News

The top half of this image is deep purple with stars arranged in a constellation-like pattern at the very top. Below the stars, the text reads Save the Date, with a subheading beneath that reads June 2nd-4th, 2021. The bottom half of the image has a white background. The text reads [Collective Liberation] Disrupt and Manifest. At the bottom of the image there are eight logos lined up. Left to right, they are Museums & Race, Visitors of Color, Museum Workers Speak, MASS Action, The Incluseum, Museums are Not Neutral, Death to Museums, and The Empathetic Museum.

The legacies of colonial and racialized violence, and white supremacy broadly, express themselves in myriad ways in contemporary museum practice. Internal and external transformation is required for shifting systems of power; interrupting the cycle of abusive museum culture; and healing from traumatic histories.

Yet, despite decades of advocacy, we keep repeating the same patterns. Why? What keeps us from taking necessary actions?

We must face individual and institutional unwillingness in museums to self-educate and the resistance to embed racial equity. We must name the lack of transparency, accountability, and serious commitment to make this work foundational. We must move our field away from performative, so-called DEAI measures that center whiteness towards models that break historical patterns of inequity and harm.

We are calling for a radical reimagining of possibilities

around what a museum can be for its publics

when racial justice is at its center.

Call for proposals closes April 16, 2021.

Selections will be confirmed by May 1, 2021.

GET INVOLVED!

PRESENT A CYPHER

Complete this form to propose your idea for a session, dialog, or poster presentation or send us a video or audio recording answering the form questions.

JOIN US IN JUNE

Stay tuned for registration details. In the meantime, follow: @MuseumsAndRace @MuseumAction @MuseumWorkers @EmpatheticMuse @incluseum @VisitorsOfColor @deathtomuseums #MuseumsAreNotNeutral

Although we will be working virtually, we commit to share resources, build accountability partners, and organize within our community, particularly with colleagues across cultural, racial, and ideological spectra.