ARTH 6930-Art & Global Diversity

Dr. Pamela Brekka

Reading Response Week 6

Kendra Edgell

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Museums have not always been inclusive, and more often than not they have been completely exclusive to many groups of people. Today, many museums are working hard to break this pattern and create more inclusive and truly educational experiences of all groups of people. Many museum curators, educators, and historians are working hard to break the oppression and address issues of racism and social and cultural biases that have often been shown in museums in the past. These articles show steps and changes that museums are taking to create safe spaces for visitors to learn, support, and engage with cultures around the world.

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Authors of “History as Art, Art as History: Contemporary Art and Social Studies Education,” Dipti Desai, Jessica Hamlin, and Rachel Mattson (2009) provide methods and a toolkit for educators to enhance their teaching of visual culture and history in K-12 settings. This book has learning activities, artworks and illustrations, interviews with artists, as well as many other resources for teachers to use to create active and meaningful engagement with students while learning about art, art history, and social studies. The authors of this book have created a significant resource for educators to develop their curriculum so that they and their students can think critically about art and history and to confront historical ideas and questions.

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In the article, “Activating Diversity and Inclusion:  A Blueprint for Museum Educators as Allies and Change Makers” by Wendy Ng, Syrus Marcus Ware, and Alyssa Greenberg (2017) write about museum and museum educators’ role in social, cultural, and political justice and change. These authors believe that museums make a perfect place to make meaningful experiences for visitors of all backgrounds. They make the point that allyship between the museum, its staff, and its visitors is critical for working towards these changes. They describe how to be an ally and the steps in which to take to create an anti-oppressive space and experience, and that it is takes a constant conscious effort to be an ally.

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Ray Williams, author of “Welcoming (and Learning from) the Stranger: The Museum as a Forum for Interfaith Dialogue” (2019) also writes about the creation of safe spaces for museum visitors, but this time with religion as the focal point. Williams writes that museums are the perfect place and hold the opportunity to expose educate viewers about different religions in a safe space. He believes that curious visitors may feel more comfortable to engage and ask questions about religions they do not know much about. He outlines strategies in which to engage visitors about diverse religions traditions within communities and to foster interfaith dialogues among the visitors and members of the community. These strategies were used in the “Five Faiths Project” that was an exhibit created to address the quickly growing religious diversity in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. This exhibit focused on using authentic voices of each religion to provide the truest perspective, practice, and beliefs of each religion.

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“Creating Safe(r) Spaces for Visitors and Staff in Museum Programs,” by Mark Katrikh (2017) defines what a safe space for museums are and outlines the steps in which to create these safe spaces for visitors and their staff. Katrikh believes that the development of safe spaces includes five layers in which he maps out in this article to engage the visitors in dialogue, ask questions, and ways to respond to any negative reactions. He writes that for a museum to be a safe space, it is imperative that museum staff and educators are properly trained and educated to facilitate engaged, and educational dialogue to fight against oppression, bigotry, and intolerance.

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