In The American Museum " Curator In Charge "

The curators' responsibility system is extensively applied in American museums. In western language situation, curators usually means professionals who take charge of research, preservation and exhibition of the collections in museums and art galleries. A curator is usually the director in small museums, while in large museums, the head of department. Curators play important roles and hold the operational lifeline in American museums. The dependence on curators stemmed from the special historical background of American museums' development. It runs through the purchase, exhibition, research and education in museums and upholds the operation of the whole American museum system.Taking the case of Metropolitan Museum of Art, especially the times when Wen Fong take charge of the Asian Art Department, this article went deep into the curators' responsibility system in the point view of structural and operational system and analyzed its impact to purchase, exhibition, research and education of the museum.Distinguished from formalistic case researches, this article based on abundant documents and data statistics. It carried out all-around and multi-tiered research on the curators' responsibility system in the point view of the management theory combined with sociology, history and art theory, with the aim to theoretically analyze the curators' responsibility system and provide reference to the assessment of the structural development of our nation's museums.