“Decolonizing is Literally Unsettling”: Repatriation of Nonprofit Land and Assets
On July 16, 2020, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) and the Yale Union (YU) announced that YU would transfer its land and building in Portland, Oregon, to NACF. The historic building will become the headquarters of the NACF …
The Call of the Moment: Marjorie Schwarzer on the New Edition of Riches, Rivals, and Radicals
Riches, Rivals, and Radicals: A History of Museums in America has been read by students, professionals, and museum lovers alike since its first publication in 2006; its public television adaptation has nearly half a million views on …
Building True, Lasting Collaborations with Source Communities
It’s well-documented by this point: museums are changing. No longer solely repositories of information and keepers of culturally important artifacts, museums today are taking on new roles and shaping revised definitions of …
Chris Newell: First Wabanaki Leader of the Abbe Museum
Ian Elsner describes Museum Archipelago (@museum_go on Twitter) as “a tiny podcast guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums.” As a devoted follower of the podcast, I was delighted when Ian recently interviewed Chris Newell, the …
Is That Hung White?
A conversation on the state of museum exhibitions and race. This article originally appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of AAM membership. In 2016, a group of 24 museum professionals came together in Chicago for …
Of Law and Ethics: What do museums need to know in this new era of cultural property ownership disputes?
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of AAM membership. A tension often exists between the law and the ethics of collecting cultural property, and nowhere is that more apparent than in …
Knowing Better, Doing Better: The San Diego Museum of Man takes a holistic approach to decolonization
This article originally appeared in the January/February 2020 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of AAM membership. As museum professionals, we typically think of the word “curate” as a verb meaning “to collect, organize, and present” a …
Museopunks Episode 41: Digitization is not neutral
Over the past decade, museums have increasingly shared high-resolution open access images of their collections. Yet there are significant legal and ethical complexities related to digital cultural heritage, particularly when blanket …
Two Case Studies in Decolonization
In this series of posts, EdCom’s Trends Committee is taking a deeper look at emerging phenomena identified in the most recent edition of TrendsWatch from the Center for the Future of Museums. In this post, they explore how the push for …
Decolonizing the Future: museums as agents of generational equity
“We treat the future like a distant colonial outpost devoid of people, where we can freely dump ecological degradation, technological risk, nuclear waste and public debt, and that we feel at liberty to plunder as we please.” –Roman …
