This is a recorded session from the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. In this recorded session, museum professionals from various institutions – a museum focused on the Holocaust, a museum telling stories related to terrorist attacks, and a university conservation lab experienced in working with objects where damage is part of their value – discuss the challenges and opportunities that arise when working with populations affected by trauma and violence. Panelists will impart helpful tools, questions, and prompts that attendees can apply within their organizations and personal practice.
Additional Resources:
Curating Trauma and Violence slides
Transcript
Stephanie Arel:
Hi everyone, we’re going to get started right away here because we have just an hour and four presentations for this session on Curating Trauma and Violence, a topic which all of us here care pretty deeply about. So, we’re doing 10-minute presentations and then we’ll open it up for questions and conversation afterwards.
My name is Stephanie Arel. I’m going to start us off today with talking about memorial museums and trauma in terms of thinking about the viewpoint of the workers.
And I’ll introduce this by telling you in 2017 I started with a fellowship at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, and my project initially was to do research on empathy and related to the longevity of the museum and facilitating empathy in the visitors who came.
And one day, as I was sort of surveying what was happening at the museum, I watched a tour end in a corner of the bottom part of the museum and all of the visitors, there were about 12 of them surrounded the guide who was a girl of about five feet tall and divulged their 9/11 stories to her, some of which were crying. She handled it beautifully, but what I recognized was that in the mediation of human suffering at these types of institutions, the workers are asked to mediate that experience. They’re asked to take it, they’re asked to care for it, they’re asked to hold it, and I feel that’s quite a lot to ask of people who don’t have training in that kind of facilitation.
So, when I went to do research to get slides for you all today, one thing that came to bear pretty quickly related to photos of workers in memorial museum settings was that they didn’t really exist.
So, the public imagination actually supports this concept where museums are visitor focused. And in these types of spaces where we’re curating trauma on multiple levels with people and content, the lack of attention to the workers is something that we actually support as a culture and a society. And my goal was to do a little shifting with this.
Now, in the actual facilitation or the mediation of human suffering in the spaces of memorial museums, another sort of phenomena that I noticed in doing the research was that workers are really trained and actually comfortable with relegating themselves to the service that they provide.
And I’ll conceptualize that in three ways. They first are beholden to and relegate themselves to the interests of the institution. So that they’re acutely aware of what’s happening at institutional levels and in terms of thinking about stakeholders, for instance, that the institutional needs come before them. And I would say that this is something that psychologically I see happening, even in conversation, casual conversation, with people who work at these types of places where there’s always an attention to the need of the other before the need of the self. I don’t wanna problematize that, I just think it’s worth raising up in terms of thinking about what these institutions might have as responsibilities in return to the worker.
The second category of relegation which I’ve mentioned already is to the visitor. I have this picture of the Parktide Museum specifically because going there and interviewing one of the workers, I recognized, am I good? I heard somebody. I recognized an incident, or yeah, I hear it, or I witnessed an incident rather, of two groups of black teenagers and white teenagers getting into an argument in the museum about the way that something was represented.
And the guide, again, had at his disposable set of tools that he had actually and training by himself in psychology to help this situation, but once again it was at the relegation of himself to help these visitors work through their own angst in the experience of this setting.
The third category is that workers relegate themselves to the community that they serve. And I underscore the idea of service. So, they are tending to mediating, holding, responding to, and caring for people in the community.
Now, the museum field, memorial museum Field, is relatively new in terms of thinking about the history of the museum field. And so, it still has some work to do, I think, around addressing what the diagnosis or what the experience would be of workers and I would argue that they have some fields which they can refer to in order to do this.
So, I’m just gonna highlight nurses pretty much started the progression of compassion fatigue in the 70s a woman wrote an article it got picked up by other fields I will frame the Veterinarian field, which does a lot of work around ethical fatigue. If you’re in a setting where you’re being asked to do something that feels uncomfortable to you, but you are beholden to do it because of the work, this can cause ethical fatigue.
We have another category of compassion fatigue in the lives of ministers. And then social work, which really followed the nursing field in thinking about secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma in relationship to working with people who are presenting traumatic symptomatology.
So I wrote this book and as a result of doing research around the globe, Cambodia, Bosnia, South Africa, the Whitney Plantation in the U.S., 9/11 Memorial Museum, Poland in Israel, I think that covers everything. And one of the things that I just draw to the fore for you has to do with the fact that we’re not just dealing with random workers, we’re thinking about people that have histories of trauma that are often related to the event that they’re commemorating. And out of 82 people in those locations that I’ve mentioned, 35% of them were survivors themselves. 35% were family members doing the work in honor of family members, some that were survivors and some that were not.
And the other 30% were community members that cared about what they were doing. So there was not one person that I interviewed out of that 82 that didn’t feel pretty intensely about the service they were offering to whomever they were relegating themselves to, whether it was the institution, the families, the visitors, or the community.
I highlight this, workers are invisible until they’re called upon, and that’s actually part of the job. This is a Quote by Velma Sarek, she is in Bosnia. She does a lot of work with peace and reconciliation there. She really helped me interview quite a few people in Bosnia. To underscore the point that I made about vocation and caring, I will read the middle of this. “Genocide survivors that work in museums, I know that every single time they talk about their experience they do so with passion but I also know how tired and exhausted and stressed they are.”
The rest of this had to do with our talking about what would help and one thing that Velma articulated and which I would say reverberated in the interviews that I made had to do with building community.
So I offer three things to think about in relationship to responding to trauma within museums, which I don’t think it’s necessary to problematize it or necessary to say it’s not there, shouldn’t be there, because the activity of a memorial museum is to honor human suffering, to mediate human suffering, to recognize it. And I think that workers deserve the transparency around what that means and acknowledgement that the work is hard.
I would recommend training. Psychoeducation means like what’s happening to you when you discover an ID that is somebody who’s who died, what happens to you chemically, physiologically, psychologically when you’re negotiating such artifacts. What’s happening physiologically, psychologically to the guide that I referenced at the beginning, and then skill building. Skill building research shows actually helps the negotiation of traumatic symptomatology, and that doesn’t have to be skill building around trauma. The underscoring concept of that is creating agency in the worker. And however, that agency is created around skills is sort of irrelevant.
And then as I mentioned before, the importance of constructing community, oftentimes that happens internally in the institution within departments, that’s fine. But the fact of just mentioning that it’s something to do in relationship to helping people confront and deal with the work that they do, it can help. Thank you very much.
Alexandra Drakakis:
Hi everybody, I’m Alexandra Drakakis and I’m going to be talking about curating traumatic heritage, bringing the perspective of an acquisition’s curator, practitioner to the fore.
So as an acquisitions curator for over 15 years, I have worked directly with members of the 9/11 and Holocaust impacted communities on the creation of a foundational collection for the National September 11 Memorial Museum and on the continued development of an established collection at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. My tenure at the latter institution was marked by the passing of members of the Holocaust eyewitness generation and current events, most notably a massive surge in anti-Semitic incidents and the ongoing impacts of the Israel Hamas War.
My sense of duty to my staff at the Holocaust Museum and processes that I put into effect during my time there were heavily influenced by my experiences at the 9/11 Museum.
An experience from 2011 in particular, helped shape some of my feelings and approaches to curatorial acquisitions work. My objective in sharing it today is to set the stage for contemplation on topics central to this panel from the perspective of a practitioner.
Two key questions to keep in mind are, one, what ethical implications arise for staff when professional museum practices intersect with the complex vulnerability and unpredictability of human grief?
And two, how can museums put structures in place or rethink established ones to support the well-being of the museum worker, the donor community, and the institution itself, specifically when grappling with difficult and traumatic history?
In an early stage of the 9/11 Museum’s collecting efforts, we acquired this handwritten note from a lower Manhattan worker who had been handed it by an evacuee running from the debris cloud. Prior to its installation, forensic archaeologists tested the smudge adjacent to the hastily scribed message.
In July 2011, it was confirmed that the smudge was a fingerprint of dried blood, and to our astonishment, a subsequent DNA test matched it to World Trade Center victim Randolph Scott.
On 9/11, Scott was in his office on the South Tower’s 84th floor, directly within the building’s impacted zone. As a result, his family had presumed that he had died instantly. This is one reason why when his youngest daughter asked to see the note before it was placed on display, I was conscious about my role as mediator of that experience. This young woman who was only a child when her father was murdered on 9/11 had begun to understand his death in a way that was upended a decade later. Bearing witness to her encounter with material evidence of her father’s last-ditch effort to survive under this set of circumstances was one of the most emotionally challenging moments of my museum career. I still wonder whether I handled it as responsibly as I could, and what the museum’s role was, if any, in the processing of grief.
There is no museum studies program that trains a person for this kind of workplace experience, Yet, those of us at museums that contain material tied to personal or large-scale traumatic episodes confront it regularly and in many ways.
Through the acquisition of these artifacts and interaction with impacted individuals, through the arrangement, description, and cataloging, conservation treatment, handling, and rehousing, intellectual interpretation, physical installation, through the public’s visiting reactions to these items and through our own intercollegial exchanges.
This can make for a precarious workplace scenario at times as it has the potential to open up a wellspring of human emotion as much as it may serve to suture it.
In the aftermath of large-scale disaster, there’s a need for connection, something that helps us regain a sense of control amid feelings of powerlessness. At the 9/11 Museum, I bore witness to victims’ families endeavoring to find connection through the objects tied to their loved ones and by donating personal material to a public repository.
At the Holocaust Museum, I witnessed this on a much greater scale, and as it was unfolding almost 80 years after World War II. Despite the passage of time, the volume of donations to the Holocaust Museum is incredibly high, one testament, perhaps, to the enormity of loss and to how the repercussions of genocide are truly ceaseless.
An example of an artifact accepted under temporary custody by the museum during my time there is this child’s romper, purportedly worn by the depositor’s mother when she was an infant on Kristallnacht, stained with the blood of a male acquaintance who was attacked in her presence during the Nazi rampage. Each donation experience comes with its own slate of challenges and lingering questions, including the one that still troubles me from my interaction with Randolph Scott’s daughter. Did I navigate responsibly with the proper balance of sensitivity and professionalism, clearly managing expectations by articulating the bounds within which the museum must function?
There is a growing body of research that demonstrates that there can be a psychological unburdening effect when an individual divests themselves of an artifact of trauma and places it in a museum.
In a field report, following interviews conducted with 9/11 museum collection donors, published by Brenda Cowan, a subject referred to the museum as a quote, “therapeutic ally.” That participation in the donation process can be a positive experience for the donor is a huge relief. However, that the museum worker is perceived as providing something akin to a therapeutic service when we are not trained in that manner is notable. It emphasizes the level of responsibility that the museum worker bears and the role that our institutions play in a donor’s psychological well-being. It also begs the question of what this all means for our own psychological well-being.
Relatedly, there is also some research on the therapeutic value of spontaneous public memorials created after traumatic events. In the 2020 article pictured here, researchers posit that public shrines are now an expected response and point to the 2017 Manchester Arena Attack as one such example.
Research also reflects a growing practice to preserve the material culture from spontaneous memorials. Here are examples from the Manchester together archive and an image of students working to document the collection.
As gratifying as this work to preserve these memorial items can be, it is not free from mental burden, especially when workers are not trained and prepared for its emotional tax, a point that the research clearly articulates.
Part of the charge of stewarding the material evidence of trauma is negotiating the intimacy of confronting human grief with institutional dynamics. These dynamics include limits in the form of staffing, resources, storage, and organizational priorities. They are not always taken into account in our acquisition practices, where success can be measured by volume, and saying no to the victim of trauma can feel like a moral dilemma.
Further, the donor may not fully comprehend the permanence of donation, length of time it takes to accession a collection, or the inability of the museum to promise display. If research suggests that we can be therapeutic allies, however, then what structures need to be put in place to protect and empower the worker and the donor to establish clarity in a common language, cultivating a healthier relationship between the museum and the community it serves.
I wish to invite discussion on how we can lean on policies and technical aspects of our practice to help address these challenges. For example, how can formal decision-making bodies like an like an internal acquisitions committee, fortify staff by helping to pace acquisitions work and manage donor expectations.
Should collections management policies, which articulate collecting scope and decision-making practices, be more socialized across museum staff and activated as communication tools, both internally and externally? Do non-collections colleagues need to be more engaged in the challenges we face so that they may be addressed more holistically?
While there is no one-size-fits-all solution I offer these examples as food for thought on what a closer look at our museological practices can offer as a complement to psychological support and specialized training as we collectively explore how boundaries and clarity can help support the health and well-being of the donor, worker, and institution. Thank you.
Lisa Conte:
I’m going to try to look at my notes here.
So, actually, I’m just going to hold it. So good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining this panel. My name is Lisa Conti, and I’m a paper conservator. Two years ago, I began teaching at New York University, one of four graduate programs specializing in the conservation of art and cultural heritage in the United States. Before this, I was the head of conservation at the 9/11 Memorial Museum for five years, where I focused on the care of traumatic heritage. During this time, I developed a deep appreciation for people-centered approaches and the care of collection items. Today, I would like to introduce some of the themes and issues I encountered while working at the museum to share some of my approaches to working with objects associated with trauma and invite you to challenge and expand upon them.
So, while we have been discussing the impacts of trauma and the complexities of collecting trauma-related artifacts, I’d like to establish the sheer breadth of what they can encompass. So, I will provide some context for the equally as well for the equally extensive and complex principles and practices that distinguish the preservation of these items.
So put simply a traumatic artifact is a thing directly associated with a natural disaster, conflict, or other form of violence and suffering, which unfortunately seem omnipresent these days. Artifacts born from such events often carry significant emotional in historical weight, serving as tangible reminders of the experiences and the memories of those affected.
As we’ve seen in the examples already shared about 9/11 and those on the screen, these can include personal belongings, remnants of destroyed structures or everyday items, and objects that played a role in the event itself. Significantly, they can embody a person’s grief, particularly things created in response to an event like an artwork, spontaneous memorials, or other tributes. So, while all artwork and artifacts require particular handling and ethical considerations, those associated with traumatic events demand special sensitivity as we’ve been hearing.
This work often involves interfacing with effective community members for who these artifacts can evoke deep emotional responses, in addition to serving as historical evidence. Our focus is often on preserving this immaterial value. So let me just press play here, great.
So, what we see on the screen is a prime example, World Trade Center dust. Following the collapse of the Twin towers, this dust-blanketed lower Manhattan, taking on different meanings, both positive and negative, depending on personal experiences. The dust itself, along with objects covered in it, were saved as relics. These gained added significance shortly after the event, as people realized the dust could contain human remains.
The 9/11 Memorial Museum has always worked closely with the office of the chief medical examiner in New York City who reviews all dust-covered material before its addition to the collection. No remains have ever been found in prospective collection items.
So, the dust was collected both intentionally as seen in the previous slide and unintentionally by those working in rescue and recovery or whose nearby studios and homes were blanketed by it.
Here you see two different approaches to preservation. Artist Elena del Rivera, who’s studio home near the trade center, was severely damaged on 9/11, ritually cleaned, numbered, and documented what was there. Initiating a quasi-conservation practice, salvaging over 3 ,000 pieces of paper and the dust that covered her studio, Rivera worked with these materials, which she calls, quote, an archive of dust. For 20 years, she worked with this material, revealing in historian Warwick Anderson’s words, quote, how long and painful the work of mourning can be, end quote. This work is not in the museum’s collection; however, I included it because it powerfully illustrates the transient nature of the dust and the profound impact of trauma on people’s lives.
Similarly, the dust clung to many first responders, Steve Samin, captain of the Brooklawn, New Jersey Police Department, who reported to Ground Zero on the afternoon of 9/11 noted, quote, “Not only did I wear it, but it’s a part of me,” mostly on the inside, end quote. Samin now suffers from illnesses caused by 9/11.
Donors, for the most part, make the most difficult decisions about whether to preserve World Trade Center dust and artifacts before they enter the museum. As conservators, we typically are aiming to respect and maintain those wishes. However, preserving dust is not typical for museums.
It is often, you know, but in the case of the 9/11 Memorial Museum’s collection is often essential for maintaining cultural resonance. However, hazardous elements like asbestos and lead can be present in it posing health and safety risks.
The 9/11 Memorial Museum frequently faces the challenge of balancing preservation with hazard removal. To ensure safety, the museum integrates health and safety protocols into its policies, developed in collaboration with occupational and environmental health professionals. And what you can see here is that essentially within the museum context, you’re implementing kind of an opposite approach of what industry does, where preservation over elimination, oftentimes is your primary goal.
So as a conservator, the values that I aim to uphold by working with World Trade Center dust and other museum artifacts include sensitivity to trauma in people’s experiences, considering cultural values, determining whether the story, the object, or some other immaterial value is being preserved. Typically, we want to take a minimal approach, a minimally interventive of approach. With that, we want to have respect for object authenticity, which can mean, in many is preserving damage, even if this might seem antithetical to typical preservation approaches.
As we’ve heard, centering the community, whether it be the donor or the source community, in approaches to care, involving them in decision making, and recognizing the unique values stored in the material fabric, and understanding that the same item can have different meanings to different people, with dust being the prime example. And here you can see an example of a tea set, which was in the home of a resident of lower Manhattan, and for them the only way to see the dust was a hazard. And so, they cleaned it, even though this patina kind of may seem part of its essential value to others.
So, the next example of, you know, preservation ideas that I’ve considered in my work, focuses on an unremarkable metal fragment, which you see in the third image from the left, which was purported to be a piece of Fritz Koenig’s The Sphere, which was damaged during the 9/11 attacks and later transformed into a memorial.
It sits just above the 9/11 Memorial Museum Plaza now in Liberty Park. So, determining the metal fragment’s metal alloy makeup could verify or refute its origin as its finder who recovered it while working at ground zero, he firmly believed that it came from this sphere. And the sculpture was special to him because it reminded him of time spent with his father sitting near it.
But think about it, among hundreds of thousands of tons of rubble, this fragment was saved because it conjured a positive memory. So, you know, even though we initially thought about trying to positively identify this fragment, why possibly strip the artifact of that value by identifying it otherwise when it could never even be returned to the sculpture anyway, which was preserved in its damaged state as a memorial. So often as we’ve been hearing trauma survivors give artifacts museums associated with traumatic events to unburden themselves from their trauma as a part of their healing process.
This case study raises important questions about research ethics and values in scientific analysis, such as respect for the object and informed consent when working with your donor populations because scientific analysis can change the immaterial value, the story of what this thing is, and thereby the value of the object for the donor. The research problem raises questions on how to balance oral testimony versus scientific analysis, especially in the context of research involving humans that fall outside the scope of institutional review boards. For this object, the research approach should reflect shared decisions between the donor and the museum because it can alter the artifact.
So, it’s important to consider before undertaking any examinations or tests that may alter cultural property. Conservation professionals must establish the necessity for such procedures. So, in this case, I ask, what would be gained by analyzing the fragment?
Finally, I’d like to consider replication as a preservation strategy. This can be especially important in history or memorial museums, where there are a finite number of artifacts to tell a story that is on permanent exhibition. However, frequent display and exposure to light and environmental factors, as we all know can lead to alterations over time, so what do we do?
Which type of artifacts are appropriate to replicate? Reproductions as a preservation approach come with philosophical and practical concerns. For example, there is the concept of the aura, or the uniqueness of the original, experienced in a distinct time and space. Sometimes the aura includes decay as part of an object’s life cycle. When decay is an important component of an object’s intended function and significance, there’s a strong argument against conserving or replicating an artifact. Additionally, some materials are unsuitable for replication due to their cultural or spiritual context.
So, consider the star filled with sand. It was left at the base of a tree on the 9/11 Memorial Plaza by two sisters in memory of their sibling, a victim of the 9/11 attacks. The sisters frequented this particular Hawaiian beach inscribed on the lid when they were growing up as children in Honolulu and thereafter during their lives.
The jar of sand was brought to the memorial for the 10-year anniversary of the attacks. Since its acquisition, you can see the lid has significantly changed in condition. Corrosion on the jar’s lid is due to moisture and chloride salts trapped in the beach sand, as well as rainwater and environmental moisture from when it was outdoors on the plaza. Despite the altered condition, the original lid was ultimately used when the jar was recently exhibited.
However, initially a facsimile lid was considered because it was thought the change in appearance to be perceived as a result of a lack of care for the object. However, after consulting with the victim’s family, we realized they did not see it this way. The corrosion does not diminish the heartfelt gesture embodied by the jar of sand. And so, the collections team chose to use the original lid rather than create replica. We determined that the primary value of the object was in the sand, not in the jar itself, and that the corrosion is part of the story of the saltwater and the passage of time.
Despite the persistent emphasis on the aura and originality, increasingly accurate reproductive technologies and a focus on access make a strong case for replicas, especially for mass-produced materials like those seen here, where the front and printed covers were reproduced.
In such cases, the primary value is informational.
And I’m going to end on this slide in just a moment, but just to consider the inherent complexities that museums and cultural stakeholders, you know, confront, we should really consider establishing systematic processes, you know, not just for evaluating, of course, replication efforts, but on all of our, in some ways, our conservation work, but appreciating the different museums. There is, again, like Alex said, there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.
For some museums like the Whitney, they have a committee, for example, for the purpose of evaluating what is appropriate to make a replica of or not. And so just to leave it on this note, replication has a long-standing tradition and opinions about copies have fluctuated over time. And no two approaches to replication, even just in the few examples I’ve shown, will ever be the same.
So in the consideration of this story and thinking about that idea that, you know, there are limited artifacts to tell certain stories that are very important and powerful within the context of a historical exhibition, you know, even if you’re not making an exact one-to-one copy of something that potentially, you know, contains, you know, biological evidence, you know, and thinking about that aura and originality, you know, perhaps there’s, you know, other approaches, such as creating, you know, graphic representations.
The family of this note was consulted in the consideration of creating a replica, which is seen on right, which really closely accurately reflects the original. But I kind of leave it to you to kind of consider, you know, maybe, you know, what you would choose kind of within your own museum and how you might go about the approach of navigating these complex questions and concerns.
So, you know, there are many growth opportunities in the preservation of traumatic of traumatic heritage, but as others have also said, I think that it’s really important to consider that objects and conversations have the capacity, these reminders, to plunge people back into distress and make their presence an issue for communities as well as individuals as highlighted in this article. So, I think that that’s probably one of the most important things that we can consider.
It’s kind of like how we consider thinking about avoiding re-traumatization as well as kind of carefully considering and discussing our personal bodies of ethics as well as our own as well as our own.
Thank you so much.
Ian Kerrigan:
Good morning, everybody.
Excellent. So, thank you, Stephanie, for setting our table and for Alex and Lisa for sharing these really rich case studies. My name is Ian Kerrigan, and I am the Senior Vice President for exhibitions of the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City.
As we’ve heard this morning, there’s often a lack of training on how to successfully work with traumatic and violent content, how to interact with the people who directly experienced these events, who have put their trust in the museum to share their stories and their objects. And how to proactively care for the museum worker engaged in this practice. That leaves many of us trying to fill the gap, and so I’m gonna speak from the position of a supervisor or an administrator who’s also trying to figure out not only how to care for themselves, but how to best care for the staff at our institutions. I’m gonna follow next in sharing some strategies that we have found helpful in our practice.
These approaches have been developed in direct response to addressing the needs of our colleagues, and thus some may or may not seem appropriate in all scenarios. There is not, as Alex said, a one-size-fits-all solution, so any strategies must be tailored to the specific needs of the people you were seeking to support.
A quick caveat that when I talk about supporting staff, please note that I’m using this as a shorthand to cover employees, interns, and volunteers at our institutions. So some of the strategies that we have found to be effective include starting on day one when you onboard new staff, be transparent about the difficult nature of the work, share what resources are available at your institution, such as an employee assistance program, or leaning on other staff who have been engaged in this process much longer, and make it personal too. Share what resources or coping mechanisms you yourself have leveraged and stress the importance of self-awareness and taking care of oneself.
Boundary setting is another strategy. Much easier said than done, but cognitively understanding that as a museum worker you are not a vessel for other people’s trauma can be a powerful tool that with practice can help us continue to do this work sustainably.
In a similar vein, it can be incredibly helpful to remind yourself and your colleagues about managing expectations of what is inside or outside of our spheres of control and influence. As staff bring forward areas of concern, it can be helpful to identify what an individual can do that is empowering for themselves, what can a team do to support each other, and what can an institution do that you can collectively lobby for. As I particularly work in the realm of exhibitions, I often hear colleagues talk about the pain of making curatorial choices of what can or cannot be included in a show. As if removing an object from a checklist is a direct assault on the individual who donated that object and trusted the museum with their memories.
It can be helpful to repeatedly recognize that exhibitions cannot be encyclopedic and that making curatorial choices is not about being dismissive of individual stories or punishing somebody who already experienced trauma or violence.
But rather, choosing representative examples best invites the public who has limited knowledge of these stories into the story so that they can be inspired and want to learn more about a particular topic.
Making curatorial choices about artifacts or artworks, photos or films can be tough. And certain types of assets in our collections can take a toll or a heavier toll on us. Specifically, I’ve frequently heard colleagues characterize listening to oral histories and watching moving imagery related to traumatic and violent events as some of the most challenging materials to work with. Limiting exposure to staff who can handle these assets, checking in on staff regularly who are doing this work to assess the impact it is having on them, and spacing the work out into chunks over time can be helpful methods to consider.
When staff anticipate, whether staff anticipated or not, we are all representatives of our institutions when we are out in the world. When a staff member discloses where they work or the type of job they have, this may prompt others to want to share their own stories of trauma or violence.
Preparing staff for this occurrence and reminding them to use the same strategies that they have developed at work can be leveraged outside of the museum may help make those moments less surprising and therefore easier to manage in the moment.
I also strongly encourage members of my team to seek out their counterparts at other museums. Building that type of network can foster the sharing of resources and the creation of new strategies. Serve as a reminder that you are not alone in this type of work, and sometimes help separate the everyday bureaucratic stresses of working in any organization from the particular issues that arise when dealing with traumatic and violent content. I’ve also found that involving staff as much as possible in evaluation work can have a very positive impact.
Seeing how visitors engage in one’s work product can create long-lasting meaning. Similarly, inviting staff to meetings where stakeholder communities have been invited to hear how one’s own work product is meaningful to those that directly experience trauma and violence can also be a powerful motivator and reminder as to why we do this work.
Soliciting feedback from staff is an important component for supervisors and administrators to demonstrate this is an ongoing process and not something that is one and done with. I found requesting feedback directly and anonymously, both have their merits.
One technique that I have used for asking for anonymous feedback to assess current issues and trends is the pass the paper activity. It generally works best for about groups of 10 to 20. Everyone receives a blank piece of paper. I then asked them to write down a concern that they have, something that they’re dealing with, some issue that they have in working with trauma or violent content.
They write it, and then they pass that paper to the right. You then get a new piece of paper in front of you, you’re asked to write a new comment or respond to the existing comment on your piece of paper. That continues, pass the paper, write or respond to the comments already there, pass again.
At the end, I would collect, transcribe, and organize the comments into themes, and then discuss them at a future staff meeting where we could brainstorm collectively as a group and then discuss them to figure out how we could address as individuals, as a team, or bring forward to institutional leadership.
Which brings me to our final suggestion in this category, which is noting the importance of procuring institutional buy-in for measures that can support staff in the work. This can be in the form of resource allocation, training, facilitated conversations, policy creation, setting up an internal wellness committee to make recommendations at a staff level or more. Again, each museum and its staff may have different needs, but securing sustained support and commitment to staff care at a leadership level is key.
In addition to the staff that work at our museums, many of us also work with external partners. I use the term vendors here as a catch-all for contractors, consultants, independent museum professionals, and other firms that we might engage to collaborate with. For these partners, There are a few different strategies we would like to call out.
When working with any new vendor, it can be valuable to offer some pre-visit preparation before they come to your museum. Let them know what they might encounter in terms of traumatic or violent content on display or as part of a meeting, either as directly relate to their scope of work or simply what they might be moving past as they’re coming through your facility.
For my exhibition partners, for example, this can include what galleries they may encounter, if any of the media is going to be on or off that day so that they can prepare themselves to see or hear this type of content.
This pre-visit prep can reduce the element of surprise and give your partners the opportunity to give some thought ahead of time as to what they may experience and how they may respond accordingly. And then, similar to what we’ve discussed with staff being representatives of your museum, many vendors, especially if it’s their first time working with you on a project, may feel compelled to share their own relevant stories if they are affected by the content.
Providing a space for them to engage can build empathy and trust, as well as giving staff members a bit of control over providing that space in terms of when and where those conversations happen and managing them accordingly.
For example, staff can explicitly ask vendors at a designated point how they’re feeling in relationship to working on this content or doing work in galleries displaying certain content rather than wait for a vendor to dive into that topic at an unexpected time.
Lastly, I want to touch upon stakeholders, and in particular, external stakeholders to our museums that represent communities of trauma and violence. We advise inviting representatives for these communities to contribute and participate in your programs.
Again, as I come from an exhibition’s perspective, examples of this could include involving stakeholder representatives to be on advisory councils during your exhibition development, participate in front-end and formative evaluations such as focus groups or prototype reviews or even as contributors to your exhibition scripts to include their voices directly in the interpretation.
The format may vary but whatever whichever channel seems most fruitful to you be sure to be transparent about the scope of participation you were asking, be clear about the time commitment frequency, be open about compensation for sharing their expertise and offer clarity about who holds decision-making authority. Additionally, because I think in terms of exhibitions, there are a variety of interpretive and design tools that can benefit as effective stakeholders that in reality can really be advantageous to all types of visitors.
First is to consider opt-in experiences. These could take the form of privacy walls in your galleries to shield sensitive content, advisory signage, know before you go information on websites or communications with pre-visit ticket sales, or other techniques that signal traumatic or violent content is present and allow people to make choices about their level of engagement with that content.
Second is to intentionally include respites as part of the museum journey. These could be visual respites. As change in color, material, or lighting, or even a blank wall that can give visitors a sensory break from their encounter with sensitive materials. This can also be a content respite. A moment to interject a different kind of subject matter in the visitor journey through your museum to provide a break. This should also be an emotional respite. Such as adjusting the interpretation to be more cognitive and didactic in its presentation, so visitors have an emotion rest from their feelings.
Similarly, I think a lot about the emotional arc of storytelling. Limit the potential visual and auditory assault on stakeholders visiting your museum and pace out these types of assets that bear more emotional weight.
Perhaps a printed quotation rather than a played audio, for example, could get across the same content point without the same heightened emotionality behind it of hearing a human voice. Fourth, examine the language used on text labels in your museum.
For stakeholders visiting, they experience a traumatic and violence firsthand. Using language that describes these events without editorial embellishment can offer a or re-encounter with the event, minimize the potential of re-traumatizing these community members, and avoid characterizing events in a manner uncomfortable for those stakeholders. For example, one could write about a mass grave as opposed to a horrifying mass grave.
Write about a rescue effort as opposed to a heroic rescue effort that could make a first responder feel uneasy with that added signifier because in their minds, they were just doing their job.
Some of the strategies we’ve discussed center around building skills to manage interactions with traumatic and violent content Others focus more in building communities of practice and support that staff can rely upon I hope that some of these suggestions sound feasible and present a lower threshold for adoption.
Nonetheless, we still advocate that museums and their counterpart organizations in the museum field Establish policies and guidelines that help staff navigate the moral dilemmas that arise when working with this type of content. To create parameters and guard rails to help museum professionals do their work effectively and compassionately, but also with emotional safety and support.
Museums like any type of business often deal in risks and liabilities, and we argue that repeated exposure to working with traumatic and violent content without effective and sustained support is just another risk and liability to consider. Without proper attention and care, results can include dips in staff morale, burnout, lower retention, reduced desire and ability to engage with stakeholders and more.
Doing this work can be very rewarding, but it is also tough. And we are all trying to navigate the human element involved, being effective in our job duties while also having our own feelings and being impacted by the feelings of others. Now, I’m going to hand the mic back to Stephanie for some concluding thoughts before we open up the conversation to Q &A.
Stephanie Arel:
Thank you all. I hope that there was something that each of you took away from listening to us discuss, navigating the human element, and dealing with traumatic content and material at museums and memorial museums.
So, in the interest of time, Let’s just go ahead and open it for questions if you would come to the floor and this microphone up here If you have a question to ask.
Its very public
Audience member 1:
No, yeah, okay.
Thanks everybody. I really appreciate all the presentations. You have this specific focus on institutions that are memorials those of us who work at institutions that occasionally will have content that features very traumatic content. It’s not something that our staff knows about going in when they and suddenly their job is related to this I’m wondering if you have any thoughts specifically about that you’ve provided a huge array of tools That are things that we’re already thinking about but that idea of it’s a little bit like surprise your job has become this now.
Ian Kerrigan:
I can start with that one. First we would say sorry and welcome to the club, that I mean it sounds funny, but unfortunately more and more there are more institutions that find themselves and find their staff stressed into this type of work. One of, I think one strategy that you can do is reach out to some of the institutions like the Holocaust Memorial Museum, like the 9/11 Memorial Museum, that do this work on a regular basis and we are more than happy to share our strategies, but also connect you with other institutions who have found themselves because of an event that happened in their community.
It’s a little different, and it takes sometimes a little more time not only to wrap your hand around what to do in your professional responsibilities, but also how at an institutional leadership level to start them to think about the support that you were going to need to do this work. So, reach out, and happy to connect with you and that’s I think for us the best way that we’ve all learned in talking with those that have come before us.
Stephanie Arel:
I’ll add one thing which is the element of surprise which Ian referenced in his presentation is psychologically one of the two factors that make the most impact.
So, the ability to recognize when one’s been surprised and then mediate or deal with that as it’s happening in real time is really important. Because people feel, when they’ve been surprised, it feels like, should I not be feeling this? Should I be in my professional cognitive moment and not in this psychological reaction?
So, validating, no, it’s pretty normal that you’re affected when you’re surprised by something that you didn’t expect and it has something to do with trauma.
Audience member 2:
Hi, thank you so much for thinking all this through and for these tools. Thank you. How do you know if a staff if a staff member or someone is responding to a cultural trauma or a collective trauma or it’s personal problems or is that the wrong question to ask? How do you know?
Lisa Conte:
I think one of the themes that we’ve been talking about is transparency and that not waiting until you think that there may be a problem.
So, I think this applies whether you’re working in a memorial museum with traumatic materials or otherwise. I think it’s about navigating the human element in your workplace environment and being proactive about care for your staff.
And unfortunately, because we don’t have the training other than Stephanie from a– I would say from the perspective of someone trained in being a human health expert, that oftentimes you have to defer if you think there’s a problem to someone who does have that expertise, right? That’s really important to know, is that you should defer people to get professional help.
And sometimes you need to kind of share with your department administrators or whatnot. I’m sure that you have an ethics guide or other guides within your institutions that help you navigate these kinds of complex problems, issues. They’re not problems.
Ian Kerrigan:
I would also just quickly add to that. A lot of that work happens before those moments arise. As a supervisor, as an administrator, the most that you can set up a culture of, you know, that open door policy, giving space to your staff to bring their issues to you, hopefully creates that relationship. I think it’s really hard to bring up and try to pinpoint and you try to resist that armchair psychologist in all of us giving feedback specifically on the work.
I’ve noticed you’ve shown up late I’ve noticed, you know, you’re not hitting deadlines. Whatever that is, you know. Do you want to talk about that and just starting there and making this space for your staff members to bring forward?
Whatever issues is sometimes a good strategy.
Audience Member 3:
Hi Thanks again for these great presentations. I was just wondering like how do you navigate when the the museum itself is directly contributing to the experience of trauma, especially if it’s intergenerational trauma, with the display of an object or the excavation of an object. For example, the Topaz Museum in Utah excavated a memorial stone related to someone who was killed at one of the incarceration camps during Japanese incarceration. And the community to like pay for like a professional like archeologist and said the museum went ahead and used like a literal backhoe to like drag it out of the ground and it was damaged and the community is, you know, re-experiencing, you know, like, ’cause there are still survivors of that, they’re re-experiencing the trauma.
So, I was just wondering how do you, if a museum does something like that, whether it’s, I’m not gonna say intentional, but You know, there are all these complicated factors. What do you what do you do?
Lisa Conte:
One quick thing it’s just to say that I think you’ve heard as a theme throughout this presentation is involving your community members from the outset because people are going to have different approaches and especially if you have if you are dealing with sacred material or human remains there are also federal guidelines that dictate the way in which you are going to approach those kinds of situations. So those are very well laid out and should be respected and followed.
So, I will just give that as a one answer, one sentence. But sometimes you do confront challenging situations that you have to navigate.
Alexandra Drakakis:
And I’ll just really quickly add that I think sometimes, despite the fact that there are ethical guidelines out there to refer to and there are resources to turn to, that sadly the reality is that museums are going to take those tremendous missteps. I want to kind of underscore a point that I feel a lot of my fellow panelists have made, and this is where leaning on the museum community to just be better and improve and continue to evolve our practices and our approaches collectively, because we’re all grappling with these same issues, whether we’re coming from a memorial museum perspective or otherwise.
So that would be my response to your excellent question.
Ian Kerrigan:
Quickly add what we know and what we feel we can’t assume that other people know. We can’t assume that our supervisor, our museum director, our board are thinking or feeling the same thing. I’m gonna steal something from my colleague Alejandro in the audience who yesterday or the other week was talking to me about having courageous conversations and finding a way and sometimes just using that language to talk to leadership in your organization and say, you know what, I want to have a courageous conversation with you, set the tone that you’re about to bring up something that is difficult, something that might be challenging, something that might be awkward, can help set the stage to allow you to express your feelings and say that, you know, you don’t want to speak for others, but that there may be others that are also having similar feelings about this and that you encourage your leadership to do some listening.
Lisa Conte:
And I just want to say sometimes museums just need to get out of the way. Like we may not be the best people to be in a certain situation or working on certain things. So, that’s an important thing to kind of I think for us all to internalize.
Audience Member 4:
Thank you all so much for being here and giving some excellent resources. My question kind of fits with the first question that was asked, we’re finding that our site in the past few years has become a little bit of a destination within the Midwest to commit suicide. And we’re also dealing with a lot of pressure from the state and from other higher ups to maintain, to keep the site open. So, we’re having staff that maybe see or confront these experiences with you know, a mental health crisis and then are seeing 2000-3000 visitors that day that know nothing about this. So how can we better support staff when they’re forced into that kind of experience?
Stephanie Arel:
I mean, I think this gets back to the issue of transparency and acknowledgement It goes a very long way to tell people we see that this is happening.
Here’s a– you guys can come up with the creative ideas about how to create that in a museum. But the ability to say, these are the two realities we’re living in, and here’s how we’re going to respond to each one.
That will take you far in terms of caring for workers at your institution.
Ian Kerrigan:
And I think also with the general public, being transparent and open and how to do that, and I don’t feel that a museum needs to step into the role of being the resource provider on that subject, but I can say, and here are resources, if you’re struggling with mental health or you want to learn more and make those publicly available, I also think that goes a long way.
So, I think we’re running out of time. I think we’ll stay up here if anyone wants to come up and ask us any questions so we can continue to ask your questions. But thank you all so much for coming.
Stephanie Arel:
Thank you, thank you.
This recording is generously supported by The Wallace Foundation.
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