Download Free Cultivating Inclusion In Us Museums Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Cultivating Inclusion In Us Museums and write the review.

A leading activist museum director explains why museums are at the center of a political storm In an age of protest, cultural institutions have come under fire. Protestors have mobilized against sources of museum funding, as happened at the Metropolitan Museum, and against board appointments, forcing tear gas manufacturer Warren Kanders to resign at the Whitney. That is to say nothing of demonstrations against exhibitions and artworks. Protests have roiled institutions across the world, from the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim to the Akron Art Museum. A popular expectation has grown that galleries and museums should work for social change. As Director of the Queens Museum, Laura Raicovich helped turn that New York muni- cipal institution into a public commons for art and activism, organizing high-powered exhibitions that doubled as political protests. Then in January 2018, she resigned, after a dispute with the Queens Museum board and city officials. This public controversy followed the museum’s responses to Donald Trump’s election, including her objections to the Israeli government using the museum for an event featuring Vice President Mike Pence. In this lucid and accessible book, Raicovich examines some of the key museum flashpoints and provides historical context for the current controversies. She shows how art museums arose as colonial institutions bearing an ideology of neutrality that masks their role in upholding conservative, capitalist values. And she suggests ways museums can be reinvented to serve better, public ends.
Cultivating Futures Thinking in Museums provides examples of the active and diverse roles that museums are taking to expand futures thinking in communities, including developing capabilities to envision and enact more prosperous, equitable, and sustainable futures. Presenting 21 examples that demonstrate how museums are cultivating futures capabilities in diverse global contexts, the volume acknowledges innovative practice, builds a foundation for growing futures work in the museum sector, and inspires others in the field to adopt futures frameworks in their practices. This realm of thinking, including components of anticipating futures by exploring drivers of change; imagining immersive experiences of futures; creating tools and methods to enable futures capability; and participatory futures informing museum design practice provides important responses to the multitude of complex contemporary problems like climate change, technological development, and social inequity. The book prompts museums to think about their role in shaping alternative and novel narratives for our future. Cultivating Futures Thinking in Museums will primarily appeal to museum professionals, inspiring and informing them to adopt practices to further futures literacies. It will also appeal to academics, researchers, and students with an interest in museums, futures, design, contemporary art, curating, and cultural studies.
Fostering Empathy through Museums features fifteen case studies with clear take-away ideas, and lessons learned by vividly illustrating a spectrum of approaches in the way museums are currently employing empathy, a critical skill that is relevant to personal, institutional, economical, and societal progress. The need is rapidly growing for empathy to serve as a lens through which we find our purpose and connection in a complex world. This demand brings with it an appetite to cultivate it through safe and trusted platforms. Museums are uniquely equipped to undertake this important mission. This book will help museum staff and leadership at all levels working at a variety of museums (from animal sanctuaries to art museums, from historic house museums to children's and science museums) to better understand the multitude of ways how empathy can be cultivated, and employed in museum setting. Fostering Empathy through Museums will provide inspiration, examples, and lessons learned from a balanced spectrum of museums currently employing empathy in museum setting: as an educational tool to better connect their content with the audience, as an integral element of a museum's institutional values and behavior, and as a phenomenon that is worthy of exploration on its own and as an intentional outcome. This publication provides museum professionals as well as formal and informal learning educators to receive an overview of the variety of approaches to empathy in museums, and to create a shared language and methodologies that could enable them to utilize and nurture empathy as a "shared vision" that would serve not only their organizational mission, but also the greater good. Empathy can be a tool, or an intentional outcome depending on the institution’s objectives. Regardless of the choice, the ideas presented in this book are intended to inform and inspire institutions to unlock exciting possibilities in the areas of improved visitor experience, creative community partnerships, and contribution to social progress by bringing empathy to public discourse through institutional strategies, exhibitions, experiences, and programs. The book also provides ideas for future strategies where empathy is considered as a "shared vision" by museums, and a product of a museum experience that might lead to positive social impact.
The museum field is experiencing a critical gaze that is both “of the moment” and long overdue. Museums were built as colonial enterprises and are slow to awaken to the harm caused by their actions which are not limited to the capturing and keeping of Indigenous ancestors, the exclusion and erasure of Black voices, bodies, and creativity, and the positioning of white power in the C-suite and board rooms. For decades, the conversation about equity and inclusion in the museum field has become louder. It is no longer possible to ignore the systemic racism embedded in our society and our profession. The Inclusive Museum Leader offers insights and perspectives from two recognized museums leaders who have joined together to offer practical solutions and opportunities for today’s museum leaders. Authors share their journeys to becoming inclusive leaders, as well as decisions they have made and actions they have taken to build equitable practices within their organizations. Throughout the book are personal exercises and provocations the reader is invited to respond to, making the book a valuable tool for any museum leader looking to enhance their style and re-frame their decision-making process.
Museums throughout the world are under increasing pressure in the wake of the 2008/2009 economic recession and the many pressing social and environmental issues that are assuming priority. The major focus of concern in the global museum community is the sustainability of museums in light of these pressures, not to mention falling attendance and the challenges of the digital world. Museums and the Paradox of Change provides a detailed account of how a major Canadian museum suffered a 40 percent loss in its operating budget and went on to become the most financially self-sufficient of the ten largest museums in Canada. This book is the most detailed case study of its kind and is indispensable for students and practitioners alike. It is also the most incisive published account of organizational change within a museum, in part because it is honest, open and reflexive. Janes is the first to bring perspectives drawn from complexity science into the discussion of organizational change in museums and he introduces the key concepts of complexity, uncertainty, nonlinearity, emergence, chaos and paradox. This revised and expanded third edition also includes new writing on strengthening museum management, as well as reflections on new opportunities and hazards for museums. It concludes with six ethical responsibilities for museum leaders and managers to consider. Janes provides pragmatic solutions grounded in a theoretical context, and highlights important issues in the management of museums that cannot be ignored.
What does the transformation to a visitor-centered approach do for a museum? How are museums made relevant to a broad range of visitors of varying ages, identities, and social classes? Does appealing to a larger audience force museums to "dumb down" their work? What internal changes are required? Based on a multi-year Kress Foundation-sponsored study of 20 innovative American and European collections-based museums recognized by their peers to be visitor-centered, Peter Samis and Mimi Michaelson answer these key questions for the field. The book describes key institutions that have opened the doors to a wider range of visitors; addresses the internal struggles to reorganize and democratize these institutions; uses case studies, interviews of key personnel, Key Takeaways, and additional resources to help museum professionals implement a visitor-centered approach in collections-based institutions
Remembering Enslavement explores plantation museums as sites for contesting and reforming public interpretations of slavery in the American South. Emerging out of a three-year National Science Foundation grant (2014–17), the book turns a critical eye toward the growing inclusion of the formerly enslaved within these museums, specifically examining advances but also continuing inequalities in how they narrate and memorialize the formerly enslaved. Using assemblage theory as a framework, Remembering Enslavement offers an innovative approach for studying heritage sites, retelling and remapping the ways that slavery and the enslaved are included in southern plantation museums. It examines multiple plantation sites across geographic areas, considering the experiences of a diversity of actors: tourists, museum managers/owners, and tour guides/interpreters. This approach allows for an understanding of regional variations among plantation museums, narratives, and performances, as well as more in-depth study of the plantation tour experience and public interpretations. The authors conclude the book with a set of questions designed to help professionals reassemble plantation museum narratives and landscapes to more justly position the formerly enslaved at their center.
In this broadly conceived study Steven Conn examines the development of American museums across the twentieth century with a historian's attention and a critic's eye. He focuses on an array of museum types and asks illuminating questions about the relationship between museums and American cultural life.
What can we learn about nationalism by looking at a countryÕs cultural institutions? How do the history and culture of particular cities help explain how museums represent diversity? Artifacts and Allegiances takes us around the world to tell the compelling story of how museums today are making sense of immigration and globalization. Based on firsthand conversations with museum directors, curators, and policymakers; descriptions of current and future exhibitions; and inside stories about the famous paintings and iconic objects that define collections across the globe, this work provides a close-up view of how different kinds of institutions balance nationalism and cosmopolitanism. By comparing museums in Europe, the United States, Asia, and the Middle East, Peggy Levitt offers a fresh perspective on the role of the museum in shaping citizens. Taken together, these accounts tell the fascinating story of a sea change underway in the museum world at large.