Glossary
Museum Technician Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential museum technician terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key museum technician vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in museum technician training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Accession
- Formally adding objects.
- Archival
- Safe for long-term storage.
- Collection
- Objects a museum holds.
- Condition report
- Object condition record.
- Conservation
- Preserving objects.
- Courier
- Escorts loans.
- Crate
- Shipping box for art.
- Exhibition
- Public display.
- IPM
- Integrated pest management.
- Light levels
- Lux limits.
- Mount
- Custom object support.
- Preparator
- Installs exhibits.
- Provenance
- Ownership history.
- Registrar
- Tracks collections.
- Relative humidity
- Moisture level.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Museum Technician practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Museum Technician training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.