The guiding principles of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion are integral to museum relevance and community engagement.
This article originally appeared in Museum magazine’s November/December 2024 issue, a benefit of AAM membership.
In the fall of 2020, the Witte Museum leadership team and trustees gathered in the museum’s conference room and struggled to create a post-pandemic strategic plan infused with diversified financial strategies to get back to normal. We were also focused on the guiding principles of diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI), welcoming insights from a Facing Change leader via Zoom. Facing Change: Advancing Museum Board Diversity & Inclusion is AAM’s initiative championing the racial and ethnic diversity of museum boards, but we were intent on changing the entire museum.
Our Facing Change consultant challenged what we thought was intentional language in our goal setting. As we listened to her review our work, we acknowledged a significant challenge to our DEAI goals: unconscious bias. What was the bias? The leadership team had initially assumed that financial diversification was separate from DEAI efforts. The consultant helped us realize that using diversity, equity, access, and inclusion as guiding principles means they become integral to every aspect of the museum’s future success: leadership; case-making; and meeting the mission, specifically for the Witte, of shaping the future of Texas.
It was a transformational moment for the Witte, especially for the trustees. For many years, we have been proud of a museum team and visitor demographics that mirror the community. We were also increasing the diversity on the board of trustees, including at the chair and executive levels. But we had much more work to do to foster leadership at every level, including interdisciplinary and empowerment strategies among our colleagues. We recognized the need to move both intentionally and, frankly, swiftly, if we were to truly represent our vast and diverse communities and reap the financial benefits of that successful work. How inspiring to acknowledge that the more diverse, equitable, accessible, and inclusive the museum became, the more worthy of investment we would be.
After a multi-year pandemic that wreaked havoc on budgets and operations, many museums are now emerging from those dark days with an improved sense that what their community needs is how their museum should serve. Communities that experience authentic and measurable impact from museums will respond in kind with investment and involvement. Community-connected museums, including the Witte, are already experiencing this investment. This is the time for museums to return to, or begin, infusing the guiding principles of DEAI into their work with the communities they serve. To help museums with this critical task, AAM is updating its Accreditation process and Code of Ethics for Museums with DEAI guiding principles in mind.
The Changing Context of DEAI Work
In spring 2019, AAM created the Excellence in DEAI Task Force, which included top museum leaders in the field. Soon thereafter, it announced a new initiative, Facing Change: Advancing Museum Board Diversity & Inclusion, with underwriting from the Andrew W. Mellon, Alice L. Walton, and Ford foundations.
The Facing Change initiative was conceived amid a growing movement of anti-racist work in museums, precipitated by the Black Lives Matter movement and an array of shocking gender and racial discrimination cases and crises. But even museums intent on infusing DEAI into their work were often moving at a glacial pace.
Facing Change began by igniting profound community-based conversations at 51 museums across the nation in an effort to help them recognize unconscious bias in their institutions—no easy task—and then make changes accordingly. These conversations included partner museums, entire museum staffs, and board members, touching each person involved.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, and museums needed to reinvent their operations to survive. Almost immediately, the financial disorder and devastation was apparent, with most museums slashing personnel, some temporarily, some prolonged.
Many museums involved in Facing Change worried about their capacity to continue that work as they struggled to sustain financial stability. Andrew Plumley, AAM’s then Director of Inclusion, sent a series of heart-wrenching memos to the field, urging them to stay the course. “All too often in this country, when a crisis arises, our approaches to equity and inclusion fall by the wayside,” he wrote. He then reminded museum leaders that through the Facing Change initiative, “We’re mitigating inequities at the highest levels of the museum field because we know this work is the right, just thing to do; we must serve our communities better. We know this work is what’s needed to remain relevant and sustainable in the future.”
Museums stepped up. Across the country, they safely opened for vaccination clinics, childcare, and healing experiences. Museums regrouped and retooled to offer solace, programs, and, at the very least, messages to their communities. They pivoted their program delivery, creating virtual programs for schoolchildren and families. The pandemic led many museums to rethink their role in their communities. These steps are emblematic of DEAI guiding principles in action.
As a member of AAM’s Accreditation Commission, I witnessed museums’ extraordinary agility during and after the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. Today we know that museums are resilient. Most not merely survived but are close to a new normal, redefining what museums are and what they will be in the future. Conference titles have moved from a focus on resilience to sustaining a healthy balance.
Infusing DEAI into Accreditation
Unfortunately, this work toward healthy balance in museums comes at a time of increased political polarization that even includes attacks on the progressive nature of museums. Focusing on DEAI has become fraught with tension, with some states annihilating DEAI programs and some museum supporters questioning the use of the acronym, fearing retribution.
Through an IMLS National Leadership Grant, AAM continues to embrace this critical work and has created a committee to help steer the processes of infusing the guiding principles of DEAI into the Accreditation process and expectations. For example, the initial review of the Core Documents through a DEAI lens revealed that the principles are not mentioned, even implicitly, and are not required. All AAM Core Standards need to be adjusted to include DEAI principles as fundamental and also to encourage, if not require, community engagement in developing the guiding principles.
Applying DEAI principles to the Core Standards should be inclusive of the entire museum field, not just accredited museums. How will our museums look to AAM as a guide in this endeavor? How can these changes inspire museums to become accredited? Most important, how can these guiding principles be empowering rather than onerous, inspiring rather than intimidating? How can museums—among the most trusted institutions in America—be a model for America, helping to shape the future using diverse, equitable, accessible, and inclusive guiding principles?
Advice from the Field
I posed the questions above to a group of AAM professionals and members of the Excellence in DEAI Steering Committee. They all have extraordinary passion for this work and believe that museums could be the model of change in their communities.
The progress is real.
The first person I interviewed was Grace Stewart, Director, Equity & Inclusion, at AAM, who noted that the museum field has certainly shifted since the advent of Facing Change. The Facing Change report declared that “hundreds of museums leaders collectively engaged in thousands of hours of DEAI training.” At the outset of the initiative, 20 museum professionals were heading DEAI efforts at their institutions. Today, that number has grown tenfold to 200. That is especially impressive given that many museums decided to embed DEAI throughout the museum rather than establish a separate position, with human resource teams marking their progress toward achieving the guiding principles of DEAI. Stewart notes that museums initially looked outward by creating exhibitions and programs as their DEAI offerings, but they are now looking inward, specifically at their strategic priorities and core values. The American Alliance of Museums is also looking inward. “This has ignited potential DEAI infusion into a continuum of change, including the Core Standards for Accredited museums and for those seeking Accreditation, to ensure that all museums serve their communities,” Stewart says.
DEAI goals must be a part of Accreditation.
Julie Hart, who heads AAM’s standards-based assessment and recognition programs, including the AAM Accreditation Program, says many museums are using the DEAI guiding principles to increase board diversity, which is a good first step. But it is now time for AAM to engage the varied communities within the museum field in creating specific DEAI goals for museums to achieve as part of Accreditation. For example, currently, AAM Peer Reviewers are asked to assess a museum’s public service role but do not yet have more specific ways to define the museum’s community engagement.
Museums need to practice cultural humility.
Mikka Gee Conway, former Chief Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Officer at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, is a member of the Excellence in DEAI Steering Committee that is working to embed guiding principles into the Accreditation process. Conway wants “cultural humility” to be a part of these principles. “Museum professionals are not authorities in all areas,” Conway notes. “We need to recognize the expertise that resides within our audiences. We need to serve our communities through humble listening.” DEAI principles can be “corrective”—or empowering rather than prescriptive.
Museums can create DEAI entry points for their communities.
Joanne Jones-Rizzi, Vice President of Science, Equity, and Education at the Science Museum of Minnesota, and also on the Steering Committee, agrees with Conway that “DEAI is not a prescribed process, not a check-the-box” endeavor. DEAI work upholds a set of values, educates people on those values, and then asks them to invest in the organization that is doing that work. “We are creating environments whereby someone finds an entry point,” Jones-Rizzi says. “Museums are a microcosm of societies, with everyone coming from a different place.” To that point, she understands that using the acronym DEAI is difficult in these polarizing times and is working on an “Equity Thesaurus” of words that can be used with confidence and with the same impact outcomes.
The language of change matters.
Jorge Zamanillo, Founding Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino and AAM Board Chair, underscores that the work we are doing must be careful and thorough, especially for the purposes of the Accreditation process. “The guiding principles for Accreditation must be thoroughly vetted” by the Steering Committee, Zamanillo says. Language shapes the experiences of museum professionals as they approach the Accreditation process. He is particularly mindful that young people want to “use their experiences for justice.”
The idea of justice is particularly apropos as we continue the work of infusing DEAI guiding principles into the Accreditation process, with a focus on museums’ visions and core values and, especially, strategic planning and action plans. The words “diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion” are powerful pillars for museums. Our communities, from young people to donors, are looking to museums to do this hard, sometimes contentious, work. In the process, we become models of transparency through our community engagement and service. Done well, this work can affirm a sense of justice among all people.
Resources
Facing Change: Advancing Museum Board Diversity & Inclusion
Excellence in DEAI: 2022 Report from the Excellence in DEAI Task Force
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