Rebecca Carruthers

Rebecca Carruthers
Museum Curator II

Archaeology, History and Museums Division
California State Parks
P.O. Box 942896
Sacramento, CA 94296-000

Phone: (916) 653-8893

I started my history career as the Curator of the Sacramento History Museum in Old Sacramento.  As part of the public programming team, we developed exhibitions with artifacts, photographs and documents from the Sacramento Archives and Museum Collection Center (SAMCC), and the community-at-large.  At the time, the museum had a series of exhibitions called “Continuing Traditions,” where five ethnic communities were invited to tell their stories.  After eleven years, and many exhibitions later, I decided to expand my knowledge and skills by joining California State Parks as a Museum Curator I at the State Museum Resource Center in West Sacramento.  For two years, I worked with staff and student assistants on deferred-maintenance projects, which included seismic-retrofitting, reorganizing and cataloguing collections, and managing the renovation of a dark, dirty warehouse space into a painted, carpeted, well-lit and climate-controlled space to store art and other sensitive material.

After the limited-term ended, I moved on to the California State Railroad Museum as the Project Manager for the “We’ve Been Working on the Railroad: The Human Face of Railroading” exhibition.  The RR Museum received a large grant to interpret and integrate the labor and social history of railroad workers into the museum’s permanent exhibitions.  From this project, the RR Museum added depth to its human story alongside their excellent interpretation and showcasing of railroad equipment.

My last assignment was Curator of History for the City of Sacramento at SAMCC.  Responsibilities included the care and maintenance of the artifact collection, and community outreach programs.  SAMCC staff launched a neighborhood-based outreach program called “Faces and Places of Sacramento.”  Staff and volunteers met with participants at community centers, where they collected family photographs and stories to enrich SAMCC’s photographic collections.  Community members enjoyed donating photographs knowing that they would be part of Sacramento’s rich history.

Now, I am back with State Parks in my former division as a Museum Curator II, where primary areas of responsibilities are to provide collections management support for field staff.  I earned a B.A. in History and a M.A. in Public History from California State University, Sacramento.