Museum curator takes credit for archivist's research, then embarrasses herself in front of major donor: 'I thought you were working on this together?'

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Nov 22, 2025 2:00 PM EST

When someone takes credit for other people's hard work, it's only a matter of time before their lack of effort comes back to get them.

In this instance, we have a museum curator who was in charge of handling logistics for an upcoming exhibition. She was collaborating with the author, an archivist at the venue, who spent months gathering material for this series. 

Once the two began to present their plans to coworkers, it became clear to the archivist that her partner was taking credit for her research and using words like "I" and "my" instead of "we" and "our." Even using the latter pronouns would have been generous, considering the fact that all the research she was citing in these meetings had been sourced by the author.

Eventually, the curator hosted an event with a major donor of the exhibition, who followed up on her time with questions about her research. At that point, it became clear that she had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, so the archivist stepped in to answer the questions. Keep scrolling below to see how this interaction ended up being the beginning of trouble for the curator!

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  • Let's just say that the curator's superiors noticed her inability to stand behind her research. When they inquired further about it, the archivist revealed that she was the actual brains behind the operation. Moving forward, their superiors insisted that the archivist's voice be properly represented in future meetings.

  • "Coworker kept taking credit for my exhibition research until she got asked detailed questions by a major donor"

    I work as a curator at a history museum in Edinburgh. Small team, maybe six of us total on the curatorial side.
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  • We've been working on this exhibition about Scottish emigration to Canada in the 1800s for about eight months. I was assigned the research lead which meant I spent weeks in archives, tracking down letters,
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  • ship manifests, photographs, the whole thing. It's meticulous work and honestly it's my favorite part of the job.
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  • My coworker Moira is the exhibition coordinator, so she handles like logistics, layout, working with designers. Different role but we're supposed to collaborate.
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  • Except she started doing this thing where she'd present my research as if it was joint work or sometimes just hers. In team meetings she'd say "so I discovered this incredible collection of letters" when I'm the
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  • one who spent three days in the archives finding them. Or "I tracked down descendants of this family" when that was entirely me.
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  • At first I thought maybe she just misspoke. But it kept happening. And I didn't want to seem petty or territorial so I just let it go.
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  • Then we had this donor event last week. Big deal, potential six figure donation. The director asked Moira and me to do a presentation about the exhibition since we're the main team.
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  • Moira volunteers to do most of the talking. Fine, she's better at public speaking than me anyway. But during her presentation she's talking about "my research" and "when I was in the archives" and I'm just standing there like are you serious right now.
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  • After the presentation this donor comes up to us. He's really interested, his family emigrated from Scotland in the 1850s. He starts asking Moira really specific questions about the sources, about particular ship records, about methodology.
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  • And she has no idea. She's fumbling, giving vague answers, at one point she says something completely wrong about how ship manifests were organized.
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  • The donor looks confused and turns to me. "I thought you were working on this together?"
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  • I said we are, but I handled the archival research specifically. He asks me the same questions and I can actually answer them because I did the work. I tell him about the archives I visited, the collections I went through, the families I contacted.
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  • You can see it click for him that Moira was b He thanks me specifically and says he's excited to see the exhibition when it opens.
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  • After he left Moira tried to laugh it off like oh she got the details mixed up. But our director pulled us both aside later and asked what that was about. I told him honestly that I did all the archival research and Moira's role was coordination and layout.
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  • He looked at her and she went red and tried to say she thought we were both taking credit for the team effort. He said going forward we need to be clear about who does what.
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  • She's barely talked to me since. Just sends short emails, doesn't make eye contact in meetings.
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  • Part of me feels bad because I technically threw her under the bus in front of our director. But also she was straight up lying about doing work she didn't do.
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  • A female art expert holds a painting while appraising works in a modern museum.
    via Unsplash+ (Getty Images)

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • BodaciousVermin • 19m ago You didn't throw anyone under a bus. She stepped in front of it herself.
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  • CindySvensson · 17m ago You should have called her out sooner. Don't feel bad.
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  • arlikeAppointm... 5m ago She was already under the bus. You just pointed at her.
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terrible coworkers workplace-stories work stories toxic-workplace work coworkers donor museum toxic-work-environment
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