Biography

I am a curator with over 20 years’ experience in the cultural, arts, academic and private sectors. I am Senior Research Fellow, Decolonising Arts Institute at UAL: University of the Arts London leading a major three-year AHRC Catalyst project with Central Saint Martins Museum and Study Collection and Oxford University Museum of Natural History called All That Glitters: Investigating Hierarchies of Preciousness and Beauty in Gem and Jewellery Collections. I am also Research Curator for the Museum of Cornish Life leading collections strategy and new curatorial research into the contemporary significance of social history and folk museums.

In September 2025 I published my new open access book: Citizen Curators: A Guide to Museums and Collections for Beginners which is free to download and distribute.

Gems, metals and jewellery

I have a specialist interest in gems, metals and jewellery and gained my Certificate in Gemmology from Gem-A, the Gemmological Association of Great Britain, in 2022 with distinction. In 2024 I won the Jewellery Valuers Association Alan Hodgkinson Educational Bursary and a GIA Scholarship to support my development in jewellery valuation and gemmology. I blog about the science and magic of gems on my website.

Material culture and collections

I am a material culture and collections specialist with particular interests in materials and design, object-centred critical research, patronage and reputation in public collections, the role of the museum curator, professional ethics, policymaking and trends, and alternative understandings of the circulation and exchange of art and artefacts, especially those from subaltern or decolonial viewpoints.

Museums and curating

I am a Fellow of the Museums Association (2018) and a former member of its Ethics Committee, accredited facilitator with the Association of Facilitators (2017-2021) and Honorary Research Fellow in the College of Arts and Humanities at Swansea University. In 2022 I was awarded an Art Fund Headley Fellowship and a Fellowship by the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) on their Exchange Programme for International Curators (EPIC).

From 2018 to 2021 I led Citizen Curators, a work based curatorial training programme that I devised, designed and delivered for volunteers across seven museums in Cornwall, supported by Cornwall Museums Partnership, supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund. In 2016 to 2018 I completed an intensive programme of leadership development as one of Arts Council England‘s prestigious Change Makers.

In my spare time I play traditional Celtic, English and medieval music on the fiddle.

Recent publications

Goskar, T. (2025). Citizen Curators: A Guide to Museums and Collections for Beginners. South Kerrier Heritage Trust. Download free copy.

Goskar, T. (2024). ‘Museums will forget: Critical approaches to catalog-centered historical research’, Collections, 20(1), 156-176. https://doi.org/10.1177/15501906231220974

Goskar, T. (2023). ‘The price of everything and the value of nothing: Museums, thrifts and British society’, History & Policy (4 September 2023). https://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/the-price-of-everything-and-the-value-of-nothing-museums-thefts-and-british-society