Updates

We heard you! And the Museums & Race T-shirts are back up on on Bonfire. Get yours  just in time for the next conference circuit!

Now, in hoodie flavors, too.

Folx asked about the Skittle-licious shirts at AAM 2018. Here’s your chance! We have a Bonfire campaign running through June 2.

Proceeds will support Museums and Race grants to help defray costs of conference attendance for emerging professionals of color. Details to come. Stay tuned!!

M&R 2016 Gathering attendees,

The Museums and Race Steering Committee would like to apologize for the inconvenience and emotional injuries that were caused during the registration process and session conversations. We are very sorry. Our goal in organizing the Gathering was to provide a space for authentic engagement around museums and race, which also grappled with topics like power, privilege, diversity and inclusion. According to some of the feedback that we received it is clear to this committee that we fell short of that goal. We hope that this apology serves as a step towards reconciliation to those who were injured and/or inconvenienced during this event.

We have already started to meet as a group to address these hard lessons and we know and understand that we cannot do this alone. Our hope is that we can involve more people in the planning and participation of next year’s gathering so that we can work together in developing a safe space for dialogue, coalition building and best practices that will meet everyone’s needs surrounding these important issues. We plan to use our website and our social media (Twitter and Facebook) to act as portals of interaction so that individuals can work in partnership around these important matters in our field.

For those who have not had an opportunity to share their feedback on the survey concerning the Gathering here is the link.

The survey will close Friday June 24, 2016.

We would also like to acknowledge those who came from near and far just to participate and Museums and Race. We appreciate the efforts you made to attend and we are committed to working with you on dismantling systemic racism in the museum field.

Sincerely,

The Museums and Race Steering Committee

V. Gina Díaz

Omar Eaton-Martínez

Joanne Jones-Rizzi

Margaret Kadoyama

Coming to recognize and understand entrenched racism is a difficult and potentially contentious undertaking—but also a necessary step in challenging and transforming the institutional policies and systems that perpetuate structural racism and oppression in museums. To help advance this work, a group of 24 museum professionals came together in Chicago for a three-day convening on race and racism in museums.

The idea for the convening—called Museums and Race: Transformation and Justice—grew out of a conversation about museum response to Ferguson that The Museum Group (TMG) hosted during the American Alliance of Museums meeting in Atlanta in April 2015. People there were determined to sustain the momentum, and so a planning team was organized to develop the Chicago convening, with TMG as sponsor.

In small groups and larger discussions, over meals and in the convening lounge, our conversations centered on how to shape, expand, continue this critical dialogue so that it involves many others across the country and in all types of museums. We came from a variety of ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds, age groups, career stages, and museum environments, and that variety made for rich and frank exchange. “I am very appreciative of the thoughtful and intense conversations with individuals and within the group, the commitment to the work, the shared resources, the poems, the chocolate, donuts, biscuits, and cake,” said one participant. “I am looking forward to including others to expand the group and spread the word.”

Here’s what a few other participants had to say about the value of the convening:

• Professional practice, scholarship, and museums of color are largely not known by our colleagues. It is important to acknowledge and build on that.
• There is an urgent need for white museum professionals to address their privilege and role in oppressive systems. People of color bear a large burden when their white colleagues expect them to raise their awareness of racism and oppression.
• The potential impact of addressing privilege and oppression in spaces where museum professionals assemble (such as association meetings) is great. It can also be a strategic way to affect awareness raising in our white/largely white institutions.
• [The most valuable part for me was] becoming connected with strong, leading thinkers and practitioners in the field. It was reinforcing to know people are doing active work to raise consciousness in matters of racial and intersectional issues and also to see their action to change the way museums think, act, and behave.
• It is critical to meet people where they are in their process. Most valuable was the honesty from which people spoke and that people were very generous. Although some of the conversations were hard, it felt like a safe space for all.

Learn more about other participants’ reactions to their convening experience. Listen to Omar Eaton-Martinez, Daryl Fischer, Porchia Moore, and Brenda Tindal reflect on the convening on the February 16 episode of The Museum Life with Carol Bossert.

Taking Action

The convening was not a one-time event, but another step toward building coalitions and partnerships to carry the work forward. Participants initiated immediate and longer-term plans to broaden involvement and galvanize individual and collective action, beginning with a day of sessions on museums and race in TMG’s unconference space on the first day of the American Alliance of Museums annual meeting May 26–29, 2016, in Washington, DC, and fanning out across the country to fall and winter annual conferences of regional museum associations and other professional organizations.

On the convening’s final afternoon, small groups identified three action areas:

• Research, Resources (Materials), Metrics, and Accountability
• Social Action and Intervention
• Influencing AAM and Other Professional Organizations

Mindful of the need to inspire participation, one participant observed that “the enormity of the work still exists. We are a small group who is willing. The proof will remain in how well we do at sustaining the energy and translating it to action.” To help shape the dialogue, generate action, and influence change, join the conversation by sharing your thoughts here or by contacting us.

Learn more about Museums & Race:

Statement of Purpose

Reading List

Chicago Participants

Frequently Asked Questions

The Museum Group

What participants learned that was most valuable

• That professional practice, scholarship, and museums of color are largely notknown by our colleagues. It is important to acknowledge and build on that.
• There is an urgent need for white museum professionals to address their privilege and role in oppressive systems. People of color bear a large burden when their white colleagues expect them to raise their awareness of racism and oppression.
• The potential impact of addressing privilege and oppression in spaces where museum professionals assemble (such as association meetings) is great. It can also be a strategic way to effect awareness-raising in our white/largely white institutions.
• Becoming connected with strong, leading thinkers and practitioners in the field. It was reinforcing to know people are doing active work to raise consciousness in matters of racial and intersectional issues and also to see their action to change the way museums think, act, and behave.
• It is critical to meet people where they are in their process. Most valuable was the honesty from which people spoke and that people were very generous. Although some of the conversations were hard, it felt like a safe space for all.

What participants considered the most effective part of the convening

• Small group discussions with report backs to big group. These were fruitful and we were able to work through our ideas and differences of opinion swiftly and with what felt like a lot of compassion. It also gave us more time to get to know one another.
• Getting the tough stuff out and moving through it while also taking time and space to process.
• Everyone was participating with the understanding that they were expecting to continue and be assigned roles in these actions post-convening. There was a great deal of ownership. Concrete action began even before everyone left on Wednesday.
• The wonderful range of experiences and professional settings, age, gender, race and points of view which were expressed with tact and humility and supported by real listening.
• Meeting others who care about the same issue.
• The ice-breaker round robin. It was a great way to get to know something more deeply significant about our colleagues. We had one-on-one short conversations with one another, changing conversation partners for each prompt. The prompts were:
  • A person I admire and why 
  • An experience in my life that had a profound effect on me was… 
  • A quality I look for in a friend and why 
  • If you knew me well, you’d know that I….
  • What I would need from this group to feel that I could be honest with you is…

The value of the convening to the participants

• It clarified what my institution should prioritize in capacity building, professional development and leadership at all levels.
• To see generational differences in how people approach the topics, hurts that needed to be expressed, limited views that remain and make moving on difficult, etc.
• To meet with others who had a collective expectation that we were present in order to move anti-racist work forward in the field.
• To feel a strong sense of community with people I had never met before.
• The amount of planning we were able to accomplish in such a short amount of time was incredible. I was reminded of the power of collective action and also the ways we are held back when we work in silos.
• Realistic understanding that the enormity of the work still exists -we are a small group who is willing – the proof will remain in how well we do at sustaining the energy and translating it to action.
• We do need to get white colleagues in the museum world to recognize the systems of discrimination and racial inequity in museums.
• Some of the major ideas and plans center on the power of our white colleagues to destabilize their own power, and this is great. TMG is amazing for pulling this all together.
• There has to be some real, visible shift to lift non-white voices and centerstage their actions as pertinent, necessary, and valuable to white people.
• It is critical to show how nuanced the impact of polycultural engagements can be. Otherwise, we’re missing the important message that structural racism and inequality harm all of us.
• I wish there was more time to process some of the findings and come to a more straightforward set of achievable outcomes with strategies and tactics in place.

Additional comments to the convening committees

• We need to be as organized as possible and hold each group accountable by breaking the steps towards impact into bite-sized chunks. If we are to hold museums to metrics of accountability and high outcomes we must first start by holding our own work to the same standards.
• For TMG—thanks for having the courage to name the issues and to collaborate with emerging thinkers and professionals concerned that previous/current strategies haven’t work/aren’t working/need revision, etc.
• I hope we can mend fences in real, substantive ways with those who felt left out and make space for many, many more people who are ready with skills and tools already sharpened for the work.