Iffy

If you can keep your collections when museums around you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on budget cuts,
If you can trust your staff when the board doubts you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can accession and not be tired by the backlog,
Or being loaned an item, don't deal in valuations,
Or being dated, don't give way to dating,
And yet don't display too well, nor label too wise:

If you can budget - and not make grants your master,
If you can drink - and not make alcoholism your aim;
If you can display a Triumph and Bentley
And treat those two cars just the same;
If you can bear to re-read the panel you've written
Criticised by the public who are a rod for your back,
Or watch exhibits you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make a major bid for your museum
And risk it all on one turn of HLF funding,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about it to your boss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your public long after closing time,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Go home!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your sanity,
Or walk with councillors - nor lose the common touch,
If neither board nor friends groups can hurt you,
If all men work with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Museum and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Curator, my son!

Rudyard Unreason (1865-?)