Since the November 2016 elections I have been asking myself how to be, live, and work in a world that appears to sanction autocracy, intolerance, and racism (both veiled and unveiled). If I had the answer I think I could bottle and sell it! Yet, over the past past eight weeks I have become aware…
In a December 6, 2016 post Museum Geek blogger Suse Cairns asked this question: Can institutions be empathetic? My EM colleagues and I have been discussing the many thoughtful questions Suse has raised. Following is our response. We believe that it is possible for institutions such as museums to be empathetic, and below we outline…
As many of you know I’ve been thinking and writing about the empathetic museum for some years now. The last time I wrote an update on our project was in summer 2015 after we had presented our first official session at the American Alliance of Museums conference in Atlanta. Prior to that we had led…
[We propose a paradigm] for how museums address their responsibility for fair and inclusive staffing, collections, and interpretation, and equality of access to their resources. This paradigm will examine a vocabulary and a set of theories not usually found in current museum discourse: Oppression: identifying the complex – and too often unacknowledged – ways in…
As many of you know I often post about The Empathetic Museum (by the way, those of us working on that project now have a new website). At the AAM Conference in Washington, DC in May, I met Laura-Edythe Coleman, a follower of Empathetic Museum posts and a professional involved in both the museum and…
Lisa Gilbert@gilbertlisak What is the role of museums & sites in responding to current events? Key Q even before this past week #YalePH2016#museumsrespondtoFerguson This tweet, posted just the other day, caught my attention not because it was unique, but because it was similar to others. I am struck by the contrast (small yet noteworthy) between…
What is The Rule of Three? Iceland has been called “a feminist paradise” in terms of health, education, economics, politics, and justice.Women figure prominently in the upper levels of its government (Johanna Sigurdardottir was PM 2009-13); and they are well represented in banking and business. A group of Icelandic woman leaders, in a recent…
[We propose a paradigm] for how museums address their responsibility for fair and inclusive staffing, collections, and interpretation, and equality of access to their resources. This paradigm will examine a vocabulary and a set of theories not usually found in current museum discourse: Oppression: identifying the complex – and too often unacknowledged – ways in…
By Gretchen Jennings and Monica Montgomery At the start, many of us were curious about why the project was designed as a partnership with a library instead of another museum. However, by the end of the project, we not only understood why, but also realized it would not have worked any other way. Student report. On January 16, 2016, from 1:00 to 4:00 pm, The…
[We propose a paradigm] for how museums address their responsibility for fair and inclusive staffing, collections, and interpretation, and equality of access to their resources. This paradigm will examine a vocabulary and a set of theories not usually found in current museum discourse: Oppression: identifying the complex – and too often unacknowledged – ways in…