Claire Warrior

Senior Exhibitions Curator

I research and help create the Museum’s temporary exhibitions and permanent galleries. I’m one of the people who work out what our displays will be about, which objects we’ll put on display, and what people might learn from them. I also sometimes write the labels and text.

I work with closely with lots of different teams across the Museum to make sure our exhibitions make sense in a 3D space. I contribute to talks about the displays and sometimes give interviews about them to the Press. 

My favourite part of my job

I enjoy the sheer variety of things I do, the people I meet and the places I get to visit. With our permanent galleries, we try to focus on the strengths of the Museum’s collections. Our aim is to find interesting and varied ways to interpret them, that will bring them alive for people today. In the temporary displays, we’ve covered everything from the Battle of Trafalgar to tattooing and Tintin! It’s never boring.

The question I'm asked most often

How did you get into this job?

When I was at university, I worked as a volunteer in a museum and as a gallery assistant in the holidays. I got experience in lots of different aspects of museum work, from documentation and collections management, to mounting small displays. Experience and enthusiasm seem be the most important things!

I think it’s fascinating to think about the ways in which the objects that we have from the past can help us to understand life then and to shed light on the present. My own particular area of interest is in North America, and in looking at the relationships between Europeans and indigenous peoples and how they are expressed in the things that were collected. You can see some of these objects in ‘Atlantic Worlds'.

Don't miss...

The Beothuk canoe model in the ‘Atlantic Worlds’ gallery. It has a very poignant story behind it and is an incredibly rare artefact.