Expanding the purpose of museums shouldn’t be up to museum professionals
We’re receiving complaints that museum professionals are playing their polyphonic critical dialogues at full volume in the community center again.
Whenever I see an essay, tweet, or shaking fist insisting museums must expand their purpose(s) to address major societal challenges, I sigh and die a little more inside.
Why?
It’s a strange emotional reaction because I agree with them — I want museums to become agents of progressive change.
So, why do I want to draw a warm bath and plug in a toaster whenever I hear a museum professional talking about expanding museums’ purposes to address issues I care about, too?
Scene from the 1993 classic comedy Inviting the Community to Engage in a Critical Dialogue, starring Bill Murray.
I’m sure part of it is the language they often use to make their arguments. I can sympathize. I got my master’s degree 20 years ago, and I’m still in recovery — burping jargon at random times throughout the day.
Me: Can you adopt a human-centered approach to disseminating the sodium chloride to the various stakeholders at our table?
Christie: I can pass the salt.
Me (blushing): Thank you. Excuse me.
But there’s more to it than just insidery, academic language.
It’s also that the arguments sound like just more top-down decision-making from museums.
It doesn’t matter that the people advocating for fundamental change are often younger or emerging professionals. It doesn’t matter if they have relatively less power within the museum. They are still museum professionals. They are still experts, even if they are less experienced experts.
What if the fundamental challenge that museums face isn’t a failure to address “relevant” challenges in their mission statements, programs, or exhibits? What if the core problem is that museum experts (of all ages and from every corner of the museum) believe they’re in a position to make decisions on behalf of the communities they say they want to support?
I genuinely appreciate the challenging discussions folks in the MAP Community bring up around sharing authority and challenging internal power dynamics within their museums. At the same time, I’d love for us always to be zooming out and looking at power from the perspective of people who aren’t invested in the museum — that is, pretty much everyone who doesn’t work at the museum.
Death to the Museum of Experts
I hear your objections.
“But people do care about social justice, climate change, economic inequality … How is that not relevant?”
You’re right. Some people do care about those things. I know I do, and I think more people should care about those things. I also think more museums should address these challenges.
But the origin of change matters, which is often missing from the discussion.
A responsive change — one that is rooted in listening to the goals of people outside the museum — will have more resonance and impact than an applied change that stems from the values and goals of museum staff.
Even when a community’s goals dovetail with museum experts’ goals, expanding a museum’s purpose based on the thinking styles of the community is a better approach because people will see themselves in the results and identify with the effort.
Two scenarios:
Museum A expands its purpose to address topic x because its staff decided that’s what’s most relevant (or because they think topic x has the most potential impact or value or is what people should be thinking about).
Museum B expands its purpose to address topic x because it has listened to people in its community who are trying to address topic x. It is a goal that they are working toward or have tried to address in the past. The museum listens to those people who have that goal. It identifies different thinking styles that describe how people address that goal. It develops programs that support that goal based on the evidence they collected in their listening.
If you were a betting person, which museum would you put money on? The Museum of Experts or The Museum of Listeners?
Thanks for reading,
Kyle
