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…
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 Out of Place The Ford and Walton Foundations made big news recently in the arts and philanthropy world, announcing $6 million in diversity fellowships for 20 US art museums. According to the Philanthropy News Digest, Efforts to be…
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…