. McMurray has curated many exhibitions at the Seattle museum, including Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana and horror films. (Courtesy of EMP Museum)

What do you do? I am the senior curator for the EMP Museum, which means that I get to spend my days coming up with compelling exhibition ideas, gathering priceless cultural artifacts, interviewing amazingly talented people and presenting all of that content in exhibition form.

What is a typical day like on the job? It varies every day — last week I met with the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee about an upcoming exhibition that we’re collaborating on, visited a fellow in Chicago with a huge Indiana Jones collection, and checked out original J.R.R. Tolkien manuscripts at Marquette University. Today I’m answering a ton of email and going to meetings.

How would someone else get a job like yours? Many people enter the museum field via specific museum-oriented degree programs. I started out at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington working a student job in the archaeology department, cataloging countless stone implements and other cool Native American artifacts. This lead to a job at EMP (or the Jimi Hendrix Museum as it was known at the time) as a cataloger in 1994. Over the past 17 years I progressed to the position I hold now.

What's the best part of the job? For me, the best part of my job is that I get to work with such amazing content. No matter what exhibition I am working on, there’s always something fascinating and interesting on which to focus. If I can share my excitement for the content with our visitors, then the exhibition will be a success.

What surprises people about your job? I think it surprises many people how complicated creating an exhibition is, how much thought and care goes into the process, and how many people are involved. I end up being the public face of the exhibitions that I curate, but many dozens of individuals work in concert to produce each exhibition.

— NWjobs staff