Museozine

By Tara Bursey

A zine about museums, containing interviews about museum memories and experiences.

From the author:

“I got my first museum job when I was 29 at the Textile Museum if Canada in Toronto, slipping in right under the wire of the Young Canada Works student job program. I had spent the last 10 years of my life in and out of art school and about a dozen retail and restaurant jobs. Going to work every day in a museum—a museum that specialized in one of my interests, textiles, no less—was a dream come true. My hands didn’t get dirty from handling filthy used book. I was guaranteed an hour for lunch! Importantly, I got to apply the archival mind I developed through selling books and records to a museum collection. I would go on to hold three separate temporary positions there over the following two years.

“For my first position, assisting the Executive Director with her programs and exhibitions, I didn’t really know what I was doing. She spent a lot of time out of town, and at the beginning of my position, she gave me a loose, broad directive: ‘do research on museum visitorship.’ This zine was the outgrowth of that project. On top of all the standard visitor surveys and research, I took the time to interview some of my closest friends about their most memorable museum experiences, and what their barriers to attending museums more often were. I made a zine out of their responses and handed it to my boss on the last day of my contract.
I love reading this zine over and over again because it reminds me what amazing characters my friends are. It is also a reminder of the ways museums do and don’t live up to their promise as public spaces.”

2011, reprinted in 2020 | 20 pages, photocopy on plain paper.