Transforming Inclusion In Museums

"Inclusion” is a word, a concept, a value, a set of practices, but what should it mean for museum staff and leaders as they envision new ways of being a museum in an emergent future? Political and environmental upheavals, and now a global pandemic, are transforming the museum landscape forever. How can our paradigm for understanding inclusion continue to transform as well? This book offers a new paradigm for understanding inclusion grounded in a retrospective of museum worker efforts to test the limits of inclusion, a reflection on inclusion’s advantages and limitations in practice, as well as the integral concerns of racial equity and social justice. Questions throughout the book invite readers to reflect on how their own experiences can add to, and expand on, new ways of thinking about inclusion in museums. Museum workers and lovers can use this book as a tool for engaging with “inclusion” anew, and as a terrain for collaborative inquiry and world-building that can help us imagine and realize new potential for museums in the future.

Do museums need to be inclusive? How do we define inclusion? Understanding and Implementing Inclusion in Museums is the pioneer text to focus solely on the notion of inclusion for museums. This book is intended to demystify the much-debated idea of inclusion for museum professionals, theorists, professors, and researchers. The chapters within this book are intended to function as a guide for understanding, implementing, and evaluating inclusion in your museum. This insightful examination ofinclusion in museums features: An introductory definition of inclusion for museums. Guidelines for creating inclusion in your museum through partnerships with people and community organizations. Strategies for driving social change through inclusive museum practice. Tools for implementing inclusion in your museum. Mechanisms for evaluating the inclusiveness of your museum. An encyclopedic Who’s Who of museum professionals serving as advocates, agents, and architects of inclusion today. An extensive resource list to aid you and your museum. We have never had a book solely about inclusion for museums, and never with such a strong focus on American institutions. I invite you to join the conversation concerning inclusion armed with greater understanding and the tools to implement change through your museum.

Forward-looking museums are committed to involving once-excluded communities in life-changing ways. Yours can too! Whether your institution is still at the planning stage, or already taking action, you'll find this book an inspiring, practical guide to new models of inclusion within museums and galleries of all sizes, types and budgets. If you read nothing else on inclusion, read these 10 essays! We've reviewed literally hundreds of MuseumsEtc chapters and selected the most important ones to help you enhance your - and your organisation's - thinking and action on inclusion. Our 10 Must Reads: Inclusion - Empowering New Audiences will inspire you to: * involve a wide range of marginalised or excluded groups * avoid elitist approaches inherent in traditional collecting, exhibition and research * implement change-orientated programming * use digital technologies which are inclusive, adaptable and accessible * measure change to create a strong evidence base for future work * make your museum a transformative space for social action * generate new forms of knowledge in collaboration with new stakeholders * explore how far museums can go to achieve positive social outcomes

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.

This book proposes that the Incluseum's paradigm can help the field meet the challenges of this current landscape and offer practical guidance for museum workers, leaders and emerging professionals doing the daily work to transform the future of museums.

Museums must change to illuminate the histories, cultures, and social issues that matter to their local population. Based on a unique longitudinal ethnographic study, Transforming Museum Management illustrates how a traditional art museum attempted to transform into a more inclusive and community-based institution. Using open systems theory and the Buddhist concept of mutual causality, it examines the museum’s internal management structure and culture, programs and exhibitions, and mental models of museum workers. In providing both theoretical and practical foundations to transform management structures, this accessible volume will benefit stakeholders by proposing a new culture and structure to arts institutions, to change practice to be more relevant, diverse, and inclusive. This book will be an invaluable resource for researchers and advanced students of museum studies, cultural management, arts administration, non-profit management, and organizational studies.

Museums have been active in shaping knowledge over the last six hundred years. Yet what is their function within today's society? At the present time, when funding is becoming increasingly scarce, difficult questions are being asked about the justification of museums. Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge presents a critical survey of major changes in current assumptions about the nature of museums. Through the examination of case studies, Eilean Hooper-Greenhill reveals a variety of different roles for museums in the production and shaping of knowledge. Today, museums are once again organising their spaces and collections to present themselves as environments for experimental and self-directed learning.

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.