Browsing by Subject "Museology"
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Item
    From Small Wins to Sweeping Change
    (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022, 2024-01-03) Priya Frank ; Theresa Sotto
    How does a diverse community thrive in spaces that were designed to be exclusionary? Museums--with histories tied to colonial violence and racist practices and whose survival is largely reliant on the generosity of wealthy donors--were not built to be inclusive. Yet many museums' missions and the people who bring these missions to life have egalitarian aims. In recent years museum practitioners across the country have been proactively confronting our histories of colonization and exclusion and advancing equity and inclusion. Museums of all types have formed cross-departmental teams to critique their internal practices, review hiring processes, and ultimately foster a more diverse and inclusive environment for both visitors and staff alike. But how do such initiatives get off the ground? How do individuals build support among all stakeholders and successfully advocate for new positions, programs, and cross-departmental working groups? How can colleagues work together across departments to foster more inclusive museum practices? This book from the American Alliance of Museums brings together a collection of tools, solutions, and models from DEAI practitioners who have actively worked together towards institutional change. With 60% BIPOC authorship, this book will provide hope and inspiration, as well as concrete strategies for museum workers all over the country who are achieving small wins and fostering sweeping change in the predominantly white cultural sector through innovation, collaboration, and courage. This is the first book to focus specifically on collaborative and inclusive practices in equity and anti-racism work in different types of museums. Its case studies demonstrate the importance of relationship building, authentic connections, and developing foundations together over time, providing a much-needed resource for museum professionals at every level who are grappling with inequities that are pervasive in museums.
  • Item
    Storytelling in museums
    (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022, 2024-01-03) Adina Langer
    With chapters written by a diverse set of practitioners from across the museum field and around the world, Storytelling in Museums explores the efficacy and ethics of storytelling in museums.0The book shows how museums use personal, local, and specific stories to make visitors feel welcome while inspiring them to engage with new ideas and unfamiliar situations. At the same time, the book explores the responsibilities of museum practitioners toward the storytellers included in their narratives and how those responsibilities shift over time and manifest in different contexts.0The book?s eighteen chapters represent a conversation among a diverse set of professionals for whom storytelling connotes their daily museum practice. As educators, collectors, curators, designers, marketers, researchers, planners, and collaborators, the authors of this book consider the ?real work? of storytelling from every angle. From the inclusion of personal stories in educational programs to the meta-narratives on display in exhibitions, this book balances practical examples with ethical considerations, placing the praxis of storytelling within the larger context of the 21st century museum. The book moves beyond advocacy for storytelling as an essential part of the museum?s toolkit to explore the many ways in which museums use personal stories, and multiple storytelling techniques, to support the larger public narratives embedded in their missions.0The contributors demonstrate how museums that emphasize storytelling from multiple angles can serve as a kind of counterpoint to our tendency to fixate on singular images of things we know little about. They encourage museums to both acknowledge that they cannot control the narrative and to embrace their power to contribute to it through the multivalent, multivocal stories they choose to share.
  • Item
    Transforming inclusion in museums
    (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2024-01-02) Porchia Moore ; Rose Paquet
    "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.