Museum Curator

>> My name is Donna Corbin and I'm the [inaudible] for the Associate Curator of European Decorative Arts at Philadelphia Museum of Art. As a curator of the museum you do research on objects in the collection and you're essentially a steward of the objects, the art objects in the collection. And then we get to do fun things like acquire objects and, which is always fun, shopping with somebody else's money. And also we do exhibitions and installations in the Museum. I do tours for the public and we interact a little bit with the public. I acquired a few years ago a plate that had been part of a dinner service that was commissioned by Louis the 16th and the dinner service was never completed because, of course Louis met rather a nasty end. And so it's a wonderful plate that's decorated with neoclassical decoration. It is actually based on Raphael's decoration of [inaudible] at the Vatican. But it's a wonderful object and says a lot about the late 18th century France but then has this marvelous collection and connection to Louis and his nasty fate. Well, porcelain is pretty easy to take care of. There are other materials in the collection which are not so. In my [inaudible] fall under my purview that are not that easy to take care of. For example, silver. We all know it tarnishes. So we try to keep silver in air tight and in an airtight environment whether it is in storage or in the galleries. Furniture is a little more susceptible to sun damage so we try to keep furniture and textiles out of the sunlight. But ceramics don't fade. Of course you can drop them and break them. But we handle those things in a very careful way.