The United States Senate curator is an employee of the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

who is responsible for developing and implementing the

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

and preservation programs for the Senate Commission on Art. The Curator Office collects,

preserves Fruit preserves are preparations of fruits whose main preserving agent is sugar and sometimes acid, often stored in glass jars and used as a condiment or spread. There are many varieties of fruit preserves globally, distinguished by the method ...

, and

interpret Interpreting is a translational activity in which one produces a first and final target-language output on the basis of a one-time exposure to an expression in a source language. The most common two modes of interpreting are simultaneous interp ...

s the Senate's fine and decorative arts,

historic History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

objects, and

architectural Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings o ...

features. Through exhibits,

publications To publish is to make content available to the general public.Berne Conve ...

, and other programs, the Office educates the

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

about the Senate and its collections. The current curatrix is Melinda Smith.

List of Senate curators

* Joseph Dougherty 1968–1969 * Richard A. Baker (acting) 1969–1970 * James R. Ketchum 1970–1995 * Diane K. Skvarla 1995–2014 * Melinda Smith 2014–present

External links

Office of Senate Curator WebsiteC-SPAN ''Q&A'' interview with Diane Skvarla, July 2, 2006
Employees of the United States Senate {{US-Congress-stub