In his opinion piece in the New York Times on July 26, 2019, (Museums Need to Step into the Future) Ford Foundation President Darren Walker applauds museums’ greater involvement in social justice issues. And he calls for increased efforts toward diversity and inclusion. Walker correctly takes a holistic approach, touching on hiring, collecting, exhibitions, and…
Is learning tangible or intangible? This question from a student in my museum learning class in India a few years ago brought me up short. Fortunaetly, my lack of a quick answer allowed for a great class discussion. We finally came up with the idea that learning is intangible, but it can be measured–there…
Broad use of the Excellent Judges Framework inside institutions, and advocacy of visitor-centered goals by exhibition professionals, just might make all of our jobs a bit easier—and the products of our efforts more effective—in the future. Beverly Serrell. 2006 We’re over ten years into the future envisioned by Beverly Serrell, one of the most respected…
On July 22, 2014, almost four years ago, I raised this issue on AAM’s Future of Museums blog: Unacompanied Children at our Borders: Can Museums Help? It didn’t attract much attention, but this was before #museumsrespondtoFerguson, #MuseumsAreNotNeutral, Museums and Race, MASSAction, and countless other disussions and initiatives regarding museums’ engagement with and responsibility to the world outside…
Yet who gets remembered — and how — inherently involves judgment. To look back at the obituary archives can, therefore, be a stark lesson in how society valued various achievements and achievers. On March 8, 2018, the New York Times published a special Sunday supplement containing the photographs and beautifully written obituaries of some…
Racist images pervade our public spaces and mental landscape If you missed the live feed of the symposium, Mascots, Myths, Memorials, and Memory on Saturday, March 3, you can still find the agenda on the program’s Facebook page, and a number of recordings of the talks on YouTube. There is also a great summary of the day…
D’lo, Queer/transgender Tamil Sri Lankan-American Actor/Writer/Comedian Visitors of Color Tmblr Can Museums Be Neutral? ,a post by Museum Questions blogger Rebecca Herz, galvanized museum discussions on Twitter and Facebook in December, 2017. The conversation died down over the holidays, but I’ve continued to reflect on some of the important questions that were raised. Earlier in the…
I’m still gathering my thoughts on the fast and furious Twitter conversation of the week of December 18, 2017, sparked by Rebecca Herz’s post, Can Museums Be Neutral? While I’m working on my response I’d like to add to the discussion by publishing the thoughts of Dan Spock (formerly Director of the Museum at the…
While revealing individual misogynists is hard, uprooting misogyny is much harder. Lozada, When Women Dare to Step…
How to transform museums into places of greater inclusion and equity? This is the key question of the MASSAction (Museum as Site for Social Action) initiative, begun in 2016 and coordinated out of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. A few weeks ago 36 museums (art, history, science) from across the country gathered for…
“Museums must become more inclusive places that welcome diverse audiences, but first they should reflect our society’s pluralism in every aspect of their operations and programs.” Excellence and Equity. 1992 This sentence on the first page of Excellence and Equity makes it the prescient and seminal publication that it was in 1992 and that it remains today.…
Where is Part 2? In a post written on March 2, 2017, Stayin’ Alive, Part 1: Advocacy, I described efforts by the American Alliance of Museums, on behalf of the larger US museum community, to advocate for continued government funding of museums and cultural institutions in the face of a proposed Trump budget. As implied…
I know when someone that’s not you tries to tell your story, especially when you don’t look like the person who’s telling your story, they’re gonna screw it up! And the only way to have it right is to have them as closely involved as possible. Comedian and writer Aziz Ansari, Master of None I…
What do we really mean by Parent Support and Engagement? Over the past several weeks Rebecca Herz, blogger at Museum Questions, and I have been conversing about philosophies of exhibit design, play, and learning in children’s museums. Two of her recent posts posts (here and here) have examined the history and impact of…
One of my favorite blogs is Museum Questions, posted most Mondays by Rebecca Herz. I read her February 27, 2017 post, “Why Are Children’s Museums Museums?” with even greater interest than usual for a couple of reasons: First, during the late 1980s into the 1990s–the period that Rebecca is examining in her post–I was involved developing…