“Relationships grow out of the realization of mutual benefit, the creation of shared value, and the commitment to a shared future." Marshall Ganz
I've recently written three blog posts about brave museums (here, here, and here) and I've had many conversations lately about how museum and cultural colleagues can be braver in support of our communities--and I don't just mean braver about advocating for our own financial support. That's vital I know, and the past few months have been shocking as IMLS, NEA, NEH, and so many other federal supports have been kicked away.
But we have other jobs too, as community members and citizens. Sometimes it's hard to know how to support others in the most effective way possible, at a time when our own bravery seems hard. I'm lucky enough to have two incredible colleagues, Braden Paynter and Stacey Garcia-- together we've spent a great deal of time pondering how we can be helpful. It seems clear to us that bravery is best done as a collective effort, so we've put our collective heads together from our home bases in Maine, upstate New York and California and have come up with this webinar for all of you.
Strengthening civic structures and supporting civil and human rights takes bravery. Individual acts of heroism can be inspiring, but movements and consistent change are built through collective bravery. This interactive virtual session will draw on experiences from across the country and around the world to offer tools and frameworks for cultural workers to ignite bravery around themselves and be forces for positive change. It's a pay-what-you-can event (suggested $10) with all proceeds going to the food banks in our respective communities.
What will we do? It's an interactive webinar--we'll build our collective bravery together, with resources and lots of opportunities, in small groups and large, to ponder questions such as:
What's bravery to you?
How do we create a brave space with our colleagues?
What change do we want most at this moment? (you have to know what you’re fighting for– something that’s bigger than yourself/your institution)
How can we turn what we have (resources) into what we need (power) to get what we want (change)?
We'll share examples from museums and cultural heritage organizations from around the world and will follow up with some useful worksheets. It's a great chance to meet and connect with colleagues, building solidarity together. Space is limited, so register now!
As I get back to regular blogging, I want to begin each one, when I can, calling out museums that are brave in challenging times. Today, check out this New York Times article featuring a number of sites and museums dedicated to telling the full story of American life, including the story of African Americans and the legacies of enslavement. In the article, Ashley Rogers, director of Whitney Plantation, reminds readers, “a wound doesn’t get better if you ignore it. It just festers.”
This week, thousands of museum folks are gathering for the American Alliance of Museums annual conference in Los Angeles where I'm sure so many issues about history, funding, and more will be discussed. I miss Twitter for conference sessions and hope someone will find Threads or some other way to share for those of us not there. Please share other brave museums you learn about!
But, on to another brave museum. Some museums become brave, like the Valentine that I wrote about last time (and as an aside, some start as brave and become less so). But others are born brave--their very founding is a call for us to remember and to be brave about facing both past and future. A few weeks ago I spent a day at the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Created by Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit law office. The goals and inspiration of the Legacy Project are described on their website: "Seeing firsthand how excessive punishment, racial discrimination, and inequality are deeply rooted in America’s history of racial injustice inspired us to create the Legacy Sites. By offering these unique spaces for people to gather, learn, and reflect on our history and its legacy, we hope to foster a new era of truth and justice in America."
No pictures are allowed in the museum and I didn't take notes, partly because of the nonstop conversations Dina Bailey and I were having along the way. As a result, I have no pictures of label texts, so this post is more reflective of the experience overall. As you enter, you encounter a very large video of waves, crashing forward, which served to me as both a representation of the journey of the middle passage and of the journey the exhibition would take us through. The museum has almost no objects and in the early history, stays away, for the most part, from the images that are so familiar. Instead, there were hand-drawn videos (with the hands shown at work) sharing parts of the story and as well, concepts and historical facts that may be unfamiliar to many. We didn't take time to watch the installations in the small theater spaces, but I can imagine they are equally powerful.
The label text is unsparing--when is the last time you saw the phrase "racial terrorism," to describe our history? The amount of graphics with words: runaway slave ads, legal notices, newspaper headlines, all in black and white, feels a bit overwhelming. As we read the labels though, it struck us that this is very much an exhibit developed by folks with legal minds. They assemble the evidence--so much evidence--and then make an impassioned argument. The exhibit demands our attention to the evidence.
Photo: EJI
There's also a subtle shift in perspective. Earlier in the exhibition, you walk on the outside of cells where you can hear re-created audio of enslaved African Americans--but you're on the outside, listening in, still at some remove. But at the end of the exhibition, visitors can sit and listen, face-to-face with death row inmates, making sure that visitors understand that this is not history, that this is not past, and that the legacy of enslavement and racism continues forward.
Photo: EJI
But then, at the end of the exhibition, we entered a space that I found so beautiful and moving. It's a very large gallery, that is floor-to-ceiling portrait images, faces only of African Americans of achievement in every field. The space is copper/gold colored and is the place where the importance of Black imagination, passion and knowledge are made gloriously clear. We sat in this space for quite a while, talking, but also watching people as they walked through, stopping at images they recognized or sitting like us, for a moment to take it all in.
From there, we went to what's commonly known as the Lynching Memorial (also, by the way, the admission cost for all three legacy sites was $5 and the tickets are good forever if you don't make it to all three in a day). There's been a great deal written about this memorial (for instance, here,here and here) and I hope all of you who can will make your way to Montgomery. As we approached the memorial, there's a large, pristine green lawn between us and the memorial itself. As we wound our way up the path, the large iron shapes, each delineating a county and its lynchings, come closer and closer. And then, all of a sudden, we found ourselves looking at counties and wondering. Wondering about the people named, wondering about all of the unknowns, wondering about why the lynchings happened when they did--sometimes a county had quite a few in a year, and then none. We walked among these pillars, slowly making our way down the ramp until these are hanging over us, as lynching victims would have been. You could feel the deep pressure and pain.
I particularly appreciated the way this national memorial focused on the local. By creating this county-by-county memorial, it makes it hyper-local. Visitors, including us, think about counties we know, or have been to. But it also, after the memorial, let's us know that we can make change. All of the county pillars have duplicates, lined up on the ground for counties to take home once some sort of reconciliation process has taken place. There are still lots of them left--but then, down a bit, are versions of familiar shaped historic markers for those counties who have actually done the work, a clear message that there is much work still to be done.
"Hopelessness is the enemy of Justice." ~ Bryan Stevenson
Before I talk about a brave museum I've visited, I wanted to shout out all those brave museum colleagues in the United States (and librarians too!) who have pushed back against the current administration's executive orders. In particular, check out, if you haven't already:
The Valentine Museum is in Richmond, Virginia, once the capital of the Confederacy. It was founded in the late 19th century and its first president was sculptor Edward Valentine whose studio was relocated to the museum grounds. Pretty straightforward, right?
Not to the talented folks who took on the task of rethinking Valentine's work, including co-curators Christina Vida and Josh Epperson. Valentine was perhaps the best-known sculptor of Confederate memorials. An exhibit, opened in 2024, seeks to understand, not the work, but what it stood for, why it was created, and most importantly, what legacies it has left us today, to still grapple with. The museum describes it as an "exhibition that examines how the Lost Cause myth was spread through centers of power, like media, education, politics, money, religion, and violence."
Interestingly, like the museum I wrote about last time, there's lots of text. Both museums seem to believe deeply that visitors are up for challenging topics, which often need lots of text. No dumbing down here! A thoughtful three-year process involved surveys, focus groups, conversations and programming. This serves as a reminder to all of us--it's not the length of the text, it's the quality of ideas and language. This exhibit used tough questions to bring folks into the topic (and effective, clear yet compelling design). For instance,
You're involved in the label conversation, you're not just a passive consumer. They want you to consider past and present in a city where the past and present are inextricably intertwined. Valentine's sculptures are still on show, but behind a scrim, with the sense that they are ever-present, yet perhaps receding in a city where the White House of the Confederacy is just down the street.
I've been lucky enough to work with the team twice on developing dialogic approaches for working with groups, both adults and young people as part of my role at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. This is a challenging exhibition and the team has been dedicated to dialogue, really embracing it as a tool for individual and collective learning. Below, two pictures from a 2024 workshop and an image sharing what the group was proud of, one year later.
Two other notes on this museum: first, there is an extensive list of resources on their website, including lesson plans for students. Second, in its permanent exhibit, the Valentine shows the statue of Jefferson Davis, covered in paint, and lain on its side. Visitors can post comments next to the statue which does inspire some strong reactions. According to the staff, the museum's director, Bill Martin, is always willing to come down and speak with visitors about the statue, the exhibit, or anything else on their minds. A willingness to engage with difficult issues, to work with communities to understand complex histories, to stand our ground and not obey in advance, is needed now more than ever. Thanks to all of you who do.
After a very long break, I've felt the urge to blog again, but felt I had little to add to the many voices that have so eloquently and usefully written about the threats to American democracy--the shuttering of agencies from AID to IMLS and everywhere in between. Thanks to all of you who have shared perspectives and useful tools (including, but not limited to: many resources from AAM here, this this thoughtful conversation with Devon Akmon, and the American Library Association statement on the proposed elimination of IMLS).
Instead, this is the first in a series about brave museums I've encountered over the last year or two. What do I mean when I say brave? They are places that take on challenging histories, with multiple narratives, that encourage visitors to really think about past, present, and future. They are also places that leap thoughtfully into innovative ways of exhibition development (with, admittedly, a bias of my own against intensive technology).
I'll begin with a museum in Estonia that I visited last fall: the Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom in Tallinn. The permanent exhibit looks at during and after the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Estonia but importantly, as the website says, The focus on restoring and preserving freedom is central to Vabamu. Somewhat reluctantly I took an audio tour, which turned out to be fabulous, tremendously engaging, but also giving you the written text, so you could read if you didn't want to listen. As you'll see below, I took lots of photos of the text itself, to help me remember!
A key element of the exhibition is testimony from Estonians themselves, who were usually shown full size--so you really met them. I think of this museum as brave, because it embraces all of the grays of past, present, and future. For instance:
The exhibit also acknowledges the complexity of remembering Soviet times--that for many, there is also a complicated kind of nostalgia that plays in different ways for different memories.
The exhibit ends with contemporary testimonies and a chance to take a quiz to find out what kind of political person you would be in a newly independent Estonia--and you hear from people that represent all those perspectives.
Today, as I go back and read these texts that I saw last fall, they have so much resonance in our current place here in the United States. It's clear that we all have choices to make, but they may all be different. But we need to be asking these questions!
Special thanks to Martin Vaino, Curator and Head of Exhibitions who introduced us to the museum's work, and appreciation for this small exhibit on Ukraine, that used a dialogic format to encourage Estonians to reflect on their role in this conflict. Thanks also to the US Embassy in Estonia who supported my attendance at the ICOM-Exhibition conference and this museum visit.
It's been more than a year since I've posted. I continue to work with museums, historic sites, and other organizations in my role at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (six continents in 2023, though no so many planned for 2024). Russia's war on Ukraine continues and I continue to stand in awe of the bravery of colleagues and friends there. I continue to visit museums all over, and a continued joy is meeting new people and seeing new places.
But I haven't blogged in more than a year! Am I all the way done, as many bloggers I admire are? Do I have anything else to say? I decided to back up all my blog posts, all 605 of them with more than a million views overall. That's alot of something, though I'm not sure quite what! Should I move to a newsletter or something else? I'll try to spend some time in the next few months contemplating all this.
This week, it's been one full year since Russia launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine, a country I love deeply. I've been in awe of the courage of the Ukrainian people--both the people I know, wherever they are, and the people I read about in the news. It's clear that in addition to fighting on the battlefield, there are also battles being fought about culture and cultural heritage. In this grab-bag post, I just wanted to highlight some work I admire (there is so much more too!).
First, the power of a single voice. Nadia Parfan was a student of mine the very first year I went to Ukraine (2009). She also was good enough to serve as my translator sometimes when I returned to Ukraine. For some reason, I have such a clear memory of her attempting to explain post-Soviet museum culture to me as we walked up a set of steps. Not an easy explanation, for sure!
Her new short film, "I Did Not Want to Make a War Film," has just been featured on the New Yorker's website so it's gotten loads of attention already in the United States: you may have already come across it. If you haven't seen it yet, please take a watch. This is such a personal story, using the tools of filmmaking, friends, and family to help all of us understand, at least a small bit, about the ways in which the war is affecting everyone in Ukraine, not just on the battlefield. From her grandmother's prayers to the joy of returning to Kyiv, the city she loves, to that tamarind plant, it's just one story of the millions about this year of war.
Dozens of Ukrainian scholars have opened new conversations about Russia as a colonial power and about the ways in which that colonial power has meant that Ukrainian artists and artworks have been ignored, misnamed, or minimized in European and American museums. Last week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, I found at least two re-written labels on artworks, due, I feel sure, to the pressure of those scholars and journalists.
Artwork and labels from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My own not-very-good photos.
I wish the Met had actually owned up to what the previous labels had said, as a way to open up a broader discussion, but at least the change was made. To learn more about Ukrainian art history and decolonization efforts, follow Oksana Semenik on Twitter at @ukr_arthistory, and for fascinating and important threads on Russia as a colonial power, follow Maxim Eristavi on Twitter @maximeristavi. Many, many more folks are doing this work as well.
Individual actions are joined by collective actions. ICOM-Ukraine, the national committee of the International Council of Museums, has actively worked to have ICOM take a strong stand. This past week ICOM-Germany did just that. ICOM-Germany is the largest national committee so this stand takes a significant message to the larger museum community. In a statement (read in full here) the committee said,
With immediate effect, ICOM Germany is boycotting the Russian National Committee as the national association under the Russian flag. In principle, the German National Committee will neither cooperate with ICOM Russia nor participate in events at which representatives of ICOM Russia or Russian museum colleagues are present. ICOM Germany is also demanding that the Russian National Committee be suspended at international level. To this end, talks with other ICOM committees and ICOM International are being intensified. The aim is to completely stop working with ICOM Russia and to exclude the Russian National Committee from the world association until further notice.
The board of ICOM Germany shows solidarity with all democratic, progressive and liberal institutions and people in Russia. It is aware that the exclusion will also affect employees in Russian museums who work for peace and justice. However, the cultural sector must not permanently claim a special role or postulate a general impression of innocence. The systematic looting of Ukrainian museums, which according to current knowledge is supported by Russian museum actors and is an example of ethical transgression, should no longer go uncommented. The reports and pictures from Ukrainian museums speak a clear language.
Fire extinguishers being delivered by HERI
So what can you, with your single voice do?
Listen, watch, read, and think critically.
Amplify good work being done. If you're a member of ICOM, can you encourage your national committee to join Germany? Can you take a look at your own collections?
Contribute financially if you are able. It seems as if local organizations/individuals on the ground are able to quickly deliver aid of all sorts than the big international ones (in my mind, World Central Kitchen is a notable exception and one I support for their work everywhere). In the museum world, there's the Museum Crisis Center, founded and run by Ukrainian museum workers which is supporting both institutions and individuals. The Heritage Emergency Response Initiative (HERI), also founded and run by Ukrainians, has focused on a wide range of support, much of it practical (generators and fire extinguishers, for instance). HERI is now broadening its work to consideration of what post-war recovery efforts will look like for the cultural heritage sections. All sorts of private citizens are raising funds to support both military and civilian needs. For instance, The poet/musician Sergey Zhadan raises funds for drones, trucks, and other equipment for the army--so far, more than 100 vehicles.
Zhadan, upon receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade last fall gave a speech on language and war (full text in English here). And he ends with the future:
Like it or not, we will have to renew our sense of time, perspective, and continuity. We are fated to have a future. Moreover, we bear responsibility for it. Now, it is shaped by our visions, our convictions, our willingness to take responsibility. We will work at returning our sense of the future, since there’s just so much in our memories that demands our involvement tomorrow. We are all linked by this current that carries us, that won’t let us go, that unites us. We are all linked by our language. Even if, at a certain moment, its capabilities seem limited or insufficient. Nevertheless, we will be forced to return to it and its capabilities which give us hope that, in the future, there will not be any misunderstandings or anything left unsaid.
Dear Ukrainian colleagues and friends, the new visions, convictions, and willingness to take responsbility that Zhadan mentions, will surely bring a new peaceful future.
Maria Primachenko, A Dove Has Spread Her Wings and Asks for Peace.
2022 meant back to travel, which meant that I got to meet incredible people and see incredible places in person. Here, in no particular order are some experiences that surprised, inspired and moved me. But the most important is the final one, so please read on!
Difficult stories in Czechia
Last spring, I spent an incredible week out and about in the Czech Republic, in three very different locations, presenting workshops on telling difficult stories. Stepan Cernousek and Petra Černoušková of Gulag.cz, joined by interpretation specialists Kristýna Pinkrová and Ladislav Ptáček identified three places with challenging histories. The five of us loaded into a van and set off. The plan for the week was to arrive at a place, give me a chance to learn about it, by meeting with local historians and others, and then do a workshop the following day. From socialist industrial history to the oft-ignored history and persecution of the Roma people, to the Sudentenland, I learned so much and understood more about how past shapes the present. The workshops were wonderful, but what I remember more are the conversations--over breakfast, over dinner, and in the van, up and down roads across the country with four amazing folks, willing to answer all my questions, and help me ponder my own work and how we can make a difference. Here's some reflections from the team.
Mammoth Dialogues in Texas
When the Waco Mammoth National Monument in Texas requested dialogue training from our team at Sites of Conscience, I really wondered how in the world I could train in dialogue around mammoths! I didn't know anything about mammoths, and to be honest, not much about Texas. But, off I went. The great team at the site, including some really thoughtful interns, had backgrounds very different than mine--archaeologists and paleontologists mostly. But, at the end of several days, the group, working together, had found so many interesting and important dialogues to consider using with their visitors. Climate change--fossils help us understand that. Evolution--absolutely. How do we value and understand science and expertise? Absolutely again. I appreciated the willingness of this team to embrace new ways of working as they helped me learn too.
In Conversation with Clint Smith
I first learned about Clint Smith when my husband said, "I just listened to this guy on Fresh Air that I think you'd really be interested in. I then devoured his book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, recommending it to everyone I knew. As you can imagine, I was thrilled and honored when Amy Hufnagel from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center asked me to be in conversation with Clint as a part of their Stowe Prize ceremony. which recognizes a distinguished book of general adult fiction or non-fiction that illuminates a critical social justice issue in contemporary society in the United States. In the book, he shares his visits to historic sites and the related conversations with visitors and staff, and his own reflections on those experiences, from Confederate graveyards to Monticello.
“Across the United States, and abroad, there are places whose histories are inextricably tied to the story of human bondage. Many of these places directly confront and reflect on their relationship to that history; many of these places do not. But in order for our country to collectively move forward, it is not enough to have a patchwork of places that are honest about this history while being surrounded by other spaces that undermine it. It must be a collective endeavor to learn and confront the story of slavery and how it has shaped the world we live in today.”
In a wide-ranging conversation, we talked about when he first knew he could be a writer (a third-grade poem), how history interpreters can be leaders in the needed conversations in this country, and how he views his work--and our work--as something that is not done for our generation, but for the generations to come. You can watch the full conversation here.
The Tenement Museum in New York City
In October, I joined my Sites of Conscience colleagues on a visit to the Tenement Museum. 97 Orchard Street, the tenement itself, is temporarily closed, but we saw an exhibition/installation about garment workers that I had not seen. But my big takeaway here was not interpretation (though it was great), it was about what visionaries can accomplish. Ruth Abram, the founder of the Tenement Museum was also the founder of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. In a 2014 interview, she spoke about a key question for her work:
"Most of my life there's been a single question hanging over each thing I've done, whether in the women's movement or the civil rights movement, and it's how are we going to be one nation and at the same time appreciate, enjoy, and not be afraid of the sometimes profound differences we bring to the table based on our backgrounds?"
This was not, of course, what historic houses were doing in 1992. But over the last decades, the worldwide museum field (including the new definition) has moved closer to Abram's vision of museums and historic sites as places where we can "appreciate, enjoy and not be afraid."
Hadrian's Wall, United KingdomOn a glorious November day, historian Joanne Sayner and her family took me off on a walk to the highest point of Hadrian's wall in the north of England. What made this memorable? It was a reminder of how large the Roman Empire was (just a month earlier I had been looking at Roman walls in the subway station in Sofia, Bulgaria). But it also was a chance to consider history outdoors, to see not only the wall, but also the varied landscape, altered over centuries. It was a reminder that joy and history can find places to work together. (a shout-out also to the very nice interpretive center, with its dialogic questions in an exhibit!)
Ukrainian Museum Colleagues
Here's the most important museum/heritage experience of 2022. As most readers know, I have a long deep experience in Ukraine, beginning as a Fulbright Scholar fourteen years ago this month. Until the pandemic, I had been able to return almost every year for one project or another, and have had the opportunity to travel all over the country, doing workshops, meeting colleagues, and learning a great deal. I have not been able to visit this year, of course, but I am in awe of the work that Ukrainian museum workers have done, showing courage and resilience under circumstances that few of us can even imagine. They have packed collections away, they have repaired damaged buildings, they have continued to do programming, in courtyards or subway stations underground, they have supported their colleagues in more dire need, they have shared their work to the world, working to decolonize narratives, they have asked for accountability from our international organizations. All this while they are working to keep themselves and their families safe. They are true heroes. At the ICOM meeting in Prague, I had the chance to catch up with some Ukrainians in person (above, here we are at lunch) so this photo stands in for the thousands of colleagues doing challenging, difficult, meaningful work.
I want to encourage those of you who are able to contribute to supporting Ukrainian museums and museum colleagues. These are two locally-organized endeavors doing great work in Ukraine:
As I look back and reflect on these experiences (and many more) there are a few important takeaways for me.
First, curiosity. I want to learn about places, about people, about the past, about where to eat the best local food (fabulous barbeque outside Waco!), the best beer (okay, all over Czechia), what different building styles mean and so much more. Accompanying curiosity is a willingness to ask questions and to acknowledge what it is that you don't know. I don't necessarily think of myself as a humble person, but it's true, curiosity is a kind of humbleness.
Second, believe that change is possible. From Ruth Abram's vision to Clint Smith's hope for the future, from tough conversations in rural Czechia to the work of Ukrainian colleagues--they all demonstrate that change is possible, but it requires not just hope, but also work.
Third, it's people that matter to me. It's not only objects or buildings that created the memories, although they are a part of all these experiences. It's the chance to have conversations--in a van heading across Czechia, under a big tent with Clint Smith, and even on Zoom calls with colleagues (though thankfully fewer of those these days!). A particular shout-out to the best work conversation person for me, Braden Paynter. We laugh that we start from two different ends (he's theory, I'm practice) to get to some really interesting conversations about ways to approach our work, almost always meeting in the middle! I've learned about the value of silence from him, and he's learned, I think, about the value of jumping in from me. A lucky, deeply meaningful work pairing.
An informal fourth: try to eat local food wherever you are! Check out the end of the post for some of what I ate this year from Texas barbeque to Italian gelato to Czech dumplings to a giant Scottish breakfast. If you're interested in general travel plus photos, in addition to museums, follow me on Instagram
And what else? So many other experiences this year--too many to write about, so my intention for 2023 is to do more writing, more immediately, about what I see and learn. Deep appreciation to all those of you who I met along the way. Stay tuned for 2023.
%20(1).jpg)
