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MAAM 2019: Museums as Spaces of Potential

Conferences can feel like a family reunion, your first weekend away at college, and and an intensive crash course all at once. The Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums Annual Meeting was no exception, and was more than I expected or had experienced thus far. This conference wasn't just about my field of museum education, but encompassed all of these other elements that make museums what they are: exhibition design, development and fundraising, marketing, consulting, leadership, and more.


One of the common threads across the disciplines and departments were issues inherent in the field. There are so many interesting and revolutionary things happening in museums, from the in-development Planet Word Museum opening next year in D.C. that explores the variability of language and communication to the the Brooklyn Historical Society's move towards centering oral histories of local communities as a way to convey narratives faithfully and authentically. Despite all of this ingenuity and creativity oozing from the field, within institutions issues like low pay or a complete lack of compensation for interns, lack of job security and general job availability, and spurious diversity and equity initiatives continue to limit what is possible and ultimately disenfranchise the professionals working in cultural institutions.


At a session on career transitions veterans of the museum field, the newly involved, and those in-between took part in a very candid conversation about how the field has changed from fifteen, twenty, and thirty years ago to today and the implications of these changes. One established professional called out increasing incongruity in the drastic rise in the number of graduate programs offering tracks in different areas of museum but the lack of available jobs for these students when they graduate. We spoke on the difficulty of moving up within an institution due to barriers like an increased emphasis on networking which could be difficult for someone who is neurodivergent to navigate. The low or no pay barrier for jobs and internships also limits an institution's pool of applicants and therefore exposure to diverse perspectives by cyclically feeding into a system that favors privileged, white folks.


I'm not going to try to dissect and solves all of these complicated and interconnected issues in this post, but it is important to start thinking about these things and fostering inter-generational dialogue around them and what they mean for the future of the field. In future posts I will explore the issues brought up more in depth, their implications on the field and ways we can work to recognize and work on improving the conditions. One thing people in museums seem to agree on is that we work in these institutions because we love them, we love their potential to educate and build bridges, but to continue to do this work long-term and effectively a transformation desperately needs to take place.



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