Other strategies focus on encouraging staff members to work one-on-one with their colleagues, building relationships internally so that resistance turns into buy-in. This may be as simple as inviting a resistant staff member to a community meeting held at the museum, paving the way for that individual to have a positive experience. Another effective strategy is to find ways to help colleagues see how working with community members can serve their own work. As Gogan at the Warhol notes, “A new perspective [from a community member] on an object in the collection can bring fresh ways of looking at things.” And one of the most effective approaches is to create opportunities for other staff to work with diverse community members. “Our colleagues need direct experience with community members,” notes Vas Prabhu, deputy director for interpretation and education at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. “When this happens, and it’s a good experience, you will have a collaborator in-house for life.”

Advisory groups are effective ways of building relationships with community leaders and others whose perspectives will enhance the museum’s activities. But problems occur when insufficient planning and communication leads to misunderstandings. For example, a museum director may form a community advisory group to help create a new exhibition but neglect to clarify its purpose and expectations. Or she may ask certain community leaders to serve solely because they are of a certain race or gender. While it’s important to incorporate diverse perspectives, when race or gender is the only reason a person is asked to participate—without regard to skills, specialized knowledge or standing in the community—it can create problems.

Kim Shuck, an artist, poet, educator and mathematician whose heritage includes American Indian tribes Tsalagi and Sauk/Fox and Poland, lives in San Francisco and is a sought-after advisory board member for a number of organizations. “When I can tell that the organization has done its homework, when they know about me and value what I bring to the process, I am happy to help,” says Shuck. “When I can tell that they have not done their homework, I don’t want to work with them. I have no patience with people and organizations that just do a Google search on ‘Native Americans in San Francisco’ and find my name.” She adds that when she has had to withdraw support, sometimes her network also withdraws support.

Even when such skills and perspectives are valued, problems occur.“Four out of [our] five advisory councils are primarily ethnically based, [and they] each address institution-wide issues and projects,” notes Barbara Henry, chief curator of education at the Oakland Museum of California. “Our challenges focus on several areas: new community members’ expectations that our museum has a lot of resources and money. . . , our need to clarify how we make decisions, the different roles of staff and committee members, how to build trust among committee members and preventing a ‘we-they’ perspective.”

To promote a “we” perspective, the museum has created an “inter-committee” that will draw members from all of its councils to pursue shared interests and projects. Staff also look at how they can address council members’ concerns even if they cannot always do so in the initial ways suggested by the members. “For instance,” says Henry, “a council may suggest that a program should be offered for free, and most of the time we try to do this. But when we can’t make it a free event, we find some other way to make the program accessible to more community members.” All potential solutions are reviewed by the appropriate council before implementation.

“Committees or councils work best when there is a high level of trust among the members,” says Henry. “Constant and ongoing communication is the key to achieving that trust—talking with community members on a regular basis, informing them about the museum to demystify it and listening carefully to their concerns.”

A key component of the Oakland Museum’s innovative solutions is the ability to adapt. Two education staff positions were redefined to include managing of the advisory councils and developing of community-based programs. An interdepartmental staff group called the Innovation Team, which includes the museum director, addresses council goals and recommendations as part of institutional planning. The staff positions and team may seem like a luxury, but the Oakland Museum sees them as a necessity.

Community members often have preconceived ideas about museums—ideas that may or may not be accurate. “Many people who have never been to the Tenement Museum assume that we are only a museum about European immigrants,” says Russell-Ciardi, “because . . . between 1863 and 1935, almost all of the [building’s] residents were from Europe.” The mostly Chinese and Dominican immigrants living in the neighborhood today don’t expect to see themselves reflected in the museum’s stories. So museum staff “talk about the challenges of learning a new language, adjusting to a new culture, making a living—the types of challenges people in our neighborhood are facing on a daily basis,” she says. “This is a new role for museums—using the past to explore contemporary issues—but one that visitors are excited about once they understand what we are trying to do. They want to tell us their own stories, and talk about how they compare to the stories of the people who lived in our building” long ago.

Helping community members understand how museums work “requires us to listen to people and to hear what they want to share with us,” says Irene Hirano, president/chief executive officer of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. “It means a lot of learning on both sides—we need to be open and we need to help them understand, so that there are clear expectations.”

At the Wing Luke Asian Museum, collaboration and community-building are part of each staff member’s day-to-day work. The museum is located in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District, home to a diverse population—Chinese, Japanese and Filipino Americans, among others. “It’s a pan-ethnic museum, and that brings major challenges,” says Program Director Cassie Chinn. “There are also generational differences, and the population is very mobile, so it’s hard to keep track of who the community is within Chinatown.” As such, the museum spends a great deal of time and resources (including human resources) trying to connect with its community. To reach out to young people about an exhibition on hip hop, for example, staff members spent time walking through the neighborhoods, talking with teenagers and finding out what interested them. That kind of attention is given to every project at the museum.

Working collaboratively takes more time than working on your own. Museums committed to community engagement soon learn that collaboration requires spending more time throughout planning, implementation and evaluation. Museum leaders and staff may feel that it is easier to plan and implement projects internally rather than involve community members or may be reluctant to conform to a different pace and schedule. Some think, “They don’t understand pressures we’re under! We need to finalize the program, write up publicity and seek funding, and I can’t get them to make decisions on time!” The way for museums to change this is to be flexible and strategic. Recognize that timelines can sometimes bend and that there are other ways to plan and publicize programs than the ways museums traditionally use. Word-of-mouth publicity from engaged community members is very effective, and programs that are planned and implemented collaboratively reflect the community’s interests in deeper ways. Also, strategic ways of working mean recognizing the important outcomes. For example, it’s important that a program engages its audience, even if it starts 15 or 20 minutes later than scheduled. A strategic approach may also conclude that not all programs are right for intensive community collaboration.

Another challenge is to keep staff from feeling overwhelmed as they strive to accomplish all the new projects on their to-do lists. The museum’s leadership should set priorities and help staff balance their time. “As we’ve looked at staff resources,” says Hirano, “we’ve learned that we can’t do everything.” 

The Japanese American National Museum has developed an innovative way to deal with limited resources. “The exhibition ‘From Bento to Mixed Plate,’ which traveled nationally through March 2004, was created by a large number of people in Hawaii,” says Hirano.

Japanese American National Museum photo found on Flickr

Staff who advocate greater museum-community engagement often feel that things are moving very slowly, and they can feel frustrated, burnt out and isolated. But these individuals are in fact changing their institutions. As author Debra Meyerson writes in Tempered Radicals, “At times [they operate] so quietly that they may not surface on the cultural radar as rebels or change agents. But these men and women of all colors and creeds are slowly and steadily pushing back on conventions, creating opportunities for learning, and inspiring change within their organizations.” Meyerson recommends encouraging staff “to build supportive affiliations with people inside and outside their organizations . . . interact regularly with people who affirm their identities, and create relationships and safe ‘spaces’ that enable them to nurture the parts of their selves that feel threatened within the dominant culture.”

It is sometimes difficult to keep focused on including local interests when there are particularly vexing problems and interpersonal conflicts. However, the reward will be deeper levels of appreciation for the richness of your community.

“Patience is critical,” says Mohrbacher of the Science Museum of Minnesota, where a senior-level staff person attends all mid-level manager meetings for youth programs, and staff members have access to board members, who provide important community contacts. “Don’t give up on your colleagues. Planting the seeds is important. It is clear that there is top level support for community involvement at the Science Museum of Minnesota.”

Margaret Kadoyama is a consultant for cultural organizations, museums and nonprofits and teaches at John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley, California.