2019 Annual Meeting – American Alliance of Museums https://www.aam-us.org American Alliance of Museums Fri, 02 Jun 2023 19:29:40 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://www.aam-us.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/android-icon-192x192-1.png?w=32&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C32px 2019 Annual Meeting – American Alliance of Museums https://www.aam-us.org 32 32 145183139 Soundtrack for an Equitable Conference https://www.aam-us.org/2020/02/24/soundtrack-for-an-equitable-conference/ https://www.aam-us.org/2020/02/24/soundtrack-for-an-equitable-conference/#respond Mon, 24 Feb 2020 16:30:53 +0000 https://www.aam-us.org/?p=110221 Cradled in soulful New Orleans, the 2019 American Alliance of Museums Annual Meeting offered a variety of new sights and sounds in one of the most culturally diverse cities in the United States. Inspired by the well-crafted NOLA playlist of Judy Rand—who has a fantastic ear for music outside of her professional interpretive consulting, and habitually curates playlists apropos of museum conference locations featuring local artists connected to the area—I’ve decided to add a few selections to frame my time in New Orleans. I have deliberately selected a few Louisiana artists and connected their quoted lyrics to illuminate my reflections on the journey to a more inclusive conference experience.

“I can’t relate to my peers

I’d rather live outside

I’d rather chip my pride than lose my mind out here

Maybe I’m a fool

Maybe I should move”

Two people posing for a portrait wearing t-shirts that say "Museums & Race," African print skirts, and conference badges.Arriving on Friday night, I was one of the first of thousands of AAM attendees to hit the NOLA streets ready for a delightful beignet-filled time. As a Social Media Journalist, I was anxious about delving into the rich culture of one of my favorite cities, while objectively considering the impact this year’s conference would have on the local economy, museum practitioners, and conference attendees.

In an effort to address the often-lamented price of conference attendance, the Empathetic Museum, MASS Action, Museums & Race, and the National WWII Museum collaborated to offer a low-cost pre-conference retreat, with the goal to create a space for local cultural workers, artists, and museum studies students to engage in rigorous scrutiny of the field while celebrating their growth as museum professionals. In responding to community need, the three collaborative organizations also shared a local Airbnb, distributing food and housing costs across a group of people to offset the financial crisis often felt by museum professionals when traveling. One colleague, Jackie Peterson, wrote about how she was unable to attend the full conference, but joined in multiple alternative spaces to volunteer and uplift the work of her peers. Is this what equity looks like?

“I don’t look at myself too long.

I’m afraid that I won’t like how

honesty and accountability look up too close.”

In 2018, New Orleans demographics were majority Black (59.80%), with those who self-identified as white at 34.06%, Asian at 2.98%, and people of two or more races at 1.75%. The Indigenous population ranked at 0.16%, while Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander amounted to 0.03%, and other races at 1.23% of the total population. I contemplated how the field, and AAM in particular, could “create space” for meaningful interactions in this city while confronting an institution steeped in a long history of colonialist imperatives to plunder and proclaim ownership over people of color. I wondered how DEAI strategies would function at the conference when in museums we know the persistent statistics that “73 percent of staff hired in intellectual leadership positions were white,” and despite efforts to train and program our way into a new reality, progressive racial equity is still far, far away.

As arts and culture sites increasingly find their toehold as educational spaces threatened by underfunding, understaffing, and reduced visitation, New Orleans is threatened by the additional challenge of marginalization and post-Katrina gentrification. Very few cultural organizations are undertaking a transparent public process of self-reflection like AAM. Knowing their renewed dedication to DEAI (diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion), I entered into the conference hall cautiously optimistic.

Within sight of the registration desks were pronoun identifiers, well-labeled bathrooms, and easily understood land acknowledgments recognizing the tribal communities of Louisiana and especially in New Orleans. There were local artists, teachers, and museum workers actively engaged with practitioners from all over the world. This was undoubtedly the youngest set of AAM members I have encountered after attending and presenting almost every year since 2009. The second line parade leading to the expo hall, complete with a full brass section and followed by tight-lipped museum people, was truly a sight to behold. Is this what equity looks like?

“Mm see you had a lot of moments that didn’t last forever

Now you in this corner tryna put it together”

Interior of a crowded conference room and a presenter sitting on stage

As a member of the Museum & Race steering committee, I am always thrilled by the response to the “ciphers,” sessions that are offered in the expo hall space. Often led by people of color, these sessions offer unique insights into the continued struggle of equity and representation for museum professionals. Open to all, the Museums & Race expo space recognizes disproportionate representation in our field and seeks to dismantle harmful and racist practices that limit additional input of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color at our institutions. This year’s conversation topics often responded and reacted to conference sessions, like the panel “Is That Hung White: Getting Real About Diversity in Exhibitions.” Although participants listened to panelists for more than an hour, they rejoined us in the expo hall space for a cipher that would continue well into the afternoon, offering colleagues an opportunity to challenge each other in safe and respectful ways while grappling with the transparency needed for real change. Is this what equity looks like?

“I hear babies crying, I watch them grow

They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know”

Now more than ever, those working in the history and cultural sector must clearly articulate their value and continued relevance, especially when faced with fluctuations in visitor demographics and staff unrest in the face of a rapidly changing contemporary reality. “What a wonderful world it would be if only we would give it a chance,” Louis Armstrong laments in his iconic song. The beautiful messiness of the 2019 conference offered plenty of opportunities to reflect a new definition of professional learning spaces. And I consider what a “wonderful world” it would be to lean into the discomfort, the tensions and learning offered at the 2019 conference to create a better, more equitable experience in 2020.

About the author:

Janeen Bryant is the founder of Facilitate Movement and has been an advocate and catalyst for building community capacity since 2000. Janeen, as an intersectional educator, facilitator, and community engagement consultant, has dedicated her work in museums to building capacity for empathetic museum spaces, programs, and experiences. She has been a core member of the Empathetic Museum since its inception in 2013. Ms. Bryant also conceptualized and implemented the Listening Sessions model used by her museum in projects including “Without Sanctuary, LGBTQ Perspectives on Equality” and most notably the Latino New South Project that ultimately became NUEVOlution. As a seasoned facilitator, she helps organizations grapple with issues of race, equality, and social justice related to staffing, programming, and exhibition development. She is active in multiple industry-wide initiatives including Museums & Race and MASS Action.

Skip over related stories to continue reading article ]]> https://www.aam-us.org/2020/02/24/soundtrack-for-an-equitable-conference/feed/ 0 110221 Making Space for Community Partners https://www.aam-us.org/2020/02/03/making-space-for-community-partners/ https://www.aam-us.org/2020/02/03/making-space-for-community-partners/#respond Mon, 03 Feb 2020 16:30:05 +0000 https://www.aam-us.org/?p=109754 The 2019 AAM Annual Meeting was hosted in Louisiana—a state known for its rich culinary and musical traditions that attract droves of tourists. But another notable, though less touristy, aspect of Louisiana is that it has historically had the nation’s highest rate of incarceration, at one in five people.

“Since 1986, Louisiana has ranked in the top ten states nationwide for the highest incarceration rates. ​From 2005-2018, Louisiana ranked first in the nation and the world in holding people captive. Louisiana only lost its title of ‘Incarceration Capital of the World” to Oklahoma after state reforms enacted in 2017 lowered our incarceration rate. Louisiana still far outpaces the nation, incarcerating 712 people per 100,000 compared to a national average of 450 people per 100,000.”

Among those rates is the grossly increasing population of women in prisons—with a nationwide incarceration rate that has grown 834 percent over the last forty years, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, and with Louisiana’s incarceration rate for women significantly higher than the national average. At the Annual Meeting, staff from the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University presented an eye-opening session on this dark reality in Louisiana’s history—one which still looms in the present. In a thirty-minute panel, they shared their steps toward developing Per(Sister): Incarcerated Women of Louisiana, in which the institution partnered with formerly incarcerated women, over twenty community organizations and stakeholders, and those directly impacted by the prison system to create the exhibition. The exhibition became a platform to hear the stories of currently and formerly incarcerated women in Louisiana and shine a light on the range of systemic and social challenges they experienced, from the perspectives of the women themselves. Many of their experiences are reflected by the statistics of women in jail who are survivors of reported abuse—86 percent have experienced sexual violence, 77 percent have experienced partner violence, and 60 percent have experienced caregiver violence.

Three pieces of art in a museum gallery: one portrait of a subject in front of an American flag, one canvas with blue fringe hanging from it, and one large sculpture resembling a chess piece
Per(Sister) paired incarcerated women with artists, who created works of art inspired by their stories. Photo credit: Newcomb Art Museum

Per(Sister) paired each of the thirty formerly incarcerated women with an artist, who created works inspired by their stories. Other stories were told through voice recordings available for visitors, or handwritten messages, all with the hope of challenging common misconceptions and assumptions regarding those who go to prison. The exhibition seeks to build empathy toward the lives of those incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, and ultimately humanize their experiences on an individual level. This exhibition was the first in a series of three exhibitions at the Newcomb Art Museum that will explore mass incarceration from a sustained point of view over the next decade. Additionally, Per(Sister) coincided with several city-wide programs, lectures, and opportunities for service to inform and educate the community of the issues surrounding the criminal justice system.

A key part of the Newcomb’s process in developing this exhibition, as presented by the staff in their Annual Meeting session, was recognizing the need to acknowledge and include the history of slavery and the precursors to imprisonment for specific communities, which sustain the vicious cycle of the prison industrial complex. The show beautifully showcased this history through the narratives of the thirty formerly incarcerated women. As stated in the exhibition text, “The experiences of incarcerated women are often unknown, overlooked, dismissed, or misunderstood. Per(Sister) presents the personal and intimate stories, in their own voices and in their own terms, of thirty women that persist in their drive for the integral survival of their mind, body, and soul.”

The session emphasized the significance of making space for the subjects of the exhibition, to be community partners. One of the session presenters, a formerly incarcerated woman, made this point in saying, “You have to change who you think of as an expert—why would you not listen to someone who has lived the experience?! You wouldn’t go to a doctor for legal advice.” Museums often claim to be about community, but fail to take the necessary steps to build genuine relationships, and this is reflected in the lack of voices represented in their exhibitions and collections.

A variety of artworks in a museum gallery: pieces of paper suspended from the ceiling, a large drawing of a tree, and a piece that says "You can't pray at my problems" in bold lettering. A timeline in white font is visible on the wood floor.
A timeline tracking the history of the prison system runs through the floor of the exhibition, past artworks, vignettes, and voice recordings. Photo credit: Newcomb Art Museum

The session made me more than curious to see Per(Sister), and so I made sure to schedule time to visit before I left. It was a beautiful, although heartbreaking, display of perseverance. The exhibition was subtly guided by a timeline that made note of both a broad history of the prison system, and more specifically, dates regarding Louisiana’s prison system and population. Artwork, shown alongside vignettes and voice recordings, gave colorful dimension to the difficult accounts of the thirty formerly incarcerated women. In visiting the exhibition, I could better appreciate the ways in which art was being used as a vehicle to translate their stories and speak to a larger history of systemic oppression, sexism, racism, and marginalization. The women’s stories shone through in a way that felt authentic to their experiences, and not their crimes, as a result of building a relationship with both the institution and their partner artists. The Newcomb’s efforts to elevate the voices of women was apparent throughout the exhibition, and strengthened by their presence beyond the museum’s walls alongside local social justice organizations.

This session highlighted the importance of museum conferences, and institutional convenings more generally, to engage with the surrounding community in meaningful ways and to create opportunities for attendees to do so as well. Local organizations and institutions should have a front-row seat to conferences happening in their community, they should be invited to speak as interlocutors, and conference planners should be in community with them prior to convening. This conference session and presentation served as a reminder that collaboration makes museum work so much richer, and the stories we tell that much better. A special thank you to the staff of the Newcomb Art Museum of ​Tulane ​for your presence at​ #AAM2019,​ and for sharing the journey of creating this powerful exhibition expanding on the lives of those incarcerated.

About the author:

Ravon Ruffin is a museum practitioner, community arts organizer, and digital strategist. She holds a master’s in American studies from The George Washington University, and is an alumna of Virginia Commonwealth University, with a degree in anthropology. In 2015, she co-created Brown Girls Museum Blog for the visibility of women of color culture workers, artists, and creatives. She is the co-founder and community manager at Brown Art Ink, LLC. She is currently a joint fellow in public programs at The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Museum of Modern Art.

Feeling inspired? Apply now to join this year’s cohort of social media journalists at #AAM2020 in San Francisco! Get complimentary registration in exchange for sharing your experience with the field. For full details, see the application form. Applications are due by February 14, 2020.

]]> https://www.aam-us.org/2020/02/03/making-space-for-community-partners/feed/ 0 109754 The Advantages of Being a Small Museum https://www.aam-us.org/2019/09/30/the-advantages-of-being-a-small-museum/ https://www.aam-us.org/2019/09/30/the-advantages-of-being-a-small-museum/#respond Mon, 30 Sep 2019 15:30:00 +0000 https://www.aam-us.org/?p=107010 Despite visiting only rarely, I have a strong affinity for New Orleans, the “big sister” of my own hometown: Savannah, Georgia. Both were historically port cities, sites for the global movement of goods, ideas, and people (willingly and not). They grew in complexity and uniqueness precisely because of the diversity that shaped their histories. In New Orleans, collisions of people, environments, and materials—often painful—have forced changes and forged connections as devastating as Hurricane Katrina but also as delicious as Creole cuisine. Maybe every city can claim something similar, but to me, New Orleans is an especially good backdrop for professional discussions at a time when museums have an imperative to address such convergences head-on. There are plenty of lessons in sustainability to be learned from any place that has not only survived through challenging times, but redefined itself for the better as a result.

This year’s Annual Meeting theme, “Sustaining Vibrant Museums,” spoke to the abilities (or at least aspirations) of our institutions to meet with whatever comes our way and respond with approaches that honor the environment, the inclusion of different people and cultures among our audiences and staff, and the diversity of stories and substance behind the materials we use and create for education and engagement. One of the major strategies that recurred across sessions was collaboration and partnership across organizations, departments, and disciplines.

While museums of all sizes are no strangers to precarity and “doing more with less,” small museums are used to the absolute necessity of such cooperation for survival. As someone coming to AAM as a worker at two museums small enough that I can count the staff of both on my hands, it was gratifying to see that many of the issues and ideas that came up at the conference were no less relevant to small organizations than to large ones. In fact, as Laura Raicovich recently argued in an opinion article for Hyperallergic, “Rethinking the ‘Bigger Is Better’ Museum Model,” large institutions can learn a lot from smaller organizations, whose strategies are sometimes more closely tied to the communities they serve. Referring to (expansion-obsessed) art museums, Raicovich states, “if bigger institutions look to collaborations with community-based organizations, public libraries, and other organizations in our cities that bear important local histories, we can learn more about the art we have in our collections and how they function outside the walls of museums.”

The smaller and younger an organization is (and the less of an established audience it has), the more important it is to know how its services relate to the community both within and beyond its walls. In some ways, this gives smaller museums an advantage. Staff sizes may be small enough that workers at all levels are in regular contact with visitors, for instance. The organization may be less entrenched in traditional notions of what a museum must be, and therefore more willing to take risks that defy those notions. When programs are already operating on lean staff and budgets, it might be easier to recognize when they’re no longer working, and to pivot those scarce resources to something more relevant. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all. Most importantly, though, from what I’ve seen, smaller organizations are better at recognizing that they truly can’t do it alone. It takes a profusion of collaborators from both within and outside a small institution to keep it alive and thriving.

This is certainly the case at my own workplace. When I began working at Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, I was pleasantly surprised by the strength of its partnerships with other arts and educational institutions. With only three full-time employees and one part-time, it’s thanks to strong partnerships that the museum has been able to mount meaningful exhibitions, publish catalogs and journals with probing scholarship, host an academic conference that attracts international visitors, and commission and present cutting-edge works and performances.

One of the sessions I attended at this year’s Annual Meeting which underscored the value of partnerships was “A Scientist Walks into an Art Museum,” about partnering with diverse content experts; not only bringing scientists into art museums, but also artists into history museums, historians into science museums, and every other possible variation. Success in the partnerships discussed relied on the museums identifying and recruiting experts, preparing them for their audiences through professional development sessions, and hosting public programs. These investments of time and effort were worthwhile, as they offered visitors who may not otherwise have come to the museum a new entry point, and also provided the content experts with a new audience of people who would not otherwise have encountered their work. Museums gained expertise and perspectives that they did not have the capacity to provide on their own, and experts, motivated to bring their work to a broader audience, expanded their skill sets by learning from museum professionals how to communicate with the public.

In fact, involving a multitude of voices as a key part of a project was one of the most apparent ways museums represented at the conference were trying to combat the idea of traditional museum authority and make sure that exhibitions or programs are relevant to visitors. In addition to working across departmental boundaries, actively seeking the perspectives of other subject matter experts, and partnering with other organizations to offer services that neither could provide separately, co-production with audience members was a strategy I saw come up again and again within the broader theme of collaboration.

In one chapter of the comprehensive MASS Action toolkit that was available at the Museums & Race Transformation and Social Justice Lounge (and available as a free download!), Christine Lashaw and Evelyn Orantes identify a spectrum of community engagement practice from “contribution” to “collaboration” and finally “co-creation,” with case studies for how these were successfully applied to a large, collections-focused exhibition as well as an intimate, community-driven one.

A similar spectrum of strategies for inclusiveness appeared in the session about the OF/BY/FOR/ALL project (one of the most popular sessions I attended at the conference). OF/BY/FOR/ALL issues a straightforward formula for making museums representative of the communities they (cl)aim to serve: hiring staff that are OF a segment of the community you are seeking to attract + offering programming created BY members of that community = making sure your museum is meaningful FOR the community. The presenters also emphasized the need to target and reach out to specific communities of geography, identity, and affinity, instead of thinking of “community” in the broadest sense. To paraphrase the presenters, saying “all are welcome here” does not mean as much as demonstrating who exactly is welcome by involving people directly.

In a poster session, Beth Twiss Houting and Monica Zimmerman presented “Community Engagement Through Audience-Designed Programs” and shared how the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Puerto Rican community arts organization Taller Puertoriqueño have come together to develop a model for audiences of both organizations to create their own programs. One of their takeaways at this stage was that flexibility is key, since what museum professionals expect will appeal to new audiences is not always what audiences actually want.

In these sessions and many others, I was reminded of some of the lessons I’ve learned working for small museums. It may be impossible to do everything, reach everyone, and know all the needs of the communities you serve on your own, so putting time and resources into partnerships that will extend those capabilities might be one of the most fruitful investments you can make—a rudimentary sort of mutual aid network that might demand a lot at times, but will strengthen everyone involved. Start small and specific, leverage others’ knowledge so that you can deliver services based on real needs, and share the risks and benefits of change when possible.

The renewed emphasis on partnerships across all sizes of museums indicates that all of us, no matter the size, are finding it increasingly important to strengthen the ties that bind us to the communities we serve. Partnering with other organizations and involving audiences directly are important strategies for moving toward a more sustainable, vibrant future.

About the author:

Carissa Pfeiffer is a graduate of Pratt Institute, where she received an MS in library and information science with an advanced certificate in archives, and the University of Georgia, where she earned degrees in English literature and printmaking/book arts. She currently divides her time between the Asheville Museum of Science and the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, North Carolina.

]]> https://www.aam-us.org/2019/09/30/the-advantages-of-being-a-small-museum/feed/ 0 107010 Get about It: Change and Resistance https://www.aam-us.org/2019/08/07/get-about-it-change-and-resistance/ https://www.aam-us.org/2019/08/07/get-about-it-change-and-resistance/#respond Wed, 07 Aug 2019 15:30:19 +0000 https://www.aam-us.org/?p=106261 I’d never visited New Orleans before, and my brief but fascinating experience served as a metaphor for this year’s AAM Annual Meeting experience. New Orleans is a city of layers, with old finishes poking through, new ideas still pushing forward, and yet other thoughts and practices still in transition. As you walked around the city, you could see bits of the old poking through new coats of paint.

At AAM, the new was there, with progressive features like land acknowledgments; Kimberly Drew’s incredible keynote putting her own salary up on the screen, followed by her male predecessor’s higher salary; the Museums and Race Lounge; and the ability to follow along with so many sessions on Twitter, no matter where you were.

But the old was still strongly there too: panels that felt like talking heads; a predominately white, male, and technology-heavy exhibit hall; and a continued resistance to pay transparency despite Drew’s comments.

New Orleans is also a crossing place of cultures, which was reflected in my AAM experience as well. A vital part of my week was the chance to get to know the Getty International Fellows, who had come from around the world to attend the meeting. For many, it was their first chance not just to experience American museums, but to dive into American culture. Just a few of their observations:

  • “Why is it so cold in the building—we’re talking climate change here!”
  • “The pronoun name tag ribbons can be used to start a discussion back home, where such conversations are just beginning to happen.”
  • “The ‘Mistakes were Made’ session was so cathartic—so many mistakes!”
  • “At the conference, as at museums—if you eat, you’ll be okay.”
  • “Walking the city is an education and experience in itself.”
  • “I need to be telling stories in my country that have not been told yet.”
Some of the Getty participants sit in a circle talking and smiling.
Participants in the Getty International Program traveled from around the world to attend the Annual Meeting.

We had much to learn from our international colleagues, and I’d welcome increased opportunities at AAM annual meetings for them to share their work. This year I learned about everything from an exhibit furniture recycling program in Mexico City, to working with antiquities, to working with all kinds of different communities from Mongolia to Argentina.

In addition to Kimberly Drew, two other speakers particularly resonated with me, confirming the sense that there is so much work still to be done in our field. We can, if we decide to, make museums places for communities to both reflect and work towards change.

Mitch Landrieu, former mayor of New Orleans, spoke about the city’s decision to take down Confederate statues. He commented in his keynote that “our country is struggling mightily with the very simple notion that diversity is a strength, not a weakness” and that “we know that we’re never going to hit that more perfect union—but to aspire to it, we need to be purposeful and thoughtful.”

Lonnie Bunch, named Secretary of the Smithsonian soon after the conference, spoke at the ICOM-US lunch about the power and meaning of history. The first historian and African American to be named Secretary, he pushed us about our work: “Your job as a historian is to help people remember not just what they want to remember, but also what they need to remember.”

As Global Networks Program Director at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, I work with human rights activists around the world who are coming to museum work as a tool for social justice. These new museums and new colleagues, not necessarily from traditional museum backgrounds or training, have increased my appreciation of the value of new ways of doing, of the importance of lived knowledge, as opposed to pure academic learning, and to the ways that museums can change the world. I want to express my deep admiration for all those of you at the conference who pushed out new ideas, asked tough questions, and proposed the creation of a more just world as the responsibility of museums. I still struggle, though, with how to ensure these new voices can be heard by those who still like that old coat of paint, that old way of doing things. I think we’ll find a way, but like many of you, I’m impatient.

A tall, empty column in an outdoor park.
Lee Circle, the site of a removed statue of Confederate soldier Robert E. Lee.

My hotel was right on Lee Circle, and every morning I looked out my window at that enormous empty column that used to hold the statue of Robert E. Lee. It seemed pretty clear in New Orleans that the city’s stories are many and evolving—but equally so, that the museum field’s work is evolving as well. As Mitch Landrieu said about change, “We need to get about it, not be dragged to it.”

Get about it!

About the author:

Since 2017, Linda Norris has been working with museums and memory organizations in sixty-five countries to use the past to create a more just future for all of us through the Global Networks Program for International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. Previously, Linda was an independent museum professional working on issues of community engagement in all facets of museum work. She is the co-author of Creativity in Museum Practice and blogs at The Uncataloged Museum. She is also an instructor in JHU Museum Studies and Cultural Heritage programs and a former Fulbright Scholar to Ukraine.

]]> https://www.aam-us.org/2019/08/07/get-about-it-change-and-resistance/feed/ 0 106261 An International Experience at #AAM2019 https://www.aam-us.org/2019/07/12/an-international-experience-at-aam2019/ https://www.aam-us.org/2019/07/12/an-international-experience-at-aam2019/#comments Fri, 12 Jul 2019 15:30:04 +0000 https://www.aam-us.org/?p=105700 After moving back to Europe from America in 2016, I had never been able to come visit until last month. That’s when I flew all the way to New Orleans to attend this year’s Annual Meeting of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and document it through my Instagram and Twitter accounts (@imamusaller).

Much to my surprise, this year I was selected as one of AAM’s Social Media Journalists (SMJs). Since I was assigned an international focus, I also had the wonderful opportunity to join some of the meetings for the Getty International Program, through which The Getty Foundation supports about twenty international art museum professionals to come to the Annual Meeting.

A group shot in front of a screen that reads "Welcome to New Orleans!"
The Getty participants reunite before lunch!

Here’s a quick summary of my experience in New Orleans. I put together some of the notes and tweets I wrote during my time there, with a focus on my experience with the Getty International Program and a few photos and captions from all the other sessions I attended (reach out to me on social media if you have any questions on them)! I hope this will pique your interest and, above all, inspire you to attend next year in San Francisco. It’s an enormous event, with tons of sessions and other activities to amaze you and make you feel at home wherever you are.

DAY 1

Getty Program Orientation

I must be very excited; I’m about half an hour early! Luckily Linda Norris, fellow SMJ, is already here as well. This morning we’ll meet the Getty program participants, who will share object stories from their home countries. How fun!

A lamp, a necklace, a booklet, and a catalog are some of the objects from around the world that the participants have shared at the meeting. Soledad from Argentina brought an inverted map, where the South is the North and vice-versa, because it’s important to look at things differently! Great one. Viviana from Colombia brought us some books representing the collections of the Museo Santa Clara and the Museo Colonial de Bogotá. Elena from Puerto Rico brought a business card holder. They sound driven and passionate about telling the other side of a story, the one we rarely hear in museums.

One of the participants stands in front of the room next on unscrolled map.
Thank you, Soledad, for showing us your world in a different light!

The meeting ends with facilitator Bob Beatty from Lyndhurst Group presenting some American-style networking tips, such as: If you don’t know what to say, stand near people who are talking and just listen; and, my favorite tip: When there’s a lull, ask a question. I enjoyed my time here, particularly the excitement each worldwide story brought with it.

AAM Scholarship and Getty International Program Speed Networking

This was incredibly well-organized and fun! I met people from all over the world, like Alana from the Witte Museum in San Antonio, Texas and Tatjana from the Muzej Vojvodine in Novi Sad, Serbia, whom I later also encountered during the Getty meetings.

Some of the Getty participants and I end the day with sliders, beer, and jazz.

DAY 2

Getty Program Breakfast

Starting off the day at the Getty Program Breakfast. I’m excited and honored to be surrounded by such inspiring humans! Most of the speeches focus on DEAI issues; there’s a need to tell a more full and complete story of this country in museums, to raise the bar and demand that, for instance, museum boards start looking like the communities they serve.

Museums as Catalysts for Empathy-Building and Social Change

This session was very interesting, with a lot of examples from the real world! I loved, for instance, the case of the Woodland Park Zoo, where different animals are considered through their different needs and wants and therefore are referred to with specific names and pronouns.

Opening Session & Awards

Here’s where we learned about the beauty of an alliance: no one is ever alone. From diversity comes richness and museums can help unpack hierarchy while completing and correcting narratives.

How the Museum Field Can Be More Inclusive of the Transgender Community

This meeting left us with precious tips to make our world more inclusive of the transgender community. The more explicit one can be, the better, considering how trans communities have always traditionally been excluded, even from the larger LGBTQ groups.

Debriefing Meeting

The Getty participants share reflections and perspectives. They sound very happy to be here at AAM, having lunch all together and interacting with the speakers! Many of them enjoyed the speed networking session and seeing each other’s objects and learning their stories. The use of apps and technology in museums and historic houses was also new to many of them, as well as the idea that museums can deal with environmental and inclusion problems.

Opening Party: Light Up the Night at City Park

Hosted by the New Orleans Museum of Art, The New Orleans Botanical Garden, and Louisiana Children’s Museum

The author stands next to a sculpture made of neon tubes and handheld American flags, among other things.
Standing by a light installation by Keith Sonier at NOMA

DAY 3

Creating Inclusive Spaces by Breaking Language Barriers

This session was especially relevant to me as an ESL speaker. Some of the takeaways from different museum representatives were: consider all possible text needs, budget for more translations than you actually think you need, focus on quality over quantity, and consider a digital audience.

Building Relevant Public and Educational Programs Using an Equity Lens

How can we be equitable in our programming? Some museums, like the Seattle Art Museum, are answering this question by being responsive to current events and by building strong partnerships with local institutions.

Debriefing Meeting

Like yesterday, the scholars share reflections and perspectives. They enjoyed the dancing and drumming performance held during the day. Some of them learned about what it means to be “of, by and for all,” according to Nina Simon. The party at the New Orleans Museum of Art was awesome: they all enjoyed the collection as well as seeing the food unite people. Some of them also learned about millennials with Museum Hack and how museums can help people destress. Many of them seem to have ideas to bring back to their home countries and institutions.

Closing Party: Parade of Museums

Hosted by The National WWII Museum, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Contemporary Arts Center

The author stands next to three circular canvases with geometric shapes in earth tones.
In conversation with Adriana Varejão’s Polvo Portraits

DAY 4

Keynote, Jose Antonio Vargas

I absolutely loved this keynote session. Mr. Vargas is witty and brilliant! All in all, we have to decide who we are and force the world to deal with that, not with their idea of us. Simply powerful.

Museums with No Walls Are the Future

This was a thirty-minute session where we learned how you can make a museum out of any environment; the key is to create relevant community projects, workshops, and art programs!

AAM Getty International Program Wrap-Up Luncheon

This is my last formal meeting at the conference. We’re having lunch and exchanging presents with the Getty participants. I receive a hand-painted postcard from India. Some of the participants say they loved all the networking, inspiration, and hope that many sessions left them with. In the next month, they promise to email all the people they’ve met at the conference and to do research on the museums they’ve visited. With the help of some of AAM’s guidelines, they say they will talk with their institutions about facing current museum issues. A few others also say they will look for more similar conferences in their home countries. In six months from now, they all hope to incorporate what they’ve learned in their daily lives.

The meeting ends by highlighting our common love for New Orleans, and with our infinite gratitude.

After a siesta and a shower, we decide to take the ferry for a quick hike in the city’s green areas before hitting the bars on Bourbon Street. I have so much to say about the past few days that I’m speechless. I love how fun and free-spirited many people are in the United States. It’s so easy to make friends, and this is a trait I haven’t encountered anywhere else.

The author and some of the Getty participants sit on a curb with a view of the city behind them.
An afternoon by the river with the Getty participants

All in all, attending this conference was a terrific experience. Among other things, it allowed me to increase the amount of museum professionals in my network, both on and off social media. Hopefully, after going through all my new contacts, I’ll be able to reach out and collaborate with some of these people I met from around the world.

About the author:

Angela Gala is a museum professional from Italy. She holds a BS in Economics and Management for Arts, Culture, and Communication (CLEACC) from Bocconi University in Milan and an MA in Museum Studies from the University of San Francisco (USF). In 2017, she founded Musalley, a blog whose aim is to inspire millennials in their museum (ad)ventures.

]]> https://www.aam-us.org/2019/07/12/an-international-experience-at-aam2019/feed/ 2 105700 What Happened at #AAM2019? Let Our Social Media Journalists Fill You In https://www.aam-us.org/2019/06/05/what-happened-at-aam2019-let-our-social-media-journalists-fill-you-in/ https://www.aam-us.org/2019/06/05/what-happened-at-aam2019-let-our-social-media-journalists-fill-you-in/#comments Wed, 05 Jun 2019 15:19:43 +0000 https://www.aam-us.org/?p=104802 Each year, AAM invites a group of passionate museum professionals who are active and skilled on social media to attend the Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo as Social Media Journalists. Like any other attendees, they follow their curiosity into sessions and excursions around the host city, but all the while they put their typing fingers to work, sharing what they discover online. If you missed #AAM2019 in New Orleans (and maybe you’re considering joining us in San Francisco for #AAM2020…) have a look at the experience as seen through their eyes.

A sincere thank you to our #AAMSMJs for their hard work in capturing the whirlwind of activity! If you’re interested in joining their ranks next year in San Francisco, look out for the application in early 2020.

]]> https://www.aam-us.org/2019/06/05/what-happened-at-aam2019-let-our-social-media-journalists-fill-you-in/feed/ 1 104802 We Need a Radically Different System https://www.aam-us.org/2019/05/29/we-need-a-radically-different-system/ https://www.aam-us.org/2019/05/29/we-need-a-radically-different-system/#respond Wed, 29 May 2019 17:58:08 +0000 https://www.aam-us.org/?p=104753 Prepared Remarks of Kippen de Alba Chu
Board Chair of the American Alliance of Museums

2019 Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo

May 21, 2019

As AAM’s unprecedented national initiative Facing Change gets underway in five cities across the US, I’d like to reflect on what I see as the biggest challenge we will face: that we are already enlightened and it is other people who must change. Let me explain.

Given all the media characterizations of red and blue states, left vs. right, conservatives vs. liberals, and Donald Trump’s base vs. everyone else, it is no wonder that we sense a polarized country. Unfortunately, the political situation in Washington (Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court) is not abnormal. Our current system is perfectly aligned to deliver the results we now have. There is no dysfunction. The system was designed to minimize change, promote the status quo, and discourage real leadership. It continues to operate as intended, and if we truly want radically different results, then we have to acknowledge that we need a radically different system.

As for assumptions and stereotypes, let me give you some background first. I recently went through a major transition. After having served for 12 years as the executive director of Iolani Palace, a historic site in Honolulu, Hawaii where I was born and lived for nearly my entire life, I decided to look for change. Last year, I reached out to a friend of mine, Van Romans, president of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, to see if he knew of any museums looking for someone to fill a number two position, such as a COO. Little did I know that Van was in the middle of a search for that very reason. I don’t think he had officially posted the position yet, because he kept asking me how I knew!

Last November, I flew to Fort Worth for the very first time and interviewed with Van. He offered me the job not long after, and with my family we made the collective decision to leave Hawaii for Texas. However, once the word got out, I started hearing from a lot of people (not just in Hawaii but from across the country) about the “Texas” I was moving to (deep red state, racist, religiously conservative, big guns and even bigger trucks). But these assumptions were all two-dimensional and rudimentary. They didn’t even begin to paint an accurate picture, yet we are accustomed to reaching for quick and simple descriptions of people and places we may not like. Assumptions are a way to conveniently justify our point of view, which we believe is always correct, to the detriment of any facts to the contrary.

In the book Unleashing the Power of Unconditional Respect, it describes our tendency to automatically assume the following:

  • The way I see something is the way it is.
  • The way I feel about someone is the way they are.
  • The way I remember an event is the way it was.
  • If you disagree with me, you are stupid, a liar, or psychotic.

Yet the irony here is that our assumptions are actually blinding us. We are deceiving ourselves through self-imposed ignorance. And probably the only reason it is not considered pathological is that it is endemic. In a survey conducted recently by CivicScience, over three thousand Americans were asked if schools should teach Arabic numerals, to which 56 percent of the respondents said no. (I bet those same respondents would say that Central America is somewhere in Nebraska.) The same survey also asked for people’s political affiliation and I know what you’re thinking, and you’d be right. Of those who identified as Republican, 72 percent said Arabic numerals should not be taught in schools, whereas only 34 percent of Democratic respondents said no. However, in another recent survey, people were asked whether the science curriculum in schools should include the creation theory of Catholic priest George Lemaitre. 73 percent of Democratic respondents said no. And in case you were wondering, George is the father of the Big Bang Theory (no, not the television show). Ignorance is apolitical, and so is bias.

In our interpersonal relationships, we bring our own experiences and background to the table to inform how we see things. It is a mistake to assume that our way of seeing is the only way to see. To make things worse, add judgment to our assumptions and you have a recipe for conflict. So let us take a step back, and reflect on the following:

  • The way I see something is one way of seeing.
  • The way I feel about someone is the way I feel.
  • The way I remember an event is my memory of that event.

The Facing Change initiative, through the leadership of AAM and our allies, means the distribution of loss. What we care about is not necessarily what would motivate other people. We literally have to sell DEAI.

Leadership is inherently subversive, and some people will attack us personally to divert from what we are doing. Others deeply entrenched in the current system will be passive-aggressive, cheering on our work and telling us how courageous we are—all the while secretly enticing us to walk off the cliff.

From our own allies, those dedicated to DEAI work day in and day out, they will say that we aren’t doing enough, and by the way we’re taking way too long. What we must remember is that leadership is also about disappointing our own people at a rate that they can absorb. The process of change is iterative, it requires inordinate amounts of patience, and it is extremely inefficient. But we all can easily recognize when there is a lack of leadership.

Aside from the leadership aspect of this kind of work, DEAI will also challenge us to be self-aware. We cannot invite others to change if we ourselves refuse to acknowledge our own contribution to this conflict. What I’m speaking about here is selective empathy. We feel outraged and often moved to action when a person that we identify with is harmed, either because they look like us, share similar views, or we judge them to be worthy of our empathy. Yet we do not feel the same when something awful happens to people who share the opposite viewpoint—people with whom we are unable to identify because we have judged them to be “less than.”

When people marching in the streets in support of civil rights are suddenly attacked, we empathize. We mobilize. When neo-Nazis marching in those same streets in support of white supremacy are suddenly attacked, we watch. Some of us will say they incited the violence, but what we really mean is they deserved it. Some of us will be indifferent. But there will be little to no empathy. Donald Trump was wrong to say that there were fine people on both sides in Charlottesville. The correct statement would have been: there were people on both sides, human beings.

So here is the crux of the issue. Indeed, I would venture to say that the ultimate success of DEAI rests on this. Imagine now just one person in that neo-Nazi march chanting hateful rhetoric. And that one person gets hit in the face with a brick from a counter-protester. Stunned, with blood running down his face, do we really think that all of a sudden, that person will go: “Geez, I should really rethink my viewpoint. Maybe I shouldn’t be hating on minorities. Maybe immigrants are good for the country. What an epiphany to have encountered that brick! Thank you!” I can guarantee you that will not happen.

In doing this work on DEAI, we cannot launch verbal bricks at those who oppose us. We cannot even think in that way, because we are only going to contribute to more conflict. We must remember that we cannot change other people. Our actions, words, and thoughts must exemplify our goals. We must remain open to those who disagree with us, and continually invite them to consider what we are trying to accomplish—all without hate, without fear, without judgment. To expand on Michelle Obama’s often repeated line “When they go low, we go high,” I would propose to you that we stay high without hubris, and kneel down with our hands always extended to lift them up when they are ready.

Skip over related stories to continue reading article ]]> https://www.aam-us.org/2019/05/29/we-need-a-radically-different-system/feed/ 0 104753 Financial Sustainability Is Everyone’s Responsibility https://www.aam-us.org/2019/05/29/financial-sustainability-is-everyones-responsibility/ https://www.aam-us.org/2019/05/29/financial-sustainability-is-everyones-responsibility/#respond Wed, 29 May 2019 16:35:59 +0000 https://www.aam-us.org/?p=104719 Prepared Remarks of Laura L. Lott
President & CEO of the American Alliance of Museums

Opening General Session of the 2019 Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo

May 20, 2019

Good morning and welcome to the 2019 AAM Annual Meeting, the largest annual gathering of museum professionals in the world!

This is always one of my favorite weeks of the year. Not only do I get to see friends and colleagues from around the world, but I love to see and experience the true power of our Alliance.

We have a lot of first-timers here! Where are you first-timers?

We have veteran meeting-goers here who have been attending for a decade or more—some for forty years! Go ahead, give a wave; we know you started coming as children!

You are all part of our Alliance—now nearly forty thousand strong. Give yourselves a round of applause!

Financial Sustainability

As our AAM veterans know, our meetings always have a theme or focus area.

As we continue to apply our collective wisdom and power to address areas of diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion in museums, and the deliberate integration of our museums into societal structures such as the PreK-12 education system, this year, we also turn our attention to the financial sustainability of museums, exploring the theme Dynamic, Relevant, Essential: Sustaining Vibrant Museums.

New Orleans is a perfect venue for exploring the financial sustainability and vitality of museums.

It’s nearly impossible to find a better example of resilience and a vibrant culture amidst change and challenge than this city. The people of New Orleans have persevered through natural disasters, economic downturns, and societal changes like so many cities in the US.

New Orleans has done all of this while preserving its historic culture, unique charm, and vibrant character. What an inspiration for museums!

Now, too often when I say that “changing business models for financial sustainability” is one of the Alliance’s three focus areas, museum professionals politely nod and try to hide the glazed-over look in their eyes.

Too often, in my experience, there is a perceived division between those professionals who design the programs and curate the exhibits—and those who are responsible for maintaining the financial health of the institution. Sometimes our passion for the amazing work of museums blinds us to the business realities within our organizations and the disruptions and financial pressures coming from outside.

I fear that many of us are dangerously close to a fatal mistake of assuming that funding will come—somehow, somewhere—because we deserve it.

Please take two things from my remarks this morning:

First, museums will be much better positioned to inform, inspire, and enrich our world if they have healthy balance sheets.

And second, long-term financial sustainability is everyone’s responsibility. And it’s something we must talk about open and honestly.

Data from our recent Museum Board Leadership report suggests nearly ONE-THIRD of museums dip into their financial reserves (their savings or rainy day funds) or endowment funds to cover basic operating expenses. What’s frightening is that this reserve spending is occurring in a strong economy. And, even more frightening, many predict that we’re on the doorstep of another recession—for which many of us are not adequately prepared.

As budgets tighten, museums defer basic necessities like facility maintenance, putting their people and collections at risk. This is a photo of the devastating fire at the National Museum of Brazil last year.

Like many nonprofits, they often stretch and ultimately burn out staff resources, and risk losing great talent to higher-paying industries.

On the revenue side of the equation, museums are competing against a growing number of nonprofits for crucial funding. Philanthropic giving is increasingly focused on solving specific societal problems and demanding quick and measurable outcomes. In many parts of the country, government funding is shrinking even as public officials seek more tax payments from nonprofits. And museums of all sizes are competing for the attention of visitors and their spending.

As the pace of change quickens, our field needs to improve our financial discipline, business planning, and data literacy. This is not an option; it is a necessity. Museums must innovate, experiment, and implement new business models in order to secure their financial futures.

Many of you have heard me admit: I’m a recovering Certified Public Accountant and I have a secret love of numbers. But the issue of financial sustainability is not just for the accountants. It needs the collective genius of our field.

As the saying goes: no money, no mission!

This week, as we learn from each other, and in the days and months ahead, I challenge you and your museums to renew your focus in a few areas of financial sustainability:

  1. Design new mission-related income streams around the core businesses and talents of your museum
  2. Explore shared service models to optimize key functions of your institution in order to contain costs and to improve capacity
  3. Be proactive in demonstrating to donors and funders that museums provide essential (and often measurable) social, economic, educational, and community good
  4. Become truly inclusive in all aspects of our operations, leadership, and engagement with our increasingly diverse communities. We literally cannot afford to leave anyone out.

I want to hear your ideas, what’s working and what’s not, and how the Alliance can help.

DEAI

Another area in which AAM is taking a leadership role is in exploring issues of diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion in all aspects of museums’ structure and programming.

Now, I believe there are lots of “cases” to be made for museums to prioritize DEAI. But, if you or your board is looking for the business case, here it is…

Research shows the makeup of museums’ core audience is stuck in the 1970s. Data shows that visitors of color make up 11 percent of museum audiences, on average – but 39 percent of the US population.

Museums are going to find it increasingly difficult to survive if we’re only serving half the population. Both because, in business terms, it means declining market share.

And because most museums, as nonprofit or quasi-governmental organizations, have a legal obligation to serve the public—the whole public, not just a segment.

Our field’s lack of diversity calls into question how well we’re actually serving the public and puts public funding and tax advantages at even greater risk.

To quote New York City’s Mayor Bill DeBlasio on his plan to require the city’s cultural institutions to demonstrate diversity, “It’s important to ensure if we’re investing public money that these organizations represent everyone and include everyone.”

And this is not just a coastal or big city issue. Our colleagues at Connor Prairie in Indiana just released a public opinion poll on the role of history and museums as education, community, and entertainment institutions. They learned that 79 percent of Americans think it is important that museums demonstrate a sustained commitment for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion.

And 92 percent of Americans think it is important that museums are fully accessible to all guests.

Museums’ viability and financial sustainability depends largely on their ability to be relevant, magnetic, and inclusive—reflecting our communities.

If you visit a museum and don’t see anyone who looks like you, and the board’s strategic decisions don’t reflect your cultural identity, and the collection and interpretation don’t include you and your history, you’re probably not going back.

Make no mistake, DEAI work is about museum excellence—and it’s a moral, political, and business imperative.

The best part of being in an Alliance is knowing you are not alone. There is a lot of help out there. AAM is raising up museums’ successes here at the Annual Meeting this week and year-round.

A quick glance at our website will reveal the many aspects of DEAI we are addressing—with your help—and that of our LGBTQ Alliance, Latino Network, DivCom and other partners such as the Gender Equity in Museums Movement.

Many of you saw the national news coverage of our new initiative, Facing Change: Advancing Museum Board Diversity & Inclusion. But I want to share some details of this unprecedented initiative…

First, let me acknowledge that I am as impatient as anyone for urgent change—and there is a strong temptation to dive into action and “fix” past wrongs. However, for real and lasting impact, the first step is understanding.

So, at AAM we began by talking to many of you to understand your concerns and challenges—and bright spots—what seemed to be working.

On the heels of the Museum Staff Demographic Survey by the Mellon Foundation in partnership with AAM and AAMD, Dr. Johnnetta Cole and I led a field-wide DEAI Working Group.

Together, we asked a lot of questions and explored why there has been such insufficient change in the demographic makeup of our staffs, visitors, and boards, despite ongoing work for more than twenty years.

The Working Group’s Facing Change report identified five key insights, including that we each must do personal work to face our own unconscious biases, and that we need to move from transactional steps to systemic change, and that inclusive leadership is essential at all levels of an organization.

Our Museum Board Leadership report gave us insight into a previously unaddressed area of DEAI work: museum boards.

The survey revealed that nearly half of museum boards are entirely white.

Three-quarters of museum directors believe diversifying their boards, racially and ethnically, is important, but far fewer have developed plans of action to become more inclusive, provided inclusion training to their boards and staffs, or implemented other changes to the status quo.

To begin to fill this gap and address museums’ needs and desires to better reflect the communities they serve, we are launching the unprecedented national initiative called Facing Change: Advancing Museum Board Diversity & Inclusion.

Backed by a record gift for AAM, a $4 million grant from the Mellon, Alice L. Walton, and Ford Foundations, this three-year initiative will provide the framework, training, and resources for museum leaders to build inclusive cultures within their institutions that more accurately reflect the communities they serve.

To make real and lasting change, work needs to be done at the top where the tone and priorities for each museum are established. AAM aims to drive long-lasting systemic culture change through this initiative. And this board- and director-level work complements the hard work and investments already being made to diversify museums’ talent pools, programming, and collections.

The first phase includes:

  • Intensive training and resources for fifty museum boards in five communities—aimed at developing sustainable inclusion plans tailored to the needs of each museum and its unique community
  • A Museum Trustee Resource Center. Just launched, this section of our website will reach many more museums in communities across the country with resources for truly inclusive museum governance.
  • A board-matching program to connect individuals interested in serving on museum boards with museums seeking new perspectives and talents on their board
  • And, lastly, at this meeting we’re convening a Task Force to look at how DEAI gets more embedded into our Excellence programs, from the Code of Ethics to MAP to Accreditation. This is an incredible group of museum leaders from all types and sizes of museums, across the country, led by two leaders whom I truly admire: Lonnie Bunch and Elizabeth Pierce.

Underlying this initiative is a team of stellar professionals—from AAM’s growing staff DEAI team, to ten senior fellows, selected from a highly competitive pool of over 140 applicants.

I hope you will join our listening session later this afternoon—or stop by the AAM Resource Center in MuseumExpo to learn more and provide your input into this effort.

Or come chat with Sister Doctor Johnnetta Cole and me at our book signing on Wednesday. Thanks to incredible thought leaders and contributors, we have compiled a text of some of the most important essays around DEAI in museums over the last twenty years, because we need to continue learning from the past as we chart our path forward.

Trust

One of the best parts of my job at the Alliance is that virtually everyone I deal with loves museums.

And a recent public opinion poll of thousands of Americans conducted by AAM and Wilkening Consulting confirmed what we always knew were true facts:

  • 97 percent of Americans believe that museums are educational assets for their communities, and
  • 96 percent of the public wants Congress to fund museums.

This poll revealed that supporting museums is a core value of the American public that crosses political lines, bridges divides between urban and rural communities, and is even consistent among those who do not regularly visit museums!

And museums share another unique and favorable attribute. In this age of “fake news” and rampant distrust of traditional sources of information, museums are among the most trustworthy sources. Museums’ trustworthiness is rated higher than local newspapers, nonprofit and academic researchers, and the government.

Neither the public’s support nor its trust is guaranteed, however—and museums must fiercely protect both.

We must also realize the weighty responsibility of having the public’s trust.

The information we choose to share, the stories we choose to tell (and not tell), the individuals we involve in our museums as board members and funders, and how we handle our inevitable mistakes all stand to impact how trustworthy—and worthy of support—the public considers museums.

I hope you’ll read AAM’s newest TrendsWatch report from the Center for the Future of Museums, which explores this weighty and really critical topic.

And if you missed TrendsWatch: The Scenario Edition, you are really missing out on a powerful museum planning tool—to turn the trends we’ve been tracking into action and to apply a futurist framework to your strategic planning.

Closing

In closing, I would be remiss if I didn’t thank many people who are key to all of this work—and a lot of other work happening at the Alliance:

  • AAM’s incredible board of directors and accreditation commission
  • Our dedicated Professional Network leaders who provide invaluable networking and focused learning opportunities for everyone here at the Annual Meeting and at events across the country
  • Thank you to Susan Taylor and Stephen Watson and the entire Local Host Committee for your warm New Orleans hospitality.
  • And to the National Program Committee who put together this week’s stellar program of sessions
  • The talented and dedicated AAM staff, almost all of whom are here this week, wearing their staff badges and ready to help
  • And, last but not least, thank you. There is no Alliance without you.
Skip over related stories to continue reading article ]]> https://www.aam-us.org/2019/05/29/financial-sustainability-is-everyones-responsibility/feed/ 0 104719 #AAM2019 Keynote: Kippen de Alba Chu and Kimberly Drew https://www.aam-us.org/2019/05/28/aam2019-keynote-kimberly-drew/ https://www.aam-us.org/2019/05/28/aam2019-keynote-kimberly-drew/#respond Tue, 28 May 2019 15:14:04 +0000 https://www.aam-us.org/?p=104714 <

Disclaimer: This video is unedited and contains several “unbeeped” profanities.

Transcript

Kippen de Alba Chu: Good morning, everyone. Yeah, this morning’s script was changed on me, so I’m going to go back to the original. No, just joking. By the way, I was able to remove the electronic buzzer from my suit last night. But wouldn’t that be a great device for our museums? Could you imagine, say, embedding them in the chairs of our board meeting rooms? So that during the next trustee meeting, we say, “Sorry, we cannot deaccession one of our 200 Remington paintings just to sell it to you.” Bzzz! Anyway.

We hope you are having a great meeting and that you enjoyed last night’s opening party. Let’s once again thank our incredible hosts, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the New Orleans Botanical Garden, and the Louisiana Children’s Museum. Awesome!

Before we begin, we do have some late-breaking news. I wish there were some CNN graphics here because then I would channel James Earl Jones, right? This is AAM, the most trusted name in museums. But I do have a brief update for you. Due to a last-minute emergency, today’s session will not be live captioned. We are recording the session and will post the video on our website along with closed captions as soon as we can. We thank you for your understanding and apologize for the inconvenience.

Okay. As AAM’s unprecedented National Initiative Facing Change gets underway in five cities across the US, I would like to reflect on what I see as the biggest challenges or the biggest challenge we face: that we are already enlightened, and it is other people who must change. Let me explain.

Given all of the media characterizations of red and blue states, left versus right, conservatives versus liberals, and Donald Trump’s base versus everyone else, it is no wonder that we sense a polarized country. Unfortunately, the political situation in Washington and I’m talking about Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court is not abnormal. Our current system is perfectly aligned to deliver the results we now have. There is no dysfunction. The system was designed to minimize change, promote the status quo, and discourage real leadership. It continues to operate as intended, and if we truly want radically different results, then we have to acknowledge that we need a radically different system.

As for assumptions and stereotypes, let me give you some background first. I recently went through a major transition. I had served for 12 years as the executive director of Iolani Palace in Honolulu, Hawai’i, a place where I was born and spent most of my life. A couple of years ago, I decided I needed to change. I was looking for a change professionally. So last year, I reached out to a friend of mine, Van Romans, the president of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. I just called him on a whim and said, “Hey, Van. Do you know of any museum that is looking for a number two position? Like a chief operating officer?” Little did I know that Van was actually in the middle of a search at that very moment. I don’t think he had officially posted the job announcement yet because he kept asking me, “How did you know?” I seriously did not know. It was just timing.

Anyway, last November, I flew to Fort Worth for the very first time and interviewed with Van. He offered me the job a short time later, and with my family, we made the collective decision to leave Hawai’i for Texas. I keep getting asked that question in Texas: “Why did you leave Hawai’i for Texas?” However, once the word got out, a lot of people started to share with me their assumptions and stereotypes. And I’m not just talking about people in Hawai’i, but from across the US. They were telling me about the “Texas” that I was moving to. A deep red state. Racist, religiously conservative. Big guns, and even bigger trucks. But these assumptions were all two dimensional and rudimentary. They didn’t even begin to paint an accurate picture, yet we are accustomed to reaching for quick and simple descriptions of people and places we don’t like.

Assumptions are a way to conveniently justify our point of view, which we believe is always correct, to the detriment of any facts to the contrary. In the book Unleashing the Power of Unconditional Respect, it describes our tendency to automatically assume the following: the way I see something is the way it is; the way I feel about someone is the way he or she is; the way I remember an event is the way it was; if you disagree with me, you are stupid, a liar, or psychotic. Yet the irony here is that our assumptions are actually blinding us. We are deceiving ourselves through self-imposed ignorance, and probably the only reason it is not considered pathological is that it is endemic.

In a survey conducted recently by Civic Science, over 3,000 Americans were asked if schools should teach Arabic numerals, to which 56% of the respondents said no. 56%. I bet those same respondents would say that Central America is somewhere in Nebraska. The same survey also asked for people’s political affiliation, and I know what you are thinking, and you would be right. Of those who identified as Republican, 72% said Arabic numerals should not be taught in schools, whereas only 34% of Democrats said so. However, in another recent survey, people were asked whether science curriculum in schools should include the creation theory by Catholic priest George Lemaître. 73% of Democrats said no. And in case you are wondering, George is the father of the big bang theory. Not the television show.

Ignorance is apolitical, and so is bias. It is our interpersonal relationships we bring, our own experiences and background to the table to inform how we see things. It is a mistake to assume that our way of seeing is the only way. To make things worse, add judgment to our assumptions, and you have a recipe for conflict. So let us take a step back and reflect on the following: the way I see something is one way of seeing; the way I feel about someone is the way I feel; the way I remember an event is my memory of that event.

The Facing Change Initiative, through the leadership of AAM and our allies, means the distribution of loss. What we care about is not necessarily what would motivate other people. We literally have to sell DEAI. Leadership is inherently subversive, and some people will attack us personally to divert from what we are doing. Others deeply entrenched in the current system will be passive aggressive, cheering on our work and telling us how courageous we are, all the while secretly enticing us to walk off the cliff. From our own allies, those dedicated to DEAI day in and day out, they will say that we aren’t doing enough, and by the way, we are taking way too long. What we must remember is that leadership is also about disappointing our own people at a rate they can absorb. The process of change is iterative. It requires inordinate amounts of patience, and it is extremely inefficient, but we can all easily recognize when there is a lack of leadership.

Aside from the leadership aspect of this kind of work, DEAI will also challenge us to be self-aware. We cannot invite others to change if we ourselves refuse to acknowledge our own contribution to this conflict. What I am speaking about here is selective empathy. We feel outrage and often move to action when a person we identify with is harmed, either because they look like us, share similar views, or we judge them to be worthy of our empathy. Yet we do not feel the same when something awful happens to people who share the opposite viewpoint, people with whom we are unable to identify because we have judged them as less than.

When people marching on the streets in support of civil rights are suddenly attacked, we empathize. We mobilize. When Neo-Nazis marching in those same streets in support of white supremacy are suddenly attacked, we watch. Some of us will say they incited the violence, but what we really mean is, they deserved it. Some of us will be indifferent, but there will be little to no empathy. Donald Trump was wrong to say that there were fine people on both sides in Charlottesville. The correct statement would have been, “There were people on both sides.” Human beings.

So here is the crux of the issue; indeed, I would venture to say that the ultimate success of DEAI rests on this: imagine now just one person in that Neo-Nazi march chanting hateful rhetoric, and that one person gets hit in the face with a brick thrown by a counter-protester. Stunned, with a bloodied face, do we really think that all of a sudden, that Neo-Nazi will say, “Gee, I should really re-think my viewpoint. Maybe I shouldn’t be hating on minorities. Immigrants are good for the country. What an epiphany, to be hit by that brick. Thank you.” I can guarantee you, that is not going to happen. In doing this work on DEAI, we cannot launch verbal bricks at those who oppose us. We cannot even think in that way, because we are only going to contribute to more conflict. We must remember that we cannot change other people; our actions, words, and thoughts must exemplify our goals. We must remain open to those who disagree with us and continually invite them to consider what we are trying to accomplish, all without hate, without fear, without judgment.

To expand on Michelle Obama’s often repeated line, “When they go low, we go high,” I would propose to you that we stay high without hubris, kneel down, and our hands always extended to lift them up when they are ready.

Now it is my distinct honor to recognize, along with AAM’s president and CEO, Laura Lott, two museums that are leading the way when it comes to diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion in the museum field. Now in its third year, AAM’s DEAI Awards Program celebrates shining examples of leadership and excellence by institutions, programs, and individuals.

The first of these awards this year goes to the New York Historical Society, which we recognize for its Citizenship Project, a program that helps green card holders study for the naturalization exam using the museum’s rich collections as the context for history education. This inspirational program is catalyzing positive change during a time when issues related to immigration are at the center of our national discourse. Just last year, it was profiled in the documentary film, “Out of Many, One”. Let’s take a look. [Video presentation]

Ruth Bader Ginsberg (RBG): I hereby declare on oath, I will support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Speaker 1: I think my greatest happiness is that I could come to America and become an Amercian citizen

Speaker 2: I came here to the United States in 2012. I was suffering persecution from the Venezuelan government. [Spanish 00:15:40]

Speaker 3: Having citizenship is important because of all the insecurity we’re going through at the moment.

Speaker 4: My boss told me, okay…we have to go and clean the twin towers. When I got there, wow.

Speaker 5: To become a citizen you need to love this country, and we do.

Speaker 6: It is really powerful to see why people are coming to this country and why they want to be a part of this country.

Judge: We are a beautiful and substantive and powerful nation because of what you have contributed, and because of what you will contribute.

RBG: After the words “We the people of the United States,” the Constitution sets out the aspiration to form a more perfect union, making ever more vibrant our national motto: e pluribus unum, “Out of many, one.”

Kippen: Please join me in welcoming to the stage, Jennifer Schantz and Samantha Rijkers to accept the award on behalf of the New York Historical Society.

Jennifer Schantz: Hi. My name is Jennifer Schantz. I am the executive vice president and chief operating officer at the New York Historical Society, and along with Samantha Rijkers, my Citizenship Project Manager, we are absolutely thrilled to accept this award. The New York Historical Society’s mission is to make history matter, and the Citizenship Project does just that by transforming people’s lives. Since 2017, we have served over 2,000 green card holders, and now we are taking the program nationally, and we are working with museums around the country to teach them how to use the Citizenship Project in their own museums. Thank you again. We are absolutely thrilled.

Kippen: Congratulations again to the New York Historical Society.

Next, the Alliance is proud to recognize the outstanding work of the Shedd Aquarium. All are Welcome: Accessibility and Inclusion at Shedd Aquarium is a comprehensive organization-wide program to achieve a more accessible and inclusive Shedd for guests, staff, volunteers, and the community. This initiative at Shedd takes a holistic approach to promoting diversity both in the public experience and throughout the organization as a whole. This brief slideshow features some images from this outstanding program. [Slideshow presentation]

Here to accept the award is Kris Nesbitt of the Shedd Aquarium. Congratulations.

Kris Nesbitt: Thank you all on behalf of all of my colleagues at Shedd doing this extraordinary work, and on behalf and in deference to all of you out in the audience who are also doing work to make our organizations accessible and inclusive to all communities. Thank you all, and keep up the good fight.

Kippen: Congratulations again to the Shedd Aquarium.

It is now my honor to introduce to you our facilitator for this morning’s keynote address, Dr. Tonya Matthews. Dr. Matthews is a national thought leader in museum engagement, free choice learning, and equity and inclusion in science, technology, engineering, and math. She is a former AAM board member and currently serves as AAM’s Interim Director of Inclusion. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Dr. Matthews and to our keynote speaker, Kimberly Drew.

Kimberly Drew: Hello. Oh my God. It’s so early. You guys are awake! Wow. Okay, sorry. I am freaking out. Thank you all so much for being here. I would like to extend a huge note of gratitude, especially to Veronica, who helped coordinate my visit here, and to any person who set up any chair or any pamphlet, stacked any booklet, whatever. I really want to say, first and foremost, thank you so much for that labor. It does not go unappreciated.

Today I’m going to talk to you about my work, my life, this weird phase that I’m in. It is not my most concise moment in life, so I hope that you guys will extend some grace to me as I talk through some of these things.

I first want to start this talk the way that I begin any talk, which is to pay homage to Carter G. Woodson, who is the founder of Negro History Week, which would become Black History Month. He said, “If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.” When I discovered this quote, it became such a motivating force for me. I liked the drama of it; I love the idea of thinking about how to fight not just erasure, but extermination, really. What does it mean to be in service of black art and black culture with that level of danger potentially on the other side if that work isn’t being done?

I discovered that quote around the time that I was interning… Oh yeah, hey. Feel free to tweet and stuff. We love phones. So, I was an intern at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which is really where my story as an arts professional began. I grew up in Orange, New Jersey, which is just outside of Newark, New Jersey, so I always had proximity to an art world or an art center, thinking about Newark being the birthplace of the black arts movement. I have members of my family who are very invested in art; my dad is here somewhere. He was a dad taking me to museums. But it was when I got the Studio Museum that I really began to see a possibility for myself as an intern, as a paid intern very specifically, within that institution. It gave me a glimmer of hope that perhaps the art world could be a space for me.

When I was done with my internship at the Studio Museum, I wanted to continue to learn in the way that I had been learning. I thought about the day that I discovered who Basquiat was, and how I had known who Warhol was in this image, but didn’t know who the black guy next to him was. And I thought, “Wow, there must be so many other black guys I don’t know, much less black women or black gender nonconforming people.” And so when I got back to Smith College the semester after my internship, I immediately went to the Internet, like a true millennial. I was 19 at the time and thought there must be some sort of web resource that does the thing that the Studio Museum does but is more dynamic than a website.

I went researching and could not find a single thing that fit my snobby a– design sense or my need for scholarship, so I decided to start my own blog. I wonder if this… Okay, it’s kind of big. But basically, I reached out to my friend Marcellus, who is an artist now based in Detroit, who really was such an integral figure in the beginning of my career, because we started at the Studio Museum at the same time. I reached out to him because I knew that if I was going to build something that I wanted to do it in community. I have never been a person who thinks they can do it on their own. I’m an only child Leo, but I love working with other people. I play well in groups, I swear.

One of the things that I think is really important to note for anyone who is interested in starting something like the work that I have been doing is that when I started Black Contemporary Art, I knew probably 10 artists’ names, and I built from there up into 5,000 artists exist on the site right now. But it really started as a small idea and became something so much bigger.

This is what the blog kind of looks like now; the colors are inverted to keep the design aesthetic of the slides… But what I decided to do when I was building out the blog, because I also started this with willful ignorance, right? I didn’t think that there was an art history or a space that could be like the Studio Museum, or a space that I could continue to learn about these black artists and find the other Basquiats and find the other Lorna Simpsons or Trenton Doyle Hancocks, and so I went to Tumblr, because I felt like it was the best community for me. It is a community where not only can you be learning and private… I think that the privacy was a big part of it, and having the courage to start something… but also because it was a relationship where you would follow someone and you could reblog or repost what someone else was doing, and so it wasn’t just about being this primary source; it was really about being in community with other people who are interested in similar ideas.

So when I started the blog, I started with my friend Marcellus, and then a whole other host of people who are based in places, and some people I haven’t even met yet, which is the most millennial s— ever… but we all work on this project and have since about 2011.

When the Whitney Museum… I know it’s mad problematic… When the Whitney Museum opened, our forever first lady gave a speech there that also really stuck with me. It was one of those times when… you know when you just find information that really sticks to your ribs? But at the end of her statement, she said, “I guarantee you that right now, there are kids living less than a mile from here who would never in a million years dream that they would be welcome in this museum.” And when that happened, when I heard those words, when I really started to embody that work, it made me think about how having a blog just wasn’t enough. Having this static archival space online was not enough to extend an invitation to people who don’t actually feel like they can interact with this art and these artists in real time. That really inspired me to build out my own voice within this internet-sphere.

At the time that I was starting my museum mammy account, it was almost an impossibility that I was doing the work that I was doing. I really was deep in the throes of imposter syndrome and thought, “This young black queer woman who comes from a family of extreme cultural wealth but maybe not monetary wealth, what does it mean to be invited to the table? What does it mean to be granted these opportunities to learn at the Studio Museum, or at these other art institutions,” which I’ll get to later in my slides. But I thought that it was so surprising that I could be there, that I needed to illustrate that for people, to present my impossibility as a possibility for them.

And so my Instagram looks a lot like this. It’s usually me doing the most in a gallery of some sort, and then getting really emo in the comments. Talking about how I am moved by things, talking about the things that excite me. Taking in artwork that might be an old Renaissance painting and finding myself in it, with the hope that maybe people will start to see themselves in these spaces as well, to remix them, to take them, to reclaim them. But I have always been a very visual learner, and so I hope that through Instagram it can be a place that I continue to at least show people that there is a possibility that maybe they didn’t see there before.

This is another look at the general things I post. There’s some selfies. More selfies now than ever. There’s some memes, there’s friends. Sharing images of friends, for me, has become such a political practice, because I really am not alone in the work that I am doing. Many of you in the room are in community with me, and I think because of my visibility, and especially now that my Instagram has a lot of people following it, it is really important to also guide people to other folks, because I know I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. I know many, many cups of tea, and we can all have them, or you can be someone’s cup of tea.

Next, okay. Outside of Instagram-y stuff, internet stuff, in the beginning part of my career, I also realized that doing stuff on the internet was not enough because… it comes as no surprise to archivists in the room… if Tumblr closed tomorrow, there is no way of recovering those things. The Library of Congress has done great work to try to preserve Twitter, but there is still this kind of lack of safety on the things that we publish and how they will be consumed and understood by future generations, and so I began a process of lecturing, because I was afraid of the practice of writing. I love speaking; I love public speaking; I love opportunities to engage with audiences, and so in the beginning part of my career, I accepted any invitation, whether that meant going to the Bronx for $50 or going to Coachella or whatever. I was lecturing and speaking and trying to spread the gospel of the work that I was doing and the work of others whenever I could.

After lecturing for a few years… Obviously, I still lecture, as I’m lecturing right now… I began to write. I was a kid who… literacy was difficult. Trusting my own voice was always something that was really difficult for me, but I also realize as I became more wise and… almost more cared for, in the art world, that writing is such an important practice to anything that we are doing. It is the transcription; it is the explication of our ideas that is the thing that feels most tangible in terms of passing a baton forward, and I just wanted to be a part of that, so I kind of tricked myself into becoming a writer.

Then the last one, of course, is showing up, which happens in both of those gestures. That means, physically whenever possible, bringing my body into new spaces, with hopes that with every door that I open, that someone else can walk through. One thing that also on this slide is Christine. Hey, boo. Christine, you’re on every single one of my presentations now. One of the talks that I did that really had a profound impact on me in terms of showing up was when I had the great privilege of being in conversation with Christine Sun Kim, who is here with us in the audience today.

Lecturing alongside Christine, I was very nervous, because she is so much smarter than me, and so I was like, “Okay, here we go.” And then something really unexpected for me happened in that moment, because it was the first time that I was in a room also with people who are interpreting in American Sign Language, and I realized that I had been doing all this lecturing, I had been doing all this showing up, but I had never really thought about who wasn’t in the room, and more than that, how I could make it possible for more people to be in the room. And so one thing that I always… in this phase especially of my life, I try to focus on is how to show up in a really slow way. How to show up thinking about, capital A, Accessibility at every turn in every way that is possible.

So this is the slide where I talk about my jobs. My first job out of college was working at Creative Time, which was amazing because it was an institution that does not have brick and mortar space, and so for a social media baby, it was the perfect place to learn. We had to think about how to wayfinding, how to direct, how to engage the archive, how to draw a big circle around all the programming that this organization was doing, and also was led by Anne Pasternak, which was, I think, amazing for myself to be in my first job and… as a “job” job… and have this continuation of strong female leadership in the way that I had had at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

I returned to the Studio Museum in Harlem as an adult person in 2013 to manage their social media, which was an exciting time. This was 2013; this was kind of the birth of Black Twitter, and I thought to myself how I would be the person who would bring Black Twitter to the Studio Museum. Successful or unsuccessful, it was a guiding force and having goals, even if you don’t accomplish them, is great.

After a year at the Studio Museum, I decided to leave for a number of reasons that I won’t get into in this talk, but one of them being that I just wanted to be in a different kind of institution. At this point, I had worked at two relatively small institutions, but I wanted to continue to expand my learning, and I actually got a call from a recruiter that was like, “Oh, this art gallery wants to hire you,” and I found myself working at Lehmann Maupin, which is a private art gallery.

It was such an exciting challenge for me at that stage in my career because galleries are so private, and I’m so nosy. So it was this really beautiful meld that happened where I could figure out ways to turn what people think were secrets into narratives. So what does it mean that this gallery represents 50-some odd artists, and those artists are constantly traveling around the world; they’re having shows in Indianapolis, they’re having shows in Beijing… how can I utilize social media to bring people into that story, so that they can continue to learn more about this very specific set of artists? And also, galleries are free, which is awesome. So what does it mean to work for an institution that people, regardless of their financial standing, can come and at least see art? I was fascinated by that.

It was also exhausting, and so after a year of working in the for-profit world, I ran headfirst back into museums and ended up in the corporate art world at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I applied there after learning from Lucy Redoglia, who used to be the handle at Met every day, who was such an inspirational figure to me in terms of thinking about art and social media… she decided to move back to Los Angeles, and I was Google chatting with her about her role and what she liked, what she didn’t like, yadda yadda yadda… and she encouraged me to apply, and so I did.

So then I found myself at the Met, which was f—– up, because I was a kid who was going to the Met, and suddenly a person who went from understanding the Met through pop culture into understanding the Met as this behemoth institution… That’s me. I screamed at her. I was like, “Robin!” She turned at me. But one thing that is also important in thinking about the Met, and then also thinking about this showing up, thinking about being really engaged and thoughtful and a total noob around issues of accessibility, I thought to myself, “What does it mean that I work at this institution that is mostly known for its steps?” Right? Yes, yes. “What can I do to make sure that the social media that I am writing, the copy that I am presenting, the strategy that I am building, provides as many doors as possible to this institution?” Because I don’t want people who, for whatever reason, are unable to ascend steps, to think that the Met isn’t there for them.

And so my access era, I guess, for lack of better phrasing, at the Met began. I started working with our access coordination department, which is hands down one of the best in the country. And tiny. A tiny but mighty team, and I love them and will get emotional when I start thinking about my work with them… but because we had so many resources, because it’s the Met, I was like, “How can I utilize all these resources for a greater good? What does it mean when I know that I work at an institution that, if the Met can institute something, that maybe other people can institute things?”

So I started partnering with our access department, and our first initiative was partnering with our interpreters to do Facebook Live tours, because I thought about how with Facebook Live, one, no one is listening to the audio, no matter what Facebook data says. But also that people who could see that there is this opportunity if you do want a guided tour, how to advertise it on our biggest platform possible. So that became the thing that really really motivated me in basically the last two years of my time at the Met.

The other thing that motivated me in my last two years at the Met was thinking about workplace diversity, thinking about this moment where yet again another big institution was thinking about trying to diversify, and the thing that is really cool about this well-resourced institution is that they did have a really comprehensive, and continue to have a very comprehensive, diversity program thinking across lines of socioeconomic difference, thinking about access, thinking about so many other aspects of identity and diversity, but also not really talking about pay equity. So it was problematic as problematic is.

Another thing that really motivated me in my last two years at the Met was my salary. And not just my salary which is here in the middle, but also the outgoing salary of the person who had my job two years before I did, who also just so happened to be a white man, and why I never met that salary, ever, in my time at the Met. That, for me, became such an obsession, and a real thing that made me feel angry, that I could be doing this work, thinking about… Still very angry. That I could be doing this work to the best of my ability, showing up, showing out, but still there was just a very small margin that I, for whatever reason, was never worth. So I stayed there, and I stayed at the Met until six months ago.

When I left, I got obsessed with a new number, which is six million new followers in my time at the Met; in the three years that I was there, I was able to grow that audience. And that is the number that I stick with. What is not reflected in that number is the countless number of young people that I worked with that also inspired me very deeply to think about how to make the art world more equitable, and I hope that if there is anything that you guys take away from this talk and our conversation after, is thinking about how to really use your time as valuably as possible. Because it is not about the numbers… It is about the numbers. It’s not just about the numbers; it is also about our dedication. It is also about making sure that we are, in whatever way possible, utilizing our rage, utilizing our joy, to inspire the next generation of people who are incoming, with the hopes that our work will make it easier for them once they arrive. But that number always makes me think of that.

What’s next? Now I’m in this weird moment. I left my job. I don’t have a new job. It’s crazy that I’m here at this conference because I don’t even work at museums anymore. I got the invite and was like, “Oh, wow. Okay.” So now I am in this moment of trying to figure out, when there is not a blueprint, what to do. I’m a very… I have so much Capricorn in my chart. I am your super stereotypical Type A woman, but I am in this moment of freestyle, and that I’m writing… I’m doing a lot of other stuff. But one thing that has become a guiding principle for me, a project that I would like to talk to you all about very briefly, is a book that I am working on called The Black Futures Project.

The Black Futures Project I am co-editing with Jenna, who is in this beautiful portrait with me. Obama was still in the White House when we took this photo. What we have been trying to do through… or what we have really accomplished through The Black Futures Project, is asking the question, what does it mean to be black and alive in the age of the internet. Both of us have… or now I have had… relatively corporate jobs; Jenna works for the Times, and I was at the Met when we came together and decided to make this book in the interest of making sure that because social media is fragile in its build, and because it has been such an incredible avenue for growth and connectivity amongst black creatives, how can we make a book that in some way makes it more tangible, makes it more accessible for future generations, and also makes it something that people can really own? Because when you think about publishing online, the Facebook owns it, the white dudes in Silicon Valley own it, so how can we reclaim it, and how can we present something that can be gifted and shared and blah blah blah?

So we have been working on this book for the last three years, and it will come out soon enough, but that for me has also been something in this moment of, “Oh my God, I don’t know who I am or what I am doing,” this book project has become my home base, and Jenna are now like a married couple; we have an accountant and a lawyer. It’s pretty fun. I highly recommend making a book.

So I will pause there because I… so thank you all. Thank you.

Dr. Tonya Matthews: Thank you so much, Kimberly. They are so going to regret they only gave us 30 minutes. We have a lot to talk about and a lot to unpack, and I want to kick off by stating the obvious, which is, this is a two-generation conversation, and I think it is phenomenal to think about the intersection of a Gen X African American woman and a millennial African American woman, both finding themselves both in transition… I’m finishing mine, she’s beginning hers… but part of what I want to suss out, there are a couple of things I want to talk to you about.

You mentioned avoiding writing until the very last minute and then taking it on as a critical part of your political transformative work. I have found the same thing. I am an engineer. I’m in STEM. We don’t “have to” write, and I found that I had to embrace that in order to be able to cross all the boundaries and the lines that I needed to cross. Can you talk a little bit more about how you’re combining these? You now even use “writer” as one of your descriptive titles. Talk a little bit how you grew into that more as part of your mission and work.

Kimberly: Yeah, that’s a great question. Hello? Great. So, when I was an undergraduate, I actually studied engineering, and I left the discipline because there was no writing, which is funny, but I was like, “I don’t want to be a scientist that can’t talk to people.” And so I ended up in architecture before finding art history. But at any rate, with writing, I just got to a point where the fear wasn’t worth the return.

[inaudible 00:44:38]

Dr. Matthews: Possibly.

Kimberly: Hello? Okay, great.

Dr. Matthews: There we go.

Kimberly: And we’re back. This is very Oprah/Gayle. It’s like, Super Soul Sunday, there was a choir. It’s crazy. So… what I was saying before was, I studied engineering originally. I thought I wanted to be a doctor, and then I thought I wanted to be an engineer, blah blah blah, went through this whole thing, but realized that working in STEM in the way that I was on my campus did not afford me opportunities for humanities, didn’t afford me opportunities for connection with people.

When it comes to becoming a writer, I think what motivated me was the outcome. I was afraid of it, but I realized that the gain from it was greater than the fear. And more than that, I also had the incredible gift of excellent editors in my life, one of whom is a Drag Race superstar, Miz Cracker. I don’t know if any of you guys watch Drag Race, but season 10, Miz Cracker was my first editor ever and is an incredible writer, aside from being a fantastic drag queen. But it was that partnership that, for me, helped me move forward and really truly begin publishing.

Dr. Matthews: And as you think about the way you define yourself, we all get to pick our titles, I notice it’s “writer/curator/activist.” I tend to do “engineer/educator/spoken soul artist,” and as I think through that, are we doing that as a new sign of freedom to define ourselves, or as a sign of defiance that we will not be singly defined? I know, right? Poet gets to ask the question.

Kimberly: I don’t know. I feel like there’s some boxes that you have to fill out. You know? I like my name enough, but I think that there’s some ways in which your boxes and the way that you fill them in will signify to others, and so I think that is something that is powerful, but I don’t necessarily think about… Labels suck. I think everyone in this room can agree. But I do think that there is something about determination and definition that allows other people to read themselves into your story. So I was never an activist, and then I realized that what I was doing was read as activist, and so if… It just started to make more sense. But it was also about the submission. So I think in many ways, even if you name yourself 10 times, you are still submitting to a naming practice.

Dr. Matthews: I am fascinated by the way you have used social media to create welcome into physical places. You are using the social media as a way to say, “You could go there, and you could go there, and you could go there.” And I have been fascinated, stunned, humbled, and frightened when I discover that people have visited museums that I worked at, just because I worked at them, and that made an open door. What are you seeing in your work, and how do you know, and how do you get that response when you are opening those doors? How do people communicate with you, and how do you take that?

Kimberly: It’s great. I think we can… It’s net good. I would say for me, it’s a loaded question in that I hope that everyone also takes on that responsibility, because I think a lot of times, there can be a lot of invitation that is done. Like, I thought that your story was going to go left. But I worry sometimes where I’m like, “Come to this show,” and then someone is rude. You know? Where it’s like, I have extended this invitation that you may see value in, and then when this person gets there, you have to act right. So it’s, I think, more about our collective responsibility to make sure that our spaces are ready, because I think through our scholarship, through our activism, through our social media work, through the many myriad ways that we all show up as people, it is also important to think about what awaits people once they arrive.

So I am always much more interested in that than necessarily the novelty of people being like, “I want to be like you.” Because f— that. I want to make sure that you feel the comfort that I feel in that space, because I have tiptoed into this world where I’m a VIP, and I just want everyone to get a little taste of that and not have to think about people looking down on them or… You know, it’s like you’re taking a selfie, and people are like, “A selfie? In a museum?” It’s just like, so what? What is the problem? If the artwork is safe, this person is communicating an experience, and that is none of your f—— business.

Dr. Matthews: I am hearing, and you even talked specifically about it a lot in your ethic, your life and your spirit ethic, really about you being an individual and owning that, and then really creating space for other people who can also be individuals and be themselves, and I have seen you as a champion against barriers that don’t affect you specifically. How did you grow into that space? Talk a little bit about your journey into becoming a universalist, for lack of a better term, when it comes to the capital A in accessibility and everything that goes with it.

Kimberly: Yeah. I just got… I got tired of being lonely. I really did. And it really, really radicalized and solidified when I was at the Met, and I would sit in rooms where everyone was able-bodied and the majority of people where white, and I would take notes on who was in the room. And this was this very Adrian Piper fantasy of delusion, but I was just keeping notes on who was in rooms and why and what we were discussing, and… I just don’t like being alone in that way.

I think for me as a person, I have always felt better when I have an opportunity to engage and learn with people; I am not a person who wants to be in homogenous spaces at all for any reason. I am always intrigued and empowered in spaces where I feel like there’s many different narratives in the room. I think it is partially because there is always an opportunity to learn, but there is also an opportunity to be quiet, too. Because I think when you are the only person who is representing, or assuming to represent, a particular identity, you have to be so much louder. Right? And so how can we create a better orchestra symphony cacophony of sounds so that it’s not just this dull murmur and then you’re rolling through like a band. Because it’s a lot of work.

Dr. Matthews: I think that’s an amazing approach to it, and I know you are still early in your journey, but what are your favorite tactics and skills for helping other people get on board with that and in that space as you bring all brand new kinds of folks into the space? What have been your tactics of helping other folks who don’t have your natural curiosity and nosiness, of welcoming?

Kimberly: I love a phone call. I called people up at the Met after meetings, whether they said something inappropriate to me or about a community. I love a bullet-pointed email. I love sending resource guides. I’m a queen of the PDF. But yeah, I have, for better or worse, tried my best to make sure that people knew when they were erring, and also in moments when I know that I was potentially erring. Right? Trying to teach people through my questions about how to show up and in what ways. Because even showing up as an able-bodied person, as an advocate for accessibility, I know I have a lot to learn. So always showing up and understanding, I just want to do the best, and I want some help in doing the best too.

I think that is the most courageous thing that any of us can do, especially in museum spaces where they’re all built on what we know. There is a whole host of people who never go into museums because they don’t think they know enough. What is that? It’s an institution for learning. So I think it is a two-pronged approach of educating and then also allowing yourself to be educated.

Dr. Matthews: Thank you. We are coming up at the end of our time. Everybody groan. Thank you. And I also want to take a moment to acknowledge, I am known for bringing my mom everywhere that I go, and I know that you have brought someone special with you as well. Would you like to mention that?

Kimberly: Yeah, my dad is here, which I…

Dr. Matthews: And he was a volunteer for us.

Kimberly: And he volunteered. So you may have seen someone with my same face walking around.

Dr. Matthews: So I want to acknowledge that. I think where we come from and what we have had to get where we are, and so my last question for you is about giving advice to your current and future fan base. For those of us who are on a journey of becoming a credible disrupter, because I find you very disruptive and extraordinarily credible, in that work, what would be your advice? For folks who want to get in there, change up the system and disrupt, but also to be credible about it as they do that?

Kimberly: Yeah. So many things. I hate the word “disrupter.” Sorry. So I have to start there. And I think it is a good launching point, and I think it is also… I did a talk the other day with Dapper Dan, who was like, “I love ‘disrupter,'” and it was really informative to hear why he loved it. But for me, I always have questions around that word specifically because I think about a norm, and so it’s like, how can we talk about creating change that doesn’t privilege the norm? How can we privilege the changemaker?

And so I think also too, I’m in this moment of figuring it out. It’s weird to stand at a podium; it’s weird to have a microphone and be this false prophet of sorts. I’m still figuring it out. I started my career on the internet in 2011, and now I’m here? And so in many ways, I think if there is any advice that there is, it’s just that there is a lot ahead, which is a very motivating force. That there is a lot more room for curiosity, for some disruption, and also for some upholding. Some reifying, some foundational work as well. Because there is not much that I am doing that is completely new, which I also acknowledge, so I think… yeah.

Sorry. My mind is moving a mile a minute, but I just think it is important to also think about how… what some of those words mean in the context of this journey.

Dr. Matthews: No, it’s fantastic. Thank you very much. I hear your journey, and I see your humility, but I raise you prepetous on a journey, as opposed to not having it. One more time, ladies and gentlemen, for Kimberly Drew.

]]> https://www.aam-us.org/2019/05/28/aam2019-keynote-kimberly-drew/feed/ 0 104714 Follow #AAM2019 From Anywhere https://www.aam-us.org/2019/05/17/follow-aam2019-from-anywhere/ https://www.aam-us.org/2019/05/17/follow-aam2019-from-anywhere/#respond Fri, 17 May 2019 16:31:10 +0000 https://www.aam-us.org/?p=104162 Nothing beats the in-person experience of AAM’s Annual Meeting and MuseumExpo: meeting colleagues, hearing ideas straight from the source in sessions, and checking out the intriguing displays from exhibitors. But social media adds another dimension to the meeting, allowing the whole museum community to follow the conversation wherever they are, enabling exchanges that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. If you can’t make it to New Orleans for #AAM2019, or you will be attending but want to tap into the expanded discussion, here are the best ways to follow along:

AAM’s Social Media Profiles

Start at the source with AAM’s Twitter and Facebook feeds. We’ll be sharing live updates and boosting reactions from the field throughout the meeting.

Social Media Journalists

Our group of thirteen Social Media Journalists will be roving New Orleans, attending sessions and events that pique their interest and reporting what they find. They come from a range of backgrounds, from collections stewardship to digital engagement, but share a passionate curiosity for and belief in museums. Check out the list of journalists selected and follow your favorites for Annual Meeting updates straight to your feed, or check out the #AAMSMJ hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to see all their posts in one place.

#AAM2019 Hashtag

Attendees are encouraged to post their reactions on social media under the hashtag #AAM2019, the digital convening point for this year’s meeting. Sample the broad range of voices speaking from our field, start conversations about what you see, and get connected with your museum colleagues. Follow on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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