This past week many museum professionals and emerging professionals attended the New England Museum Association’s annual conference Museums on the Move. This year was a big year for NEMA celebrating its 100th annual conference. The theme of the conference was meant to investigate how museums …
In honor of Election Day, tomorrow, Tuesday, November 6th, we’d like to share a roundup of articles about American museums striving to communicate the importance of voting! Did you know that the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, the Mummers Museum …
Greetings readers! Don’t forget to vote on Tuesday, November 6th! Here is the national jobs roundup for the week of November 4th:
Northeast
Preservation Planner [Town of Brookline/Brookline, MA]
Director of Interpretation [Historic Deerfield/Deerfield, MA]
Department Assistant, Finance [Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Boston, MA]
Data Integration Specialist [Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum/Boston, MA]
Associate Educator for Interpretation [Portland Museum of Art/Portland, ME]
Mid- Atlantic
Public Programs Supervisor [Children’s Museum of Manhattan/ New York, NY]
Program Specialist [Institute of Museum and Library Sciences/ Washington, D.C.]
Senior Curator Historical Resources and Collections [Maymount Foundation/Richmond, VA]
Curator of Decorative Arts and Design [High Museum of Art/Atlanta, GA]
Southeast
Assistant Registrar [Louisiana State Museum/New Orleans, LA]
Curatorial Services Director [Louisiana State Museum/New Orleans, LA]
Research Historian [History Associates Incorporated / Rockville, MD]
Midwest
Registrar [The Brinton Museum/Big Horn, WY]
Curator [Yellowstone Art Museum/Billings, MT]
Cataloguing Project Coordinator [Park City Museum/Park City, UT]
Collections Manager [National Buffalo Museum/Jamestown, ND]
Registrar [Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis/St. Louis, MO]
West
Assistant Registrar [Hammer Museum/Los Angeles, CA]
Assistant Registrar [Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco/San Francisco, CA]
Development Associate [Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco/San Francisco, CA]
Museum Education Coordinator [Gilb Museum of Arcadia Heritage/Arcadia, CA]
Registration Administrator, Large Collections [LACMA/Los Angeles, CA]
Next week, the Tisch Family Gallery will host a panel discussion among curators and art historians about the role of art education. Panel Discussion: Does Education Define an Artist? The predominantly self-taught artists in the current Tufts’ exhibition Expressions Unbound prompt us to consider how artists have been …
Museums have, for many decades now, been sites of learning and exploration for people of all ages, economic classes, and educational levels. The idea of informal learning spaces assisting with civic education of newly arrived Americans has its roots in a Progressive Era ethos of …
October is a great time to talk about LGBTQ+ identity in museums! You may be thinking, “Isn’t Gay Pride in June?” and you’d be right, but October is also a key month for discussing more than just pride. Not only was National Coming Out Day held on October 11th, but it also happens to be LGBT History Month in the US and UK. Additionally, the first annual International Pronouns Day was observed this year. This event seeks to normalize the practice of recognizing preferred pronouns and asking for them in public spaces. Considering as well the recent rumors that the Department of Health and Human Services is about to propose changes to the federal definition of of gender to exclude trans and genderqueer people from federal civil rights protections, the time is right to evaluate how museums are treating their LGBTQ+ audiences, staff, and subjects.
The American Alliance of Museums has made a guide for welcoming LGBTQ+ people available for several years now and it is an excellent place to start when evaluating if your museum is doing all it can do to support the LGBTQ+ members of its community. The guide is multi-faceted, applying LGBTQ+ concepts to AAM’s seven Standards of Excellence, ranging from Facilities Management to Public Trust and Accountability and everything in between. Like their Standards of Excellence, the LGBTQ+ Guidelines provide a handy self-assessment checklist to aid museum staff in evaluating their own institutions. So what do these standards look like?
In this example from the Public Trust and Accountability section, you can clearly see how a Standard of Excellence, in this case adherence to all federal, state, and local laws, can be put through an LGBTQ+ critique that results in guidelines that surpass the requirement to comply with laws. While your institution will of course continue to follow any governing statutes, regulations do not always protect people from harassment on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation, for example. In a case like this, creating an internal policy that assures your LGBTQ+ staff and visitors that harassment or bias is not permitted on site helps your organization move from indifference to welcome.
Here, within the Mission and Planning standard, the recommendation to be inclusive of local communities when making decisions regarding collections, exhibits, or programming is applied specifically to the LGBTQ+ community. Moving beyond “token” attempts at diversity to build relationships with your local LGBTQ+ community groups shows an investment in the people that make up your audience. Consulting with LGBTQ+ experts and groups when putting together exhibits demonstrates an interest in accurately representing a marginalized community.
The intention of these guidelines is to provide measurable benchmarks that indicate that an institution has moved past “tolerance” of LGBTQ+ people into “inclusion” or better yet, ownership and community collaboration. In a time where rights that have been secured are at risk of being rolled back, it is worth taking a fresh look at these guidelines to consider if your institution is doing all it can to be an ally of the LGBTQ+ community.