Two members of the Museums & Race Steering Committee attended AAM in Baltimore this year. They are some of the more regular AAM conference attendees from the Steering Committee. One has been attending since the 1980s, and the other for a little over a decade. It’s been an important aspect of both of their careers, both in terms of staying up to date with changes in the field while sometimes working outside of it, and making the connections and finding the opportunities to develop our skills and advance our work. We have also discussed within the Museums & Race Steering Committee a truth for this year: the two folks able and willing to attend are white. This has not always been the case, especially when Museums and Race historically hosted a Transformation and Justice Lounge or presented a session, yet it was the reality for 2024.
AAM and the field at large have changed. It may not always be noticeable from year to year, but over a longer period, it’s obviously a different environment. There are many more sessions at AAM directly addressing DEAI issues head on, even compared to 10 years ago. Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri in August of 2014. The AAM conference that followed that event, in April of 2015, had a theme around the social value of museums and a handful of sessions on topics like decolonization, empathy, community collaboration, and inclusive language. One session titled “Missouri Burning: Turning Conflict into Conversation” addressed the recent event head on. This most recent AAM, while having fewer sessions overall, had a significantly larger number of sessions focused on similar topics and addressing the topics more directly. In a similar way, just by the eyeball test, presenters and attendees are more racially diverse. Yes, it’s still mostly white and it’s not something where the change is noticeable year to year, but there is a difference. That change is even more drastic when looking back over decades rather than years.
The state of change in the field has been even larger. Museum workers are increasingly people of color across all departments. This change has not resulted in equitable participation at critical gatherings like AAM and that has impacted the resulting discussion. Is AAM attendance a trailing indicator of the field because more experienced people attend? Regardless of why, it is having an effect.
One session at the conference discussed what the field looked like back in the 70s and 80s. It was heartening in a way. We’re still asking some of the same questions, but there is a huge difference of degree. The priority of those issues has changed. Who is working on the changes is different. There are funders putting in questions about the composition of staff and leadership at museums. There is funding looking to help museums reach new audiences. AAM’s leadership is certainly different, both in terms of the board and hiring its first Black director. Not all of these changes are something that is particularly noticeable year to year. And some of the big changes that are there one year are unfortunately gone the next.
In the 80s and 90s, the events (breakfast or lunch meetings and evening parties/museum visits) were organized by the professional networks that focused on job function – educators, curators, designers, etc. One of our steering committee members discussed how “then-Vice President Pat Williams, began the AIDS Network, and a few years later, she pulled together a group to promote museums’ acceptance of the ADA. I became a participant, not just an attendee. This was also the early days of the pulling those task forces together with the new Latino and Indigenous self-support groups and a more politicized LGBTQ+ Alliance into the Diversity Coalition. As I became more and more involved with the smaller groups by professional role and identity, my commitment and enjoyment of AAM grew.”
More recently, however, AAM fumbled its communication of its commitment to diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Last year, AAM re-organized and dissolved the professional networks and identity groups. Some segued on-line and exist as webinars and listservs so they can still be useful for their members. But, they could not propose or endorse sessions and lost their identified pages on AAM’s web site. So, AAM this year was different and detached from the issues in the museum field and community. While AAM says it wants to find ways to have people volunteer and help out, it is much harder to not just be an attendee, but be a participant. The field is broader than AAM, moreso now than ever before, so our work must be broader too.
Our work makes a difference. The good trouble museum workers do every day, the fights we fight, make this field better for those who come after us. It’s slow and never ending, but there are changes. The people that submit sessions, frontline and mid management museum workers, the people that work in leadership positions both seen and unseen–we all impact the field for good or ill. The field is a more diverse and equitable place than it was decades ago. It still has a long way yet to go. That progress will only continue if we put in the effort to make it so.
Museums & Race 