Officially retired and officially part time, Dick Teubert does whatever it takes to get the job done.
The curator of the Grand Traverse Heritage Center's Museum of History has had a busy four months doing a little bit of everything since joining the staff in September. He hit the ground running, starting work during the busy week of Heritage Days, which brings in hundreds of school children and dozens of volunteers to Heritage Center. Then there were some final tasks to manage around the former Con Foster Museum site downtown.
"I came in here and one of the first things was we had one remaining storage area at the Con Foster building and those things needed to be gone over,” said Teubert.
Primarily responsible for the exhibits and the collection, Teubert brings more than 30 years experience to museum exhibition and conservation. With his college studies and background in theater set design and construction deepening his resume, Teubert provides a robust skill set.
"Dick is exceptionally talented and educated in this area and we're anticipating clarifying a great many issues around our collections,” said Steve Harold, president of the Grand Traverse Heritage Center. "The definition of a curator is the person responsible for the collections, and in our case, the exhibits. There will be a greater focus on managing the collections.”
A Wisconsin native, Teubert began his career at the Milwaukee Public Museum as a volunteer student aid for conservation, eventually working his way into a full-time but temporary staff. While there, he realized that the melding of history, display, conservation and research was his calling.
"I found that doing the exhibits was nothing more than scaling down from the theatrical stage to the small case or exhibit,” he noted. "The lighting and construction were similar.”
To pursue his career, he took positions at various museums over the next decades, each time moving up the ladder in responsibilities. His postings took him from South Dakota to Iowa, back to Wisconsin then to Mackinac and back to Milwaukee to finish out his career at the Milwaukee County Historical Society.
"It's very rewarding and very challenging and part of the rewards are coming up with the solutions to the challenges — whether laying out an exhibit or security or spatial arrangements,” said Teubert, who as a young man also served four years in the United States Coast Guard.
"For example, a label in a case, people don't realize that it is very carefully designed with different levels of information, an ideal is usually three levels of information,” he added. "There's all this planning for one label — many elements come into play.”
With an ancillary job description including equal parts creativity and patience, putting together an exhibition is like assembling a puzzle: it all has to be researched, planned and laid out before hand. Then, Teubert noted, there are always things that do not work out so flexibility comes is a must.
"You need to be able to look at things from different perspectives,” he said.
Teubert retired from the Milwaukee position in May and he and his wife, Mary Ann, moved to Traverse City, near to her relatives in the Charlevoix and Petoskey areas.
Looking ahead, Teubert will continue working with volunteers on the collection of three dimensional artifacts, cataloguing and managing the wide array of items relating to the region's history. He is planning an upcoming exhibit featuring the treasures from the collection that might not have been displayed recently or ever.
"What really makes a museum are the artifacts,” he said. "If you want graphics and text, then you go to a book. If you want the real thing, you look at an artifact.”
"The Grand Traverse area can be presented in an interesting manner so the public as a whole can learn,” Teubert added.
For more information on the Grand Traverse Heritage Center, see their web site at www.gtheritagecenter.org.