Curators: Behind the Scenes of Natural History Museums by Lance Grande

Professional memoir, career guide, and museum lore

If I could go back in time and start another career, I think I’d like to be a naturalist of some sort, someone who explores the wildernesses of the world, studying plants and animals and discovering new species, like a modern-day Audubon, Darwin, or Humboldt. Nowadays, many of the people who conduct this kind of research work as curators for natural history museums. Lance Grande has occupied one such enviable position for roughly four decades at the Field Museum in Chicago. In his 2017 book Curators: Behind the Scenes of Natural History Museums, Grande recounts his distinguished career in natural history and provides an enlightening look at the profession of scientific curation.

Grande has degrees in geology, zoology, and evolutionary biology. Before being hired by the Field Museum, he completed his PhD while working and studying at the American Natural History Museum in New York. Grande’s specialty is vertebrate paleontology, particularly fossil fishes, but, as he explains in Curators, his work at the Field Museum has also led him to research in other related fields. Grande discusses his field work hunting fossils in Wyoming and Mexico, his involvement with the acquisition, preparation, and display of the Field Museum’s famous Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil named SUE, and his redesign of the Grainger Hall of Gems exhibit. Grande also held a management position as head of Collections and Research for the Field Museum, so he discusses the administrative issues he faced while overseeing that department.

For the first several chapters, one wonders why the book wasn’t called Curator, singular, since it’s basically a memoir of Grande’s career. In the second half of the book, however, he discusses the work of his fellow curators at the Field Museum, the general workings of the museum and the various research initiatives they’ve launched, and broader issues in the museum field such as wildlife conservation and the repatriation of human remains. Grande also spends a few chapters looking back at great Field Museum curators of the past, such as herpetologist K. P. Schmidt, anthropologist Franz Boas, and geologist Bryan Patterson, whose father hunted the legendary man-eating lions of Tzavo (now immortalized through taxidermy at the Field Museum). These stories of past generations add further depth to Grande’s survey of the curatorial profession.

This would be an excellent book for a high school or college student interested in the natural sciences. It might very well provide the inspiration for students to explore careers in natural history, museum work, or wildlife conservation. For an older reader like me, it was just a fascinating behind-the-scenes fantasy-camp look into natural history museums—institutions that I enjoy visiting. The text is accessible to students and general readers, but not oversimplified. Scientific and administrative matters are discussed at an intelligent adult level, about on a par with National Geographic or Science News magazines. Professors and museum professionals aren’t likely to gain any scientific revelations from this book, but they might enjoy reading it for an overview of what’s been going on at the Field Museum. The book is also very well illustrated, with a color photograph of just about everything, everyone, and everywhere that Grande discusses in the book.

Scientific biographies and autobiographies are a genre that I typically enjoy, as I like to live vicariously through scientists’ explorations and discoveries. Curators not only succeeds as a scientific memoir but also has the added benefit of functioning as an illuminating glimpse into museum careers. Grande’s obvious enthusiasm and aptitude for addressing general readers results in an engaging and informative book that anyone with an interest in natural history will enjoy.