For anyone aware of the news, it’s clear that Hollywood has had a big year.

Between box office hits, conversations on diversity and representation, and the #MeToo movement, the movie industry has been the center of entertainment news for reasons both good and bad.

Museums can learn a lot of great storytelling techniques through movies and music. They can embrace diverse art forms by embracing the entertainment industry. And examining the way the public interacts with the industry could reveal something about how the public interacts, or will interact, with museums.

But as much as museums can learn from Hollywood’s successes, they can learn even more from its failures. While it’s tempting to just skim the tabloids and go back to the office, diving into the messiness of the entertainment industry can be essential to museums’ continuing relevance and popularity.

Two recent examples stick out – the representations of women and non-Western art. Two big topics on women in Hollywood are the recent #MeToo movement and the Bechdel Test. To read more thoughts on museums and #MeToo, read our previous post here.

For those unfamiliar with the Bechdel Test, it is a way to measure movies based on how they represent women. To pass, a film must contain at least two female characters – who talk with each other about something other than men. Seems simple, right? Pay attention to the next few films you watch – you may think again.

The Jaffer-Humphreys Test, created by two British museum professionals, takes this to museum galleries. To pass, a gallery must contain works by or related to two women, and they must not be presented for a relationship to a man (for example: a woman’s glove, included because she’s married to the man who the room is really about, doesn’t pass). To read more about the Jaffer-Humphreys Test, click here.

The second example comes from the movie “Black Panther,” in which one scene blatantly confronts a museum’s colonial roots and failure to accurately interpret non-Western objects. One of the most uncomfortable aspects of this scene is that it doesn’t actually feel much out of the ordinary. A white, female curator describes to a black, male visitor where some of the African collection objects are from. He calls her out on misinformation and makes a comment about leaving with the object. She responds by saying it’s not for sale. In a mic-drop moment, he then asks if the museum had paid for it when they received it. And this is all done without any other sense that the conversation is critical – no dramatic music, shouting voices, or detailed camera work.

What is somewhat worrisome is that the normalcy of the scene demonstrates a public perception of museums as discriminatory colonizers. What is more worrisome is that this perception is not always wrong. The up-front nature of the scene calls on museums to examine and change unethical and discriminatory practices.

To read a more in-depth commentary on how museums should respond to the scene, click here.

Through mass movements such as #MeToo, unofficial tests of representation, and accountability to museums’ role in cultural oppression, Hollywood has much to give to museums. The industry’s mistakes should inform our work just as their successes do. Next time you see a major entertainment industry discussion, look a little closer. What does it imply for museums?