This post is part of a series examining the concepts of the Museums & Race Report Card. This series is intended to help readers more effectively use the Report Card by increasing their understanding of each key concept in light of justice and equity work. Each post has been written by a member of the Museums & Race Steering Committee with feedback from the group.
As museums continue to grapple with representation in our experiences and in our staff, resources like the Museums & Race Report card are helpful to challenge us and to track change, or lack thereof.
Representation, in the context of the Museums & Race Report Card, refers broadly to the diversity (race, gender, sexuality, age, ability, religious beliefs, language) that is present in your museum’s staff, board, programs, exhibitions, marketing, and collections. Let’s explore each to consider how you might consider representation as part of your “grade.”
Staff & Board
When I joined my previous museum in 1999, a concern that the staff shared with me was the lack of “diversity” in the staff. However, there was in fact significant diversity already present. Throughout my 5 years with the museum approximately one-third of the staff identified as LGBTQ+. Over half the staff and Board, and the majority of the leadership team and executive committee, were women.
We needed to specifically call out and work on our concerns over a lack of racial diversity. It was important for us to learn to be specific for two reasons:
First, we needed to be specific about the identities we hoped would join the organization. The museum has an extensive outreach program — they reach more people outside their walls than they do inside. A significant portion of the school audiences they reach are BIPOC, while almost the entire Education team is white. By not being specific, that we were seeking to hire (and retain) BIPOC staff, we were talking around the issue rather than facing it directly. And by using the vague wording of wanting more diversity, we were dismissing the perspectives of the many different lived experiences already present in staff.
Second, being specific helped us realize that the museum, already a majority of marginalized identities, had a lot to learn about the work environment and culture from those who were already a part of the museum. This realization helped us to work towards creating a culture that hopefully would not just hire BIPOC staff, but would be able to retain them. As you consider representation for your organization, where might it benefit you to be more specific?
How to measure representation is another important aspect to consider. At this prior museum, we conducted annual engagement surveys where one of the questions was, “I can have genuine conversations with my coworkers without having to hide relevant parts of myself.” We used this question to help us gauge if employees felt they could bring their full selves to work. This engagement survey was confidential, and the results were shared with both the staff and the community (through an annual DEAI report) to hold ourselves accountable. In what ways are you engaging the staff to track your progress?
Exhibitions
Representation of people from multiple identities (race, gender, age, ability, religious beliefs, language, and more) is an important aspect of our work in museums. Do visitors see themselves in the exhibitions, through the stories being told, the artifacts, the images, or the graphics? A great tool that we used at my previous museum was the Association of Science and Technology Centers’ IF/THEN gender representation audit. We first used the tool to conduct an audit of gender identities present in our exhibitions and marketing, and later expanded the tool on our own to include race. This audit, shared with the staff and our community through our DEAI Report, was an important way for us to gauge where we were. To move forward, we needed to include the identities that were absent or less present by including them in the process of shaping the exhibitions that would include their perspectives and images. Do you have a tool that you use to understand where you are now in terms of representation, and that can be repeated to track change over time?
Programs
Programs are similar to the example of exhibits above, and we used the same audit process. However, the advantage with programs is that they are often much cheaper and easier to change or adapt than exhibitions. Programs are also a great example of where staff can take action on their own. To again use an example from a previous museum, in our programs with schools, staff took the initiative on their own to replace some of the over-represented western European stories with stories from cultures or identities that introduced other perspectives. This was a change that staff could do on their own and something that could be done quickly and inexpensively. This sort of change is possible when staff feel supported in making these changes. In what ways do you help to empower others to increase representation? In what ways do you take individual action to increase representation?
Marketing
This same audit process can be applied to the museum’s website, social media, and print (rack cards, visitor maps, catalogs, etc.). Are we engaging our partners in departments across the organization to ensure representation is a museum-wide effort, not just held by one or two departments?
Collections
Representation also extends to the objects in our collections. Who is doing the collecting? Are we working to collect stories that are representative of the communities in which we reside? Are we telling only one story for the objects in our collections, or are we exploring multiple stories from multiple perspectives? Are we holding our collections to the same representation standards we hold exhibits, programs, and marketing?
Connecting with Community
When I was with my first museum, I was part of a project that utilized “community informed design” rather than the more widely referred “community co-creation.” I was not aware at the time of what community informed design was, or of the distinction between this approach and community co-creation prior to my leaving. I learned of the difference only after leaving and reading this article in Curator.)
Briefly, community co-creation is intended to be a deep collaboration between the museum and its community, where ownership and decision-making power are shared. Community informed design involves gathering input and feedback from community members, but the primary decision-making is with the museum.
Bringing in community can take many forms. It will look different in different communities, and will evolve each time it is done. The important thing is that it is done. As the article in Curator nicely states, “Forms of community engagement can be thought of as a spectrum of power sharing that community–museum partnerships move along, ideally moving forward in intertwined activities of relationship building and meaningful change.” How is your museum engaging with your community? (Are you being specific when you say “community”?)
Progress over Perfection Postscript
Be wary of maximalism, or considering anything less than a perfect solution as a failure. Part of the work is to bring others along with us and to learn from them and their experiences. The adage of progress over perfection is important. As you work to move your institution forward, what is needed to deepen your institution’s thinking about representation beyond the numbers of individuals from various identities? For example, how do power imbalances between people with different identities play a role in whose voices are elevated and whose are pushed aside? How can everyone at your institution learn to be aware of and mitigate those imbalances?
Wherever your institution is currently and may need to grow towards, representation is a part of a much wider web that interconnects with all of the other areas of the Report Card.
Museums & Race 