Essential Evaluators: A Brave New Dance
Essential Evaluators seeks to gather evaluators in a common space to dialogue, reflect, and support each other in a world upended by COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protest movement. This is a time of uncertain and unknown expectations …
Racism, Unrest, and the Role of the Museum Field
On June 3, attendees of the AAM Virtual Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo came together to hear from Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, and Lori Fogarty on the museum field’s role in combating racism. In the heat of the …
International Museum Day 2020 Goes Digital and Spotlights “Museums for Equality: Diversity and Inclusion”
From celebrating tribal traditions in Kenya to reconnecting with immigrant roots in Taiwan, tens of thousands of museums all over the world held International Museum Day activities in 2019. This year, however, the fortieth anniversary of …
Quantifying a Commitment to Representation
I realized last summer that after twenty years in the museum field, I felt deeply frustrated. When I enrolled in my first museum studies classes in the late 1990s, there were audible and inspiring calls to increase diversity in museums. …
What Can Museums Learn from the “American Dirt” Controversy?
As an avid reader of Chicanx/Latinx literature, I’ve been closely following the national conversation about the recently released novel American Dirt by author Jeanine Cummins. The conversation—which highlights issues of race, ethnicity, …
Soundtrack for an Equitable Conference
Cradled in soulful New Orleans, the 2019 American Alliance of Museums Annual Meeting offered a variety of new sights and sounds in one of the most culturally diverse cities in the United States. Inspired by the well-crafted NOLA playlist …
The Transformative Power of Inclusive Storytelling in Museums
My mentor Dr. Johnnetta Cole, the former director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (NMAfA), often says, “It’s easy to live without art, but it’s hard to live well.” For me, the power of art lies in its transformative …
What Kind of Ancestor Will You Be?
As Facing Change Senior Diversity Fellows, I and my associate fellows have been tasked with supporting museums as they address the lack of racial diversity in the governances of their institutions. In this journey, I’ve been reminded of a …
A Welcoming Week Celebration on the US-Mexico Border
This fall, AAM partnered with Welcoming America to encourage museums to participate in its annual Welcoming Week, in which organizations around the country welcome new immigrants and refugees into their new communities. For one AAM member, …
Table Setting: The work before the work
Often when I talk with folks about DEAI work there is a sense of urgency. They’ll say, “We’ve gotta make this happen now because so and so is really a problem,” or “We need our community engagement initiative started yesterday, so let’s …
