In museums, we spend a lot of time talking about care; care for collections, care for visitors, care for art. We write plans for preventive conservation, environmental monitoring, and safe handling. But the most fragile thing we steward isn’t an object; it’s one another.
Caring for colleagues is quieter work. There are no forms or climate controls for it, no condition reports to fill out when someone’s worn thin. It happens in the margins including the check-in before a meeting, the shared sigh after a long day, the gesture that says I see how hard you’re trying.
After twenty five years in the field, I’ve learned that professional care is less about grand acts and more about sustained attention. The same kind we bring to a painting, or to walking the same path every morning with Artemis. You start to notice what changes: the tone of a voice, the pace of a step, the way someone’s laughter sounds a little forced. And then you do something with that noticing.
Care, at its best, is reciprocal. It’s not about rescuing; it’s about recognition. It’s saying: You matter in this work. You don’t have to do it alone.
In education, where giving is constant, we forget that generosity has limits. We talk about burnout as an individual problem instead of a collective responsibility. But I think care is infrastructure. It’s what makes the rest of the work possible. Without it, even the most brilliant ideas begin to crack.
When I walk Artemis early in the morning, before the emails and meetings, I think about my colleagues. The people who carry so much invisible labor: the planning, the problem-solving, the holding of space for others. The light is soft then, the world quiet. It reminds me that care doesn’t always need to be loud. It can be a small, consistent practice, like attention, like tending.
Caring for one another isn’t extra work; it is the work. It’s what keeps the museum, and all of us inside it, alive to possibility.
