Sugden and Stoddart abstract 2008
The decline of the specialist numismatic curator (and numismatics?): the UK experience
This paper examines the socio-political, educational and economic background to the growing loss in the UK of subject specialists amongst museum professionals in general, and numismatics specialists in particular, based on publicly-available data and interviews with relevant personnel.
It distinguishes, as a corollary, a separate (but not unrelated) set of problems in those public museums (mostly local, ie not national or university-maintained) which have significant numismatic holdings, but no curator with sufficient numismatic experience to adequately manage (or even defend) the collection.
It identifies the most vulnerable museums as those with purely local funding, but the national museums und university museums are also suffering and even specialist mint and bank museums are not immune to the trend, although for reasons, more likely to be based around commercial considerations in the case of these institutions.
Finally, the paper looks at ways - some existing, others potential- in which this trend might, to a greater or lesser extend, be mitigated, even if the general direction cannot be halted or reversed.