If I Ran a Museum in the US Right Now

It's been months since my last blog post--as my Gang of Five told me, "when you're ready to write again, you will."  I had an idea a week or so ago that I never got to, but today I realized that I needed to reflect publicly on the events of the last few days here in the United States.

On December 1, 2013,  I wrote a post called "If I Ran a Museum in Kyiv Right Now." I had (and still have) a deep affection for Ukraine, its people and its possibilities and December 1 was the day that student protests morphed into something bigger and different, leading to many deaths, a revolution and a war in the East of Ukraine with Russia that continues to this day. My dear friend and colleague Ihor Poshyvailo read that post late at night, and he's been generous in saying that it inspired him to go to Maidan and begin collecting the stories and objects.  He's now the director of the Museum of the Revolution of Dignity, the museum that emerged from those days.  But in fact, friends, colleagues and former students immediately began doing so many things:  they were on the barricades, they served as medics, they made and delivered food--they supported each other and their community.

As I watched my social media feeds over the last few days I was struck by what seemed to be a lack of action and support from US museums.  Marilia Bonas, a Brazilian colleague asked on Twitter, "Waiting to see more and more american museums public statements against racism.  EUA (USA) had a strong position in defence of the new museum definition in Kyoto. Where are you guys?" 

So when directors spoke up, it really stood out:

Lori Fogarty of the Oakland Museum wrote, in a museum tweeted signed directly by her not just about support, but about action: "Members of our staff are engaging in brave and authentic dialogue about this moment...We will also be exploring ways for the Muaseum as an organization to respond, continue the vital work of equity and inclusion and insure that we give voice to the cry for an end to violence against black people, people of color and other brothers, sisters and siblings who feel the impact of marginalization and inhumanity."

Jorge Zamanillo, Executive Director of History Miami sent a direct message to his community in the Instagram post below, directly assuming responsibility for the harm that museums have caused in the continuing legacy of racism.  

If I were the director of a US museum right now, I would speak out.  But equally importantly, I would see what actions we, as a museum, could take.  It's no secret that museums are financially hurting right now, just as members of our community are.  

So what can you do?  Begin by asking some of these questions.

• Can your museum serve as a safe haven for those who feel unsafe from the police?  What kind of direct aid can you give?  I saw somewhere today (who can help find info?) that staff from a museum in New York were outside with masks, milk, and other supplies for protestors.  
• How can your museum begin dialogues? with whom?
• Have you looked deeply at your collections, your hiring policies, and the ways in which you welcome visitors?  
• Have you joined the protests in your city?
• How are legacies of racism embedded in all of those--and how can you change them?
• If you're a director, have you had a frank conversation with your board about expectations for their behavior and support of anti-racist work?

In 2013, I suggested that Ukrainians might want to begin collecting objects.  To be honest, I can't decide if that's something museums should be doing right now.  We should not be doing that unless we address the larger systemic issues of society and our institutions at the same time.  The answer to addressing those issues will be different in every community--but every museum--from the smallest historical society to the Smithsonian can play a part (see the National Museum of African American History and Culture's new web portal Talking About Race or check out the work of the many Sites of Conscience in the United States and around the globe addressing the difficult work of reconciliation--we have many lessons to learn from elsewhere).

If you want more suggestions, check out this blog post from Museum Education Roundtable for specific suggestions to support your community and to make change within your organization. It should be no surprise that the quickest professional organization to respond was one comprised of museum educators--hardest hit by Covid-related unemployment yet most connected to community.

A year or so after I published that post about Ukraine, I was one of a number of bloggers who jointly shared the post, #MuseumsRespondtoFerguson.  It's deeply saddening to realize how true that post still rings:

There is hardly a community in the U.S. that is untouched by the reverberations emanating from Ferguson and its aftermath. Therefore we believe that museums everywhere should get involved. What should be our role--as institutions that claim to conduct their activities for the public benefit--in the face of ongoing struggles for greater social justice both at the local and national level? 

We urge museums to consider these questions by first looking within. Is there equity and diversity in your policy and practice regarding staff, volunteers, and Board members? Are staff members talking about Ferguson and the deeper issues it raises? How do these issues relate to the mission and audience of your museum?  Do you have volunteers? What are they thinking and saying? How can the museum help volunteers and partners address their own questions about race, violence, and community?

I wish I had more answers than questions, but I want to end by expressing my particular appreciation for young colleagues who have been far braver than I ever was at the start of my career:  Aleia Brown and Adrianne Russell, who spearheaded the #MuseumsRespondtoFerguson effort along with Gretchen Jennings, and whose regular tweet chats on the topic gave shape to new approaches;  other bloggers and activists,  and the many colleagues now working for fair and equitable treatment through the formation of unions at their museums.  I am in your debt.

Top photo:  Photo by Fibonacci Blue/Flickr

"I am an activist" From Walden to Sites of Conscience

This Fourth of July celebration seemed different than others, somehow.  My social media feeds were filled with reminders of both the potential of the United States (tweeting the Declaration of Independence) and of the distance we still have to go (Frederick Douglass' 1852 Fourth of July speech in Rochester, NY).  Reading those tweets and speeches pushed me to finally write a small bit about my experiences with International Coalition Sites of Conscience members at our Africa and Middle East and North Africa meetings in May. Those two weeks were deeply meaningful to me as an introduction to Coalition members' work around the world. Whether it was sitting by the water in Tunis, drinking tea late at night or somberly trying to make sense together of a visit to a genocide memorial, those connections will long resonate for me. Somehow those reflections had the unexpected result of bringing me back around to an exhibition at the Morgan Library, just down the block from my office in New York City.

So let's start at the exhibit. It's This Ever New Self: Thoreau and His Journal, featuring Henry David Thoreau's journals along with a stellar collection of Thoreau-related artifacts, many from the Concord Museum, where the show will travel later this year.  Thoreau kept a journal---lots of journals, filled with all kinds of things, from the weather to politics.

In the exhibit, big quotations on the wall pull you in to learn more.  And somehow, although I knew this exhibition has been in the planning for quite some time, the quotes seemed incredibly timely.

As I looked at the lock and key from the Concord jail where he spent one single night for his failure to pay the poll tax, I read this quotation,  "I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine."  That simple quote led me back to my colleagues in Africa and the Middle East.

Before I began work at the Coalition, I thought of Sites of Conscience in primarily US-focused terms: sites like Lincoln's Cottage, or the Levine and Wing Luke Museums, or national parks like Seneca Falls and Manzanar.  These are organizations that operate as relatively traditional (but inspirational) museums. But many of our Coalition members have come to memory work, the work of archives, museums and memory, from very different places and their organizations are often very young.  I'm just beginning to puzzle out how to share the vital knowledge and practice of these new organizations with the more traditional museum field in the US and elsewhere, in ways that may have the potential to transform our museum practice. And of course, at the same time, I'm working to find more ways to assist all of our members around the world in building on their own strengths.

Here's a bit of what I've been thinking (in no particular cohesive framework--I'm still thinking!).

Because many people working in these organizations come from human rights, social activism, law, and other fields, the gatherings represent a diversity of perspectives not always found in US museum work. It's a reminder that by privileging the knowledge of a museum studies graduate degree, we lose out on important knowledge, skills and perspectives. 

I was reminded of the power of archives, even more than artifacts.  Gonzalo Conte, from Memoria Abierta in Argentina, shared their incredible ongoing archival work, integrating oral histories, images, maps and more to build the ongoing work of justice.  Sites everywhere are doing the same--those oral histories and archives are valued for the ways in which they can speak truths, and in so doing, build justice and reconciliation.  But archives are only valuable when they are accessible. 

When we visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial, which includes the mass grave of 250,000 Rwandans murdered during the 1994 genocide, I found myself balancing between the absorption of complicated information and emotion.  That challenge exists in almost every history exhibit, and the experience is different for every visitor. There are no easy answers, but as exhibition developers, working with those whose story we are telling is critical.  We know this, yet too often we neglect it. We need to find more ways to make those voices heard and more ways to support museum staff who work every day with trauma.  The Memorial seems to do an exemplary job of supporting both staff and visitors.

And lastly, I went away from both meetings struck by the potential power of museums and historic places that are sites of conscience.  In Tunis, we stopped at the site of the former 9th of April Prison (above), now a dusty parking lot and a place where our Tunisian members are working to have designated as a memorial or museum. As we stood there, one of the participants moved a bit over, and stood in a place, saying, "This is exactly where my cell was."  I asked how it felt to stand there. He said, "I do not let this define me.  I am not a victim.  I am an activist."

We need more activists in all our museums to keep from settling for the role of, as Thoreau described museums, "catacombs,"  for dead things, rather than places for the living power of change.