Greta Russell started in the museum field in 1994 when she
volunteered to catalog a collection of dolls for the Illinois State Museum. She
has been working with museum collections in various functions ever since, in
Missouri, Illinois, New York, and Washington, DC. She recently moved with her
family to Cody, Wyoming where she is the Senior Registrar at the Buffalo Bill
Center of the West.
1. How
and/or when did you get you hooked on history?
Listening to my grandmother’s stories about her childhood in
a small town in Illinois is really what sparked my interest. She had stuff to
go along with her stories as well, and I remember her showing me things like a
darning egg, photographs, scrapbooks, and autograph books. What interested me
the most was the idea that these people she told me about were so similar to
me, and yet their objects and clothing looked so different from mine. That is
probably what developed my interest in museum work, the desire to be around and
learn about objects that people used from different time periods.
2. What role
does history play or has it played in your personal life?
When I realized that the historic sites being funded and
preserved by the Missouri State Parks system were so vastly one sided (white,
heterosexual, male), I started blogging about women in my spare time
(www.missouriwomen.org) in order to try to document women’s history in
Missouri. I envisioned the blog as a place to find resources about women and
their experiences in Missouri: like Alma Nash, from Maryville, conductor of an
all ladies marching band that marched for suffrage in Washington, DC. I also
wanted viewers to find women’s history sites that they could visit around the
state, like Alice Wing’s interpretive panels in Greenville, that document her
traveling the eastern Ozarks on horseback rallying for the suffrage cause. In
2014, I authored a book geared towards 4-6th graders about Olive Boone,
Missouri pioneer. Raising awareness about women’s lives in the state became a
passion of mine due to the inequality of women’s representation in the state
historic site system.
3. How
is/How was history a part of your professional life/career?
The first ten years or so of my career was spent at cultural
institutions with a history focus. After I earned my BA in History (Illinois
State), and MA in Museum Studies (Fashion Institute of Technology), I worked at
the Daniel Boone Home in St. Charles County, Missouri, where I revitalized
their house tours and worked with their collection of historic objects. After
that, I was the Administrator at Confederate Memorial State Historic Site in
Higginsville, Missouri. Since then, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with
museum collections that have a strong focus on history, which has kept me
personally interested in the collections that I manage.
4. Why is
studying/knowing history important?
For me, it is knowing that I am not alone in this human
experience. My interest in women’s history was fueled by the knowledge that
someone, sometime before me had conquered similar challenges. I wanted to know
how they faced adversity, felt about their life, and coped with outcomes of
their decisions. Women who were victims of circumstances are very intriguing
too, like Calamity Jane, and Carry Nation, because of the shared humanity of
their experiences.
5. What is
your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?
Change makers interest me the most, those people in history
who saw a problem and figured out a way to solve it. Jane Addams for one, who
saw the problems for immigrants/lower class women and children in Chicago and
decided to do something about it. Women’s suffrage, because of the lessons we can
learn from people who saw a problem, organized, fought hard, tried different
tactics, and ultimately got what was rightfully theirs – the vote (equality
with men is another issue, see #2 above).
6. You
recently started a new job at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. What is your job and what excites you about
it?
Being the Senior Registrar is exciting professionally
because I am in the position of working with my coworkers to care for thousands
of objects that have been acquired at the Center or are on loan to the Center.
I help implement policies so that these objects are cared for to the best of
the institution’s abilities, and oversee things like shipping and packing of
objects, contracts with lenders and borrowers, risk management for the collection,
and making sure that the Center has the most complete records possible for the
objects in its care. In addition to all of that, there are also all sorts of
interesting pieces in the collection to get excited about, which you can see on
the Center’s website. I welcome you to visit my online exhibit Women of the
West, where you can see objects in the Center’s collection that once belonged
to women whom I personally admire, like Calamity Jane, and Amelia Earhart.
7. What advice do
you have for someone thinking about a museum career?
Volunteer, work hard, watch and learn. Educate yourself on
proper museum practices, and always be willing to learn from your colleagues.
Spend time with someone doing the job you are interested in and ask them what
the most challenging part of their job is. Understand that in museum work, you
may have to relocate to get your dream job. 
