Join Museum Workers Speak for a listening session on Wednesday, July 22, 2020 at 7:30 pm ET. Go to this invitation for more information on the event and on how to participate. The Museum Workers Relief Fund MWS is a collective of activist museum workers interrogating the relationship between museums’ stated commitments to social value…
In the century that has followed the rise and near-triumph of Nazism between the 1920s and 1945, history has judged not just Adolf Hitler, his government, paramilitary organizations, and army. We have also become aware of the almost total submission of German civic institutions to Nazism: the courts, universities, banks, hospitals, arts organizations –…
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…
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…
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…
“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.…