The Social Work of Museums, written by Lois H. Silverman and published in 2010, examines museums through the lens of the social work profession and launched a worldwide movement that emphasizes an expanding role for museums as institutions of social service. What factors gave rise to this vision? How do museums today best engage human needs, strengthen relationships, empower people in diverse circumstances, and contribute to health and well-being? How do the legacies and realities of unjust and oppressive museum practices inform current approaches? What can museums learn from innovative social work in libraries and other community settings?

The Social Work of Museums is published and available through Routledge

Review the discussion guide for The Social Work of Museums.

Transcript

Ben Garcia:

Here we are. I’m Ben Garcia, I’m the executive director of the American LGBTQ+ Museum in New York City. We’re going to be opening our first space in 2027, at the New York Historical Society. And I’m here to moderate this wonderful group of panelists, in a conversation about Lois Silverman’s book, The Social Work of Museums. Thank you so much for including us, Dean. The Social Work of Museums had a huge impact on me as a museum professional, because I came to the field after working for six years in social service organizations and with social workers. I worked in a program that worked with professionals who worked directly with victims of violence, to engage them in a creative practice as a way to counter burnout, whether visual arts, writing, or music. And so because of that job, I understood the role of a creative practice in sustaining a person’s ability to support the healing of others in the face of humankind’s worst depredations.

I chose a museum career in part, because of museums ability to serve as sites for healing. I met Lois when she taught a seminar at my graduate program, at Bank Street College, in 2008. And her work on museum magic, and later, on The Social Work of Museums, provided a framework and language for me to develop a practice that privileged the healing possibilities of museums, notably in my career with indigenous communities, and returning the ancestral human remains and belongings, and having museums be accountable for the violence they perpetrated on indigenous communities. And today, with queer people, as we build a national museum of LGBTQ+ history and culture that embodies the spirit of the movement for queer liberation, and also the values of social work.

I had the pleasure of moderating today’s conversation with three remarkable social workers, who have all worked to marry their practice with that of museums and libraries. Before we dive into the conversation, I’m just going to briefly provide a synopsis of Lois’s book for any of you who haven’t yet experienced it. The Social Work of Museums explores the role that the museums have played, and still play, as sites of well-being and social change, and provides an overview of the history and values of the museum and social work professions. In this publication, Lois laid out ways museums can, and do, support human relationships, specifically for major categories of human relationships, the self, closed pairs, families, and groups. Using museum examples from the US and abroad, the book theorizes and demonstrates, through examples of practice, ways in which museums engage social work, such as by developing, sorry, addressing relationship needs, empowering and centering individuals, serving people at risk, and fostering social action. This book points our field toward an essential social function for museums and for museum professionals, that supports healing.

I’m so happy to be here with our panelists today. You all got the biographies, but very briefly, going down the row, we have Lisa Harper Chang, MSW, former community project director at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, Missouri. Patrick Lloyd is joining us Museum folks today, as someone who comes from the library field, licensed social work, clinical assistant professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. And of course, Lois Silverman, MSW, Professor of Public Scholar and Director of Graduate Studies of Museum Studies at IU Indianapolis, in Indianapolis. So these three panelists are going to be talking today, about a number of really interesting facets of the ways in which museums and libraries can engage with social work values and ideas. But let’s just start by talking about what brings each of you to the conversation today. Lois, why don’t you go ahead and kick us off.

Lois Silverman:

Thank you so much, Ben, for the introductions. It is truly my delight and honor that AAM, and especially Dean, invited me to participate in the Imprint Series, and to bring together some colleagues who could speak to the intersections between museums and social work. So this is my dream team, and thank you all for being here.

Patrick Lloyd:

Hi, y’all. I’m Patrick, my pronouns are he/him. I’m a social worker, as has been mentioned before. I got into library social work in 2016. I spent some years in family courts, as a school social worker. And then in 2016, I became the first public library social worker in the State of Texas. Did that for about five years, moved on to the state level, at the state library for one year, and now I teach full-time at the University of Texas School of Social Work. But I do want to emphasize that I’m here speaking as a private citizen.

Lisa Harper Chang:

Hi, my name is Lisa, pronouns she/her. And I come here, both with a former position, I actually started as a manager of community engagement. So thinking of what you were saying, Nico, which was a joint position between the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. And now currently, as a deputy director of United Women of Color, which is a nonprofit in Huntsville, Alabama, and really looking toward how you build inclusive spaces, particularly leaning on cross-sector collaboration, which is why I’m so thrilled to be here with all of you.

Ben Garcia:

Great. So Lois, why don’t you start us off by talking a little bit about what led you to write the book.

Lois Silverman:

Thanks. So it’s a little bit personal. Perhaps, like many of you, I grew up with many happy memories of visiting museums with my family. When we were together in museums, we felt things, we were happy, and we got along, which wasn’t always the case in other settings. I have always been interested in mental health and helping professions. To a certain extent, it was a road not taken. If you are called to different areas, remember that you might be able to import from somewhere else, into your museum work, and that has certainly been the case for me. I grew up in the field shaped by all of the publications that were discussed this morning, so they have all had a profound impact on me. Since very early in my career, I have pondered and written about the therapeutic potential of museums. And I remember when I wrote a grant with some colleagues, to the IMLS, and we debated whether or not to call it the Therapeutic Potential of Museums.

So back to the point about courage, we took that leap to what we believed in, and it paid off. That grant allowed me to bring together a group of museum practitioners and social service professionals in Bloomington, Indiana, where I was living. And that work changed my life and my path, in part because I was following my personal passion and what was important to me. I also saw firsthand, the intersections of these two professions. And I decided to go back to school, even after a PhD, to get an MSW. And it was in that social work training that I gained some new lenses for looking around at museum work that was happening around the globe, and seeing it in a new light. I felt that I was seeing social work principles in action, in museums, even though that wasn’t necessarily what museums were calling it. And there were two, three points in particular, from social work, that continued to really inspire me, that I really wanted to bring to the field.

Number one is that social workers and psychotherapy services involve helping people and supporting relationships. That word has been mentioned several times today, and I want to call it out because that’s part of what resonated to me, about social work, helping to support our relationships with ourselves, with our significant others, in pairs, with strangers, in our families, our groups, and our communities. And social work calls this micro and meso practice. However, social work also acknowledges that we, as people, exist in environments, and so many factors in our environments can impact our circumstances, like laws, social policies, social structures, public attitudes, right? So if a person wants to foster change in their life, they might need help advocating for change in the community, or the society in which they live, and not just take medication to fix their mood or attitude. And social work calls this macro practice.

So museums have said that we want to support and improve people’s lives and communities, and it occurred to me that we share these aims with social work. I want to just point out that Rick also was talking about systemic change, that is another phrase that’s very actively discussed among social work professionals. The third point that helped motivate me is that social work is a profession of its own. It has theories, it has values, best practices, and ethics, all of the things that we, as museum professionals, talk about. However, just as museums didn’t create museum education in a vacuum, we borrowed from the existing theory and practice of the broader education profession. I was inspired to write this book to open the door for museums to learn from, and collaborate with, a field that has long been devoted to issues of human wellbeing and social change. And that’s what it seemed to me in 2010, that the museum field was heading.

Ben Garcia:

Thank you, Lois. Lisa, can you talk a little bit about how social work concepts, values, ideas, showed up in your work?

Lisa Harper Chang:

Absolutely. So I was recruited for this position, both by the dean of the school of social work at the time, and our visionary leader, Matthias Waschek, who is now the director of the Worcester Art Museum. But at the time, he had just come from the Louvre, and he was a museum educator himself, and thought he did not want to recreate that traditional model of museum education. And I say this with some trepidation in this room, that he wanted to replace museum education with social work instead. I don’t believe that. I think there’s a place for everybody at the table. And in fact, we worked in partnership. But in full disclosure, my job description was listed as defining the social relevance of arts. So that’s a great OKR to have, in one year, to figure that out. And it was for an institution then called the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, now the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, that was a Tadau Ando-designed building in the middle of Grand Art Center.

If you know St. Louis at all, it was in a fairly lightly-populated area with a lot of empty lots, with a lot of people who, I think using Marsha’s language, are farther from justice. And it seemed like Matthias just felt like it was unethical to have a jewel box of art in the midst of all of that, and not have an institution play a role in its community. Our building doesn’t have a front door, it had a wall instead, that was locked. And at the time when I first started, it was only open 10 hours a week, five hours on Wednesdays, five hours on Saturdays. So that was sort of the challenge that was laid out saying, what can social work do to say that the art in this building that is barely open to the public, can be relevant, show that it can be relevant for the city.

And I was talking to David here, and saying actually what was a challenge actually ended up being a gift, because it meant that using the social work language, and I know Nico said this, meeting people where they are, I didn’t have a choice. Our building wasn’t open, I wasn’t allowed to bring them in, because, I know we’ll speak to this later, this tension between protecting objects over people meant that I couldn’t actually have people come in unless I’d arranged it with the registrars, and the security guards. And so my department and I, made of interns and practicum students, would spend a lot of time out in the community, building relationships on behalf of an institution that actually had solidly not done so in the time that the Pulitzers had been in St. Louis. And so it was really a great opportunity and exploration of this idea of relationships.

And again, I’ll hit on that point, because all of our previous panels have, and I wanted to really clarify this idea of relationships not as transactional. I think that frequently, especially in this part of the country, we tend to go into relationships thinking, “What can I get out of this, and what can you do for me?” But rather it was grounded, authentic curiosity and belief, and love for the city that we were in, for the people we were engaging with, and definitely for the art that we were showing. And a belief that what we had in Emily’s collection, that we were putting up, and what we could leverage out of that collection to bring forward, actually had a lot of worth and inherent value, just as the people were bringing into it had that inherent worth and value.

So much so that the Pulitzers way of showing the art was different at the time. There were no labels. We would hang things in different ways, so that it really was meant to emphasize this is how you live with the art. We would encourage our visitors to say, “You can love it, you can hate it. We just want you to be open to the experience, and open to each other in that.” And so in a very equally destabilizing, awe-inspiring but awkward setting, it was oddly equalizing for everybody who came in. And so through that, we did a number of projects, which offline, I’m very happy to talk about the pros and the challenges of doing so, and really got an opportunity to establish the institution in the city. But that really wasn’t the purpose. It was really to build a stronger community network in our neighborhood, and within the City of St. Louis, and I think we made some forays into that.

Ben Garcia:

That’s great. Thank you. Lois, can you talk a little bit about how you saw these concepts show up in the field?

Lois Silverman:

Thanks, Ben. So it’s, in my opinion, the ideas from this book have, to some extent, expanded and morphed into our current movement, or language around museums, health, and well-being, and an ongoing interest that the field has in museums and social change, or activism. And our conference this year, reflects these themes, but I think it’s really interesting to note that these two arenas literally define the social work profession. I want to read to you the International Federation of Social Workers global definition is, quote, “Social work is a practice-based profession, and an academic discipline, that promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people. Social work engages people and structures, to address life challenges and enhance well-being.”

It’s interesting to me, and maybe something we can discuss, that the museum field seems more comfortable with the language of health, well-being, and social change, rather than social work per se. Yet there are many concepts and practices from social work that have found their way into our work in the last 10 or so years. They are, for example, trauma-informed practice, strengths-based practice, structural competence, to name a few. And so again, my contribution is to say instead of creating these wheels, let’s build upon social work, perhaps better it, perhaps explore the ways that museums can be doing our version of social work differently, or better, but let’s not overlook where these concepts and practices are coming from.

Ben Garcia:

So Patrick, can you talk a little bit about in your work, or in the field of libraries, how you see these concepts showing up?

Patrick Lloyd:

Yeah. So as a social worker, and a social work professor, social work values are kind of just there all the time for me. But I think that some of the things that jump out, based on what we’re talking about today, and my experience working with the public and in libraries, is empowerment, and Lois just mentioned this. I mentioned that I’ve been a school social worker, I have worked in the libraries, and spent a lot of time around teachers, and of course, I am a social worker. And I think that teaching, librarianship, or information professionals, to broaden it a little bit, and social workers, the through line there is empowerment. All of those folks are trying to get their students, clients, whoever they’re working with, to the point where hopefully, they don’t need us anymore, or they need us less.

And y’all I think are in somewhat of a different boat. But I would argue that you’re also in the business of empowerment. Information is power, knowing history is power, and I would add y’all to that list as well. Self-determination is another value that is a huge piece of social work in general, but certainly, within public spaces. Well, who knows more about your life than anybody else? You do. So for some reason, those of us who have all these privileges and fancy jobs and lots of letters after our names, sometimes think that we can tell people who have fewer privileges, what they need to do or not. And social work says none of that. Self-determination, folks can decide for themselves. If I walk up to somebody, and I say, “Hi, I’m Patrick, I’m the social worker, I just wanted to know how you’re doing today.” And they go, “I don’t want to talk to you.” I go, “Okay, here’s my card. Have a good one.” Maybe we never talk again.

But that is a huge piece of social work, and I think it’s especially important in public spaces. Justice and equity, y’all probably know this already, but equity basically means everybody gets what they need, not everybody gets the same thing. And I think that’s especially important, again, in public spaces. And then I also just wanted to hit on Lois used the phrase therapeutic a few minutes ago, and that may have made a few of y’all a little bit nervous. In library social work, we do not provide therapy in the libraries, that has been established, not just by me, but by the library social work community around the country. We are usually trying to gather information about the folks we’re working with, and refer them out into the community to receive services, which may include therapy. However, many, many of the conversations that I had in the library, many of the conversations that I have now, many of the conversations that all of us probably have, are therapeutic. And I want to say that that is maybe a little scary, but it’s a good thing, and it’s something that all of us can do.

Lisa Harper Chang:

Can I add one note?

Ben Garcia:

Yeah, please.

Lisa Harper Chang:

I will say and clarify as well, when we were doing social work in museums, we were not providing therapy, or anything within the clinical context. And that was a very big part of having professional partnerships with organizations that could provide those services, and could actually provide in-time, current, and effective referrals. And so thank you for that reminder.

Ben Garcia:

So I think that brings us to sort of how these ideas are relevant in these spaces, short of a therapy practice, and why they’re relevant today, why this publication and these concepts still resonate today. In museums, libraries, and social work, in addition to the things that Lois, you pointed out that they have in common, in terms of those goals around supporting relationships, and their potential to promote well-being and health and healing, and all of those things. Another thing they have in common is that they’re all rooted in histories of colonialism and depression and complicit, and have been complicit, and still are at times, in harm to people, communities, and others. So what do we do about that? Patrick, do you want to jump in?

Patrick Lloyd:

Well, the first thing I would say is something. I think that too often, those of us with, again, lots of letters after our names, especially white folks, want to talk it to death. I want to listen and I want to learn. And I think it’s time we begin considering forming a committee to begin discussing the blah, blah, blah. Oh, my God, let’s do something. There’s no shortage of stuff that needs doing. Let’s do it. That’s the first thing I would say.

As far as history goes, in social work, Jane Addams is largely regarded as kind of the first social worker ever. She was an American, and she did lots of wonderful things, and she also said a lot of horrible things. And I think that the field of social work is still trying to grapple with that. I think of it also in regards to what used to be called Indian boarding schools, right? Native American kiddos were removed from their parents, and then assimilated into white culture against their will. And I encourage y’all to think about the through lines with that, between those boarding schools and the child welfare system right now as well. And so I think that the process is ongoing. And what do we do? Again, I think that we know the problems exist, and I can only imagine what it must feel like to be a person of color, beating my head against the wall over and over again. So let’s stop doing that for starters.

Ben Garcia:

Lisa, what do you think about this?

Lisa Harper Chang:

Yeah, I agree with everything Patrick has said. I do want to say, and acknowledge that representing sort of these three sides of it. So you have museums obviously, representing social work, which also, I think, goes unacknowledged. And I know our students do a great job of analyzing the history, and how we’re still upholding oppressive structures, and holding us accountable, which I think is so beautiful. But also higher ed, because that was the other funder for my position, was a university, and how these systems are all complicit, and also products of, oppressive systems. And really when you try and dismantle oppression, you find that those systems really tighten up, and find other ways to oppress. And so really trying to figure out, and I think this is the piece that I don’t think we got to, because it takes so much time and effort, and it’s incremental change, is ultimately it’s about power.

So I’m going back to what Elaine said. It’s not only doing the power analysis of where is the power, who holds the power, and obviously, the money is a big part, but how do you leverage that point to then share that power? So to what Rick was saying, the in reach piece of how do you get more people of color, how do you get more experiences represented on your boards, on your senior staff, not just your entry-level staff, and your gallery assistants, and your security guards, and really trying to give voice, and a place at the table for everybody. Because the more diverse those decision-making institutions and bodies are, then I think we make some movement, and are able to take more action, rather than, and hopefully this isn’t too controversial, I think at times, as the public-facing component of an institution, it was easy to feel like a token, or as window dressing, trying to make an institution seem better by what we’re doing and what we were looking for.

And this wasn’t very much grounded in social work. We were looking for real authentic change, to really become an actually more inclusive space that could leverage its power to make all of the city become more inclusive, and therefore empower its citizens, which is a lofty goal, similar to figuring out the social relevance of art. But I do think art, as you all know here, has the power to really do that, and bring people together, and empower individuals. And so how do we do that investing in people?

Ben Garcia:

Lois, is there anything you want to talk about?

Lois Silverman:

No, thank you.

Ben Garcia:

Patrick, are there examples of things that you were able to do, that you’re seeing social workers do in the library context, that really begin to shift that power dynamic?

Patrick Lloyd:

Between?

Ben Garcia:

And to sort of address some of the structural oppressions, white supremacy?

Patrick Lloyd:

Not as much as I would’ve liked. I’m not in the library field anymore, and there’s a reason for that, unfortunately. It’s tough going y’all. I mean, I’m from Texas, right? And politics are hot everywhere, but it’s especially difficult right now. When I worked for the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, they hired me to be, my title was Community Resilience Consultant. And when I submitted my first PowerPoint to our communications department, they told me I couldn’t use the phrase self-reflection, because their words to me were that it sounds like it’s personal, and it’s telling the person that they need to make a change. And I was like, “It is personal and they do need to make a change. Duh.” The state did not want me to do the job they had hired me to do. The City of Georgetown, Texas did not want me to do the job that I was hired to do. I was hired to do justice work, elevating vulnerable populations.

And the power differentials are often challenging, because the folks at the top are probably not boat-rockers. As I like to say, boat-rockers are rarely promoted to ship captain. And the stuff that we are talking about, makes folks, especially in Texas, with good reason, very nervous, very nervous. And so it’s a challenging time. It’s a super challenging time. I know all of us are well aware of that, but I wish I could sit up here and tell you that we were able to lower power differentials between staff and admin, between the library and the public, and all of that stuff. But the truth is that that continues, and it’s two steps forward, one step back right now, and maybe even two steps forward, two steps back, because it is very challenging. And I think that there’s some buyer’s remorse, to be honest with you, on some library administrators parts, which we may have time to get into here in a few minutes.

Ben Garcia:

Great.

Lois Silverman:

And if I may, one of the things that you raised when we were chatting, is the idea of how a social worker on the leadership team could truly… It shouldn’t be an extra person, it should be someone who’s helping to shape the vision of the institution.

Patrick Lloyd:

Yeah. I think, I don’t know, I’ve only been to museums as a patron, but I think that y’all may be a little bit more interdisciplinary than libraries. But I would say that when an institution that is kind of uniform, like a library, invites someone like me into the building, they’re essentially saying, “We want to become interdisciplinary. We want you to reshape the way we do business.” And what we see often, is that that doesn’t actually happen. The positions are created, and then what I call the slow cooker model kicks in. Y’all got crock pots and slow cookers at home? You probably shove them away in the back of your pantry, or your cabinet, and then get them out three times a year to make stew or whatever.

A lot of libraries are treating people like me, like slow cookers. They shove us in the back, and then there’s a difficult person, difficult behaviors happening out on the floor, and they come out and get us, and say, “Hey, we have this tough cut of meat. We’ve got this problem out there, we need you to solve. Solve it, and then go back into the cabinet.” And surprise, surprise, that does not work too well. It does not behoove an interdisciplinary institution. I think that if you’re inviting another profession into the building, that person has value, otherwise you’re not inviting them in. So they need to be part of hiring, they need to be part of policy development. They need to be in those meetings to help reshape the work that is going on. Otherwise why did they create the position in the first place?

Lisa Harper Chang:

Sorry. And I think speaking to your experience, Patrick, and I’d love to know if you had this similar feeling, it’s a little bit, when you’re a social worker that’s working out of a social work context, it’s like you’re the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, right? You were trying to learn different language, you’re learning different values, and it really becomes this real-time exercise in coalition building, and trying to remember why are we all here? Within a museum, it’s because we’re aligned around the objects. But at the end of the day, I think I was talking to someone about this, I would get into the biggest fights with our registrars, because they were there to protect our objects. They’re there, and they would say, “We’re protecting the objects from the people.” And I would say, “Yes, but you’re also protecting them so people can enjoy them.”

So here, we’re here for the people at the end of the day, and we just go round and round in circles because they were so scared that everybody we were going to bring in, that we’re going to ruin the objects that they had. And I understand that, because their value, their professional worth, and their ethics are all about how well can I make sure this object remains in perfect condition, and doesn’t get ruined while we’re in possession of it, versus my job, and my value, and what I’m driven by is how can I impact people’s lives, souls, hearts, and change things by their exposure to this object. And so it was really trying to find the common ground, and I failed more times not, to really figure out how can we work together to make this workable? And I think so much of that, I’m going to push back on social work.

How many of you know a social worker? And of those social workers, what do they do? How many are clinical therapists? Mostly, right. How many work for child welfare services? Right. How many work in the community, as community builders? So we are such a disparate field, what I like to say is social work is not what we do, it’s how we do it. That there isn’t a clear concept, I think, in the general public, of what is social work, what drives us? The three of us can recite that code of ethics. And believe me, when you work in a non-traditional context, you should be able to keep that code of ethics by you because you are really trying to figure out what differentiates me from a museum educator, who you are doing beautiful work, and you’re doing it in such amazing ways. How am I different, and why am I here? But it’s really trying to then educate the general public, because our profession is terrible at it. Nobody really knows what a social worker actually is and what we do.

Ben Garcia:

Yeah, that’s great. Thank you, Lisa and Patrick. Lois, we’re sort of looking at some of the tension points when you bring together different fields or professions, what are some of the ones that you think about, that you recognize some of the things that you think can be done in the face of that tension?

Lois Silverman:

So I think the code of ethics is a really interesting issue. I looked up the AAM code of ethics, just during lunch, and I will only say it’s been a very long time since it’s been updated. And I would suggest that that would be a fabulous exercise, and to involve people from all different fields, as well as ourselves, because a lot of things have changed since that point. And one of the things that it does become a tension point when we venture to be interdisciplinary. We know that from just the challenges and potential tensions between different departments of our museums. But if you go beyond that, and you imagine here’s this whole other profession that’s guided by a different code of ethics than our museum code of ethics, but what if we were to get together, and say, “Where is the common ground? Where might museums really have just greater support?”

And I don’t know what a good word is, chutzpah, for actually moving forward into these, further into these realms that we say we are aiming to do, foster health and well-being, build relationships, and foster social action. So I believe that it doesn’t necessarily mean that suddenly, we’re going to switch, museum people are going to abide by the social workers code of ethics. That’s not really likely. But I think there’s a lot of important inspiration and new vision to be gained from looking at codes of ethics, of social workers, of medical professions, of psychologists, and other helping professions, and social activism, if these are the things we say we want to do.

Ben Garcia:

You’ve talked a bit about social work code of ethics versus museum. I’d be interested to hear about some of the specific aspects of social work codes of ethics, that you think museums could benefit from. But as we sort of look at social work values generally, within institutions, can you talk a little bit about how that needs to manifest internally, as well as externally, I think, to [inaudible 00:35:13]’s earlier point, and some of the earlier conversations?

Lois Silverman:

You bet, you bet. One of the things that I think is particularly inspiring about the health and well-being umbrella, is that I am pleased to see more museums in the field at large, taking a look inward, and showing concern for the environment of museum work and museum workers. So back to that key principle from social work, you learn it in Social Work 101, is person and environment. So to sort of turn that on ourselves as workers, there is so much to be gained from that. We talked about greater concern for pay rates, working conditions, work-life balance, wouldn’t that be nice? Mental health, all of this is social work too. And so I’m inspired and excited by that movement towards simply taking better care of ourselves, and getting our house in order in a variety of ways, in preparation for putting on your own mask before helping others. We have a lot of work to do in that area.

Patrick Lloyd:

Tell me again, ask it again.

Ben Garcia:

Yeah, next, Patrick. Yes.

Patrick Lloyd:

Tell me the question.

Ben Garcia:

Yeah, the question is really sort of as you think about what could happen differently in libraries by making sure those values are reflected internally, can you talk a little bit about-

Patrick Lloyd:

Yeah. In libraries at least, and I suspect, I mean it’s true in everywhere, under capitalism, the people who make the least money, do the most dangerous work. And that may sound… Maybe it doesn’t to y’all. There are a lot of assaults in public libraries. I’m working with the San Antonio Public Library right now, on a safety needs assessment, because they had, I think, 23 assaults in their buildings last year. And so I think one thing is that the power differentials in the building are out of whack, right? We’ve got people making $17 an hour. In Texas, we were back at work, in person, May 1st, 2020, and the library said, our director stood up and said, “Your safety is our first priority.” And I said, “What’s the plan if there’s an outbreak among staff?” And she said, “We don’t have one.” And so that’s one place to start.

I think that at least libraries, and perhaps public service in general, we pay a lot of lip service to mental health and to equity and DEI, and all that sort of stuff. And then we rarely actually do it. And I know I keep saying this, right? But it keeps happening. And so I think that we got to take better care of ourselves and one another. I think that we have to stop looking to employers and governments to take care of us, and that we need to take care of one another, whether we are the director and the lowest paid person, vice versa. We’re people, right? You got to take care of each other.

Ben Garcia:

So we’ve looked at some of the challenges and some of the tension points. Despite all of that, everyone here believes that social work has much to offer the fields of museums and libraries. So where do we go from here? What do you think this could look like, should look like, as we move forward? Lisa, do you want to go?

Lisa Harper Chang:

Yeah. I mean, obviously, it’s taken me awhile. I was telling Lois that one of my charges in this being half funded by this higher ed institution, was to write about my experience, because it labeled as an experiment, which is problematic when you’re working for community. And I was telling Lois, it’s taken me this long to really process it, because we were really working with people’s lives, not only objects, and all the good and beautiful moments that were there, and where you really saw demonstrated the power of art and community, and then all of the places where I know, personally, I feel like I failed. And I feel like people’s lives were not made better, and in fact, potentially worse by what we did. And so it’s really looking hard and fast at what are we trying to accomplish? How are we trying to do it?

But I have great hope, because I did have these beautiful, powerful examples. And over time, could see that this work, this investment, you’re not going to always see that aha moment, that you might in a classroom. It’s like teachers, you know that you’re laying the groundwork, or the kernels, somebody said kernels earlier, of what you may never see the flower that blooms from the seed that you planted. But at the end of the day, it’s worth it to know that you’re sharing your love of people, your love of community, your belief that the world can be made better by all of us coming together around something that we love, which is the arts, right, and arts institutions, and institutions of informal learning, and places of gathering.

And so that’s what drives me, and that makes me believe that actually the stories and the lessons we’ve learned, I was telling Lois, I said, “We have to write this up,” almost as a part two to her book, of here are the case studies, because there is a way that social work does this, and there is a way that that can be shared. And I think that there’s a universal truth to that experience that other community builders and other educators know. And so it would be really powerful to be amongst all of you, and it is, today, to share that.

Ben Garcia:

Patrick?

Patrick Lloyd:

Yeah, one thing that came to my mind, is that there’s at least one university, it’s Dominican University, outside of Chicago, which has a dual degree MSW/MLIS program. So you can get, I think it’s three years long, and get master’s degrees in social work and library science. I invite y’all to enter that chat, come on board. I think there’s a lot of overlap between the professions, and I think that at least that dual degree will start to spread as time goes by, because the library, social work practice area is growing as well. One thing I tell folks in the library communities, that we serve people not books. I recognize that that’s different because y’all have items that need care. And so it’s little bit… It’s not totally square analogy, but I do think that we are public servants, and we serve the public, first and foremost, so I would highlight that.

And then to this question about not knowing our impact, this is trouble, I think, probably for all of us in this room, but my students especially experienced this, and I have this story that I tell them about impact. When I was an intern, 12 years ago, the semester was ending, and I had been doing after school programming with kids who lived in public housing. And there was a little girl there, and we just didn’t click. Sometimes you click with a person, sometimes you don’t. We didn’t, or at least I felt like we didn’t. The graduation’s coming up, I sit the kids down, and I say, “Hey, I have to tell you something kind of sad.” And she says, “You’re leaving.” And I was like, “Whoa, I am. I’m graduating. I have to go.” And she said, “Mr. So-and-so left and Ms. So-and-so left, and now you’re leaving.” And she was pissed, and I was like, “Whoa.” I thought this girl didn’t even know my name.

And I keep that in my back pocket, because whether I meant to or not, I had made an impression on this little girl. And I would say that, I say this to my students, I say that to y’all, because we don’t always get to see the dividends of our work, but they’re there.

Ben Garcia:

Lois, how about you?

Lois Silverman:

I want to piggyback on something that was said earlier, and just do another little poll. So how many folks know a social worker, or have a social worker in the family, or a neighbor? Okay. And how many of you folks have ever gone to a museum with that person, or had a conversation about where your interests and values might overlap? Some. Okay, I will challenge all of you to do that. That’s the first thing that we all can do, just start the conversation. And because my passion is social work, our passion is social work, that’s what I think will really help the fields. But whatever is your passion, if it’s another profession that you think museums, as institutions, can learn from, have that conversation with those people that work in that organization. To the point about the value and importance of relationships, never underestimate… Someone said earlier, “Never underestimate the power of an individual.”

Never underestimate the power of a conversation. And two people, especially from different perspectives, that might come up with something new that you hadn’t thought about. That person could actually be a potential collaborator for your museum, for a project that you envision, or can maybe lead you into a community that you otherwise wouldn’t have access to. So I encourage everybody, on an individual level, to have those conversations. And I just want to end my 2 cents by saying in the book, I made some recommendations that I still feel are really valuable, and maybe they are even more valuable today than they were in 2010. But they are basically that there really is a unique relevance and value in social work principles and practices, be it trauma-informed practice, strengths-based practice, structural competence, a whole bunch of other things. Even if you just read some books about social work, it just might give you a new way of thinking about your work. And as lifelong learners, that’s something we should always be doing, seeking some inspiration and some new perspectives.

I also talked about the importance of collaborating, which I said that already, but that can start from simply a conversation with someone that you know. The flip side of not knowing your impact, is the essential value of continued research and evaluation in museums. Randy Corn was here earlier. There are other folks in this audience that have really just been amazing for paving our way, and demonstrating the incredible value of evaluation research to build our body of knowledge. So anybody who kind of takes a step into a new way of a new program, a new exhibit, a new leadership initiative that has social work principles at the core, or you’re looking to try to make a difference in people’s lives in a new way, get with someone who does evaluation, and help to document the impact of what you’re doing. Even if it doesn’t show a lot of impact at first, this is how we start. We learn from our mistakes, like Lisa was talking about. We know it’s not always successful. Sometimes there are failures, but we need a growing body of knowledge to underscore the work that we do. I’ll stop there.

Ben Garcia:

Okay. All right. We thought that I would also weigh in a little bit on where we go from here. And I just want to circle back to when I was in grad school, and early in my career, thinking about the ways in which my experience working in social services, and the values of social work, could manifest in museums. And as I sort of recognized some of the structural inequities, and the white supremacy, and the colonial legacies of museums, it was hard for me to find ways to really feel like I could impact that until I moved into roles where I had real decision-making authority, and decision-making authority over resources in the museum.

And now that I’ve been able to be in those kinds of roles at a couple of museums, and the executive director of one, I really feel like the work that we did in San Diego at the Museum of Us, to create a colonial pathways policy that shifted the relationship, the power dynamic between the institution and indigenous communities that was supported and championed by the CEO, Michael Parson, and by the chair of the board, Jorge Ramirez, but only after I, as an educator and social worker, and my colleagues, indigenous colleagues who came in, had created sort of a context for learning together, and listening and learning from other museums, like the Abbey or the Denver Museum of Nature and Science that had preceded us in really shifting that.

I feel like what social work taught me was that you need to get the power dynamic right in the relationship. You need to acknowledge what you’ve done as an institution, in order for any kind of healing to move forward. And these are things that institutions aren’t comfortable doing. They may be comfortable trying to address the impact of their histories in the present day, through maybe more enlightened, or inclusive programs, or practices, but they often aren’t comfortable really being clear about what they did wrong in the first place, and what they’re doing wrong in the present moment. So I feel like that was a very direct application of a social work idea to museum practice, and one that made a huge difference at the Museum of Us, and led to a board of directors that was largely not indigenous, agreeing to make every single item at that museum that came from an indigenous context, subject to consultation and repatriation.

So I do feel like the power of this day, and at this conversation, of these publications, is that those of us who came up learning from the generation of people who were writing these publications, breaking that first path, we accepted that this was the way things should be, and we proceeded as though this is what was reasonable and right. And I just am so moved to be in this room with so many people who broke those paths, and sort of set those possibilities, so that I, and my colleagues, could come in and sort of implement something different, in a slightly different way.

And then now I see with the rising generations of museum workers that I work with, people who come into an institution, that from the beginning, believes that people who are working most closely with the public should not be the lowest paid, should have the kind of economic, and should have security in terms of their housing, their salary, their job, and all of those things. They’re just going to be demanding even more accountability, and hopefully creating institutions, or helping our institutions develop into ones that are more and more accountable. So that’s my end note, which is I really have seen these ideas, when they can be applied by leadership in an organization, have a huge impact. And I guess, kicking off questions, I know we’re a little early, but we’ll just dive into it. I’ll start with a question for you all.

As you think about the roles that you both had within libraries and museums, that weren’t at that highest level of decision-making, it wasn’t Matthias’ role, it wasn’t the director of the library, what are some of the things that you would say were effective? Or what advice would you give to people about how you can begin to impact the culture of museums and libraries with these values, even if you’re not in the driver’s seat?

Patrick Lloyd:

So Ben, you asked about institutions that are kind of on board. I don’t have experience with those institutions.

Ben Garcia:

Yeah.

Patrick Lloyd:

So from my experience, I think one thing that is effective is community pressure. And that may make some people uncomfortable, but when I was in the library, and a lot of people really excited that I was there. When I first got there, I was serving a small city of about 80,000 people, which actually it had pros and cons, but one of the pros was that I got to really meet everybody. If you did social services as a profession, or as a volunteer thing, I met you, and people were calling me up, and saying, “Hey, can you come talk to my church group? Hey, can you come visit with my friends and have coffee with us?” And I would always say yes, because I wanted them to understand what I wanted the library to look like. And I wanted them to exert friendly pressure on the administration and on the city manager’s office, to make those changes. That was, I think I’d hesitate to say successful, but I think that that was where I actually made some progress, rather than just kind of, again, beating my head into the wall.

Lisa Harper Chang:

Thank you. I would say coming into that, and sort of that internal change piece, and trying to build coalitions internally, it’s really grounded in my personal experience of growing up as a third minority, as an Asian in Alabama, in the deep South, and always feeling in otherness, like there wasn’t really a place. And I think coming back to that feeling of if you meet resistance, if you meet tension, leaning into that tension, and really exploring it with authentic curiosity, and trying to have this empathy, which is a big piece of social work, empathizing with other people, and really trying to understand where somebody coming from. So I’ll go back to the registrars, because clearly, we were mortal enemies at different points. Really trying to figure out what is it at stake, what do they care about, and why do they care about, and why are they so firm in the ground, and what’s making them more rigid? And is my action provoking a more rigid reaction? And how can I get them to relax so that we can actually get to a yes together, to build an and, as it were.

Another example, we did this beautiful program involving those who were involved with the criminal justice system, and they were in our galleries, and studying the art, and creating works of art. And our security guards were off duty police officers for St. Louis, for the St. Louis Police Department. And when we first proposed this program, and we had participants coming in, the head of our security was incredibly… There was a lot of animosity that we were getting from him, and my staff was absolutely feeling the brunt of that. And so we were trying to figure out whether it was coming from, and it was because he and a number of his officers, had actually arrested and put away a lot of our participants.

And so there was this weird tension point that we didn’t anticipate, perhaps we should have, prior to the program. And it really took sitting down and working on that personal relationship with him, and leveraging, and this was where I had an advantage, because I was the pet project of our director, which meant that if I encountered a problem, he took it very seriously, and he sat down and he addressed it immediately, and that we were leveraging our personal relationships. I think sometimes it’s those late-night conversations, right, over wine, or over coffee, that make the difference, but it is really leveraging that authentic personal connection that we had, to navigate that. And so by the time we had a second iteration of this program, he was one of our biggest advocates and ambassadors, because he saw that we took it very seriously. We took his advice, that we really saw where he was coming from, but that we also weren’t going to compromise with what we were going to do. It was all important that we could build a beautiful program together.

And so I think it wasn’t easy work, it was worth it, because I think everybody is always worth the investment of getting to know and learning., But that is incredibly time-intensive work. And this is where I think it really hits the boundaries of social work, because I don’t know, in clinical practice, there are strict boundaries with how you engage with other people, your clients, your professional relationships. In macro social work practice, that is out the window. Your best way of building rapport with somebody, if they invite you into your home, is eating their food and drinking their tea that they’re offering you, or whatever it is. As a clinical social worker, somebody offers you something, you are ethically bound not to accept it, right? You give me a Panera gift card, I can’t take it, right? In the community, refusing a gift is actually going to break that relationship. And so even within the field, we run into this tension. And as we encounter other disciplines, you’re seeing these other tension points arise. And so at the end of the day, it goes back to authentic relationships.

Patrick Lloyd:

Can I add something to that? And it was mentioned in the last session too, and that was courage. I think there’s a lot of courage in what Lisa was just saying. I think we need a lot more of it in this country, and especially in leadership positions. And for me, courage, it really goes hand-in-hand with vulnerability. What we’re talking about up here is sharing ourselves with people who we may not know that well, and that takes courage to be vulnerable. And I think that can seem a little counterintuitive, but if I’m going to open myself up, that is courageous. And people could be like, “I think you’re an asshole,” right? If I run an institution, and I say, “We’re going to push the envelope, and we’re going to repatriate these items,” some people are going to push back on that, and you open yourself up to vulnerability, but we need that right now. I think we need that all the time, but especially right now.

Ben Garcia:

Thank you all so much for being here today, and thank you all. Take care.

Lois Silverman:

Thanks.

Lisa Harper Chang:

Thank you. Thank you, Ben.