Museum Advocacy Day: From diversity initiatives to integrating missing voices
In honor of this year's Museum Advocacy Day, which takes place Feb. 25-26 in Washington, D.C., at Grantmakers in the Arts we look back at some of the museum contents we have published in our news feed and Reader. Some of the posts tackle diversity initiatives in both staff and boards while others explore the importance of integrating missing -or underrepresented- voices and artists.
A Pilot Internship Seeks to Make US Museums Staff More Diverse
A Funder Collaboration Works to Diversify Art Museums
A Museum's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Plan
Bringing Native Voices to Chicago's Field Museum
A Grant to Diversify Museums Through the Atlanta University Center Initiative
"As Our Communities Change, Museums Have to Change"
American Alliance of Museums Launches Museum Board Diversity and Inclusion Initiative
MoMA to Close and Reconfigure its Galleries to Focus on Women and Overlooked Artists
The Oakland Museum of California's Vision for Social Impact
In the Fall 2018 issue of the GIA Reader, in “Arts Access: Messy, hard, oh-so-worthwhile work,” Emily Smith Beitiks, associate director at the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University, addresses the institute’s experience preparing the exhibit Patient No More: People with Disabilities Securing Civil Rights and the importance of equity and inclusion encompassing people with disabilities. Read the article here.
What We're Reading:
- A study found that 85% of artists in U.S. museum collections are white, and 87% are male.
- In 2015, the Mellon Foundation found that museum leadership demographics were majority white, but with equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives growing throughout the nation, the institution's most recent study shows progress is underway, but slow.
- Art Museums Need to Address Colonialist Theft—Not Diversity
- A Detroit teacher launched a mobile museum to educate people on African American history all year round
- The current political landscape is inspiring more people to visit the sites where the civil rights movement made history
- A conversation with Dr. Tonya Matthews, American Alliance of Museums (AAM)’s interim director of inclusion
Image: Unsplash/Mike Kotsch