By Judy Fireman

Zette Emmons begins each day promptly at 7 a.m., when Susan -- her male cat -- signals for breakfast and an insulin injection. "He's got the two things linked in his mind, thank goodness, so the medication procedure is a snap and we're both up and running for the day," she says.

Running, indeed. As an independent museum curator, Emmons labors feverishly behind the culture curtain to bring together the many pieces of the average museum exhibition. On a given day, Emmons might be gathering objects for display, sifting through museum archives to research the artifacts, or placing them inside display cases with her very own hands.

On this March day, the first order of business is one familiar to all IPs -- tracking down a job lead. A few weeks ago, at a party to celebrate a museum opening, Emmons ran into an old acquaintance, also a curator, who invited her to call him about a project he had on tap for the summer. Three frustrating rounds of phone tag later, Emmons still hasn't reached him. "I try to book work three to six months in advance," she says, "and I don't have a thing to do in June, so this feels like a big opportunity for me. Now I'm chasing him and getting nowhere fast."

After a quick phone call to arrange a luncheon with yet another curator friend, Emmons settles down to do a little work at home: writing exhibit labels for a show on Tibetan art that will open in two weeks at the Asia Society in New York. "We always do the labels at the last minute, and something always goes wrong, and they always take forever," she says, "so I'm trying to avoid the inevitable and get a jumpstart on the chaos this time around."

The labels tell the story of the exhibition, and must be both informative and accessible. In this case, the objects have been chosen by an Asia Society staff curator, who has prepped Emmons on the overall concept of the show and given her the task of writing the labels -- a task she is eminently prepared for after thirty years of traveling, observing, and reading about Asian art.

A willowy, pre-Raphaelite beauty of 50-something, Emmons has a serene manner that at first seems unsuited to her hectic professional life. Don't be fooled so easily, she says. "I thrive on chaos, on the controlled hysteria of putting on an exhibition. I adore the work of conceptualizing the show, choosing the objects to show, and the teamwork of figuring out how to teach and entertain simultaneously. In fact, I just love being in museums. That's what finally made me realize, after years of working in various jobs in the film community, that I should make a career of working in museums -- even though I'm without the academic credentials that most curators, even the independents, usually have."

Emmons' career has hardly followed a linear trajectory. While in college, she spent a year in India working on a catalogue of folkcrafts for the India Handicrafts Board. "That year formed the basis of practically everything I've done since, one way or the other," she says. After earning an M.A. degree in textile design, Emmons found herself in Providence, R.I., doing odd jobs for the local historical society -- putting up exhibitions, working in the photo lab, doing film research. Here it was that her museum career began.

Eventually, she moved to New York to accept a job at the Museum of Modern Art. "They hired me to coordinate a traveling show of Indian films, basically because I knew how to call India and because I was a well-educated film buff," she says. From the MOMA, Emmons went to the New York Film Festival, and there she coordinated visiting directors and actors for eight years.

But working in film wasn't exactly what she wanted. "I was in the epicenter of the film business, but I was only a film buff," she says. "My heart wasn't in it. I like film, but I like the history of Asia more." Frequent trips to Asia had nourished her interest in the region and deepened her knowledge of both the folk and fine arts of the East. The moment came when Emmons decided to strike out on he own as an independent museum consultant.

Her projects as an IP are diverse. Now, for example, she's under contract to coordinate a two-year traveling exhibition of African textiles, which puts her textile training to use. Although she wasn't part of the original mounting of the show, it's now her job to manage its installation at each new venue. Today, after writing labels for the Asia show, Emmons spends fifteen minutes on the Internet confirming her travel arrangements for the upcoming leg of her put-it-up/take-it-down job.

Actually, Emmons has just returned from dismantling the show at a previous stop out west and will be home only for the week that the artwork is in transit. "What a nightmare this last place was," she exclaims. "When I got there to install, the presiding curator was in a white-hot fury. She hated the show; she thought the set-up instructions were insufficient and garbled, and at the root of it all, she despised the originating curator."

As an IP -- a worker with many allegiances -- Emmons often has to play politics. She must at once be loyal to the institution that hires her, and also make peace with the staff of the show's current home. From a personal standpoint, too, Emmons wants to maintain good relations with every curator she meets: they're all potential employers.

Emmons got one of her current jobs from the Asian Studies curator at The Newark Museum, whom she met through an internship in fulfillment of a Certificate in Museum Studies from New York University. Ever since, they've worked together happily: Newark has the nation's largest collection of Tibetan art. "I do a lot of work there and I love it," she says. "There I get that hands-on contact with the objects that keeps me going. I just love putting on those white cotton gloves!"

Recently, Emmons put her knowledge about native handicrafts to use in her own show at The Newark Museum -- in the children's section. There she's installed an exhibition of homemade Chinese children's toys from the 1920s. "I loved doing that exhibit case," she says, "because it gave me the opportunity to conceptualize, to choose objects, to write the explanatory text, and to have fun and interact with kids all at the same time."

After a quick turkey-burger lunch with her curator friend, at which the two discuss who will be at an upcoming exhibition opening, Emmons dashes for the subway. At Newark, she's also working on a long-term project cataloging a collection of ceramic pots and mother goddess figures (Pakistan, 3rd to 1st Century B.C.E.) that were donated to the museum several years ago. Cataloging is a tedious, but critical aspect of museum work. Each object must be evaluated for authenticity, measured, described, and identified in meticulous detail. The record Emmons creates becomes the object's formal history and a permanent component of the museum's computerized catalogue. Emmons likes this kind of work especially -- it's low-stress, a welcome respite from the tense politics of mounting an exhibition.

After cataloging for three hours, it's time to call it a day. Almost. First she's got to attend a benefit cocktail party for the International Campaign for Tibet. Emmons goes out on average four nights a week -- to openings, parties, movies, and dinner with friends and colleagues. Work and play blend almost seamlessly in the art world. And as she says, she likes teamwork: "I don't much like being isolated."

Judy Fireman is a freelance writer based in New York.

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