Exhibitions for Social Justice (July 2019, Museum Meanings, Routledge)
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Exhibitions for Social Justice, by Elena Gonzales, assesses the state of curatorial work for social justice today in the Americas and Europe. Gonzales analyzes and examines best practices and interesting new curatorial work to support all those working on exhibitions. From sharing authority to inspiring action, from building solidarity to forging long lasting memories, Gonzales seeks to share curatorial practices that lie at the nexus of contemporary museology and contemporary neurology. Specifically, Gonzales looks at where curators can enhance the effects of their work by making the most visitors’ physical and mental experience of exhibitions. The book draws ethnographic and archival work by Gonzales at over twenty institutions with nearly eighty museum professionals as well as scholarship in the public humanities, visual culture, cultural studies, memory studies, and brain science.
Many scholars have established the possibility of museums working for social justice and documented that reality. Others have provided diverse examples of curatorial work for social justice. Gonzales’s project steps back from the detailed institutional histories of how exhibitions come to be. Instead, she builds a set of curatorial practices by examining the work that goes into the finished product in the gallery. Working for social justice through exhibitions is one way to enhance the sustainability and relevance of museums. Museums have the power to help our society become more hospitable, equitable, and sustainable. The goal of this book is to support museum professionals and other cultural workers in making and making exhibitions that work for social justice. Click here for an overview of chapters. Download the tables here. |
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Curatorial Work in Our Climate Emergency:
Guiding Principles Museums have a crucial role to play in fostering the sustainability of our human project on planet Earth. Museological tools exist to harness exhibitions more fully in service of environmental justice. But primarily white institutions (PWIs) and BIPOC institutions (representing Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color) seem to be working on separate paths regarding the climate emergency. This article is part of a series on the climate emergency for History@Work, the blog of the National Council on Public History. Read more here. |
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Equity Oriented and Anti-racist Curatorial Practice
The Inclusive Historian's Handbook - a joint publication of NCPH and AASLH - supports inclusive and equity-focused historical work in public settings by sharing a knowledge base that invites more people to engage in history projects. This handbook provides concrete examples of how to make history work more relevant. It centers on equity, inclusivity, diversity, and public service while offering accessible windows into the many ways public historians work. This essay examines the history and practice of curatorial work in this area. Read more here. |
Stacked Waters by Teresita Fernández, installation art at the Blanton Museum Rapoport Atrium, Austin, TX; Photo by Goreyc on Flickr, CC 2010
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The role of curatorial work in our two pandemics:
part 1: A hospitable institutional context; part 2: Inside the gallery The United States is confronting two pandemics in tandem: COVID-19 and systemic, life-threatening anti-Black racism. Curators are among the many interpreters who will help Americans confront, remember, and understand this time. As a result, curators are morally obligated to help visitors use this moment to fuel and inform work for social justice–the equitable distribution of risks and rewards–long into the future. This is a short series for History@Work, the blog of the National Council on Public History. Read more here and here. |
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Emotionally Captivating Anti-Racist History
Explore the Lower 9th Ward Living Museum in New Orleans in this report for Exhibition, the journal of the National Association for Museum Exhibition at the American Alliance of Museums. Click the PDF on the left to read more. |
Nightingale-Brown House, Main Hall with Vues d’Amérique du Nord wallpaper. Photo: Jesse Banks III
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"Exhibitions for Social Justice" An appreciation from Chicago to Providence
A visit to the JNBC can offer such a memorable experience. The house is perhaps the most beautiful one on campus. This quality rests, at least in part, precisely on the disturbing and unusual wallpaper. The wallpaper is beautiful and ugly at the same time. Its visual appeal does not excuse the racist content of the imagery. The updated interpretation of Vues d’Amérique du Nord keeps the conversation about racial equity in the front hall, as it should be in the public humanities, where exhibitions for social justice are an important vehicle for scholarship, engagement, and action. This is a post on the Public Humanities blog at the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University. Read more here. |
#SheddTheStraw for Sea Turtles. Image credit: ©Shedd Aquarium/Brenna Hernandez.
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Zoos and Aquariums: Inspiring visitors, inspiring museums
When it comes to encouraging visitors to take social action, and measuring the impact of their appeals, zoos and aquariums are the leaders of the museum pack. Social justice is the equitable distribution of risks and rewards in society, and environmental justice is a crucial part of this. Most of the “rewards” we require to survive are connected to the environment: clean drinking water, clean air, healthful foods, and shelter. And these rewards are most certainly not distributed equitably. With the way the world’s food chain rests on the phytoplankton in the oceans, for example, it makes perfect sense that aquariums should be leaders in conservation and environmental justice more broadly. So many fundamental concerns: our water sources, our food sources, our forests, and the ecosystem, meet the museum world through these institutions, among others. This is a post on the American Alliance of Museums blog. Read more here. |
“Passport to the United States” by Anni Holm, A Declaration of Immigration, National Museum of Mexican Art, 2008, Photo by Scott Olson
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Anti-Racist Curatorial Work
Exhibitions have shaped our ideologies and prejudices in ways so prevalent they’re nearly invisible. But to the majority of people: women, people of color, low-income people, and other marginalized communities, the disrespect and disenfranchisement is highly visible. Just as exhibitions have been used to produce systemic injustice across our societies, they can also be used to create change. This is an article for the Activist History Review. Read more here. |
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Exhibitions for Social Justice - The Incluseum
This article is a follow up to the content on The Incluseum regarding the #MassActionReadingGroup. The article describes Exhibitions for Social Justice, Gonzales's motivations for writing it, and where you can find it. This is a blog post for The Incluseum. Read more here. |
Abstract of Museums working for Social Justice: Resonance and Wonder (Dissertation)
Museums can and do work for social justice, the equitable distribution of risks and rewards in society. The resulting questions – how do museums work for social justice? What is the state of that work? And how can we do it better or differently in the future? – drive my inquiry. My dissertation is a practical toolkit for curators today, surveying and analyzing contemporary tactics of curatorial work for social justice. I hypothesize that this kind of work requires both engaging visitors in critical thought and inciting an embodied emotional response in them.[1]
This dissertation uses and builds on memory and affect studies, cultural and institutional history, social justice studies, and cultural policy, applying them to museums. It contributes to museum studies as it evaluates many curatorial practices in a diverse set of institutions. Rather than reexamining museums’ ability to work for social justice, this project maps practices that can support this work and demonstrates ways to integrate and improve on existing curatorial tools. I propose curatorial work for social justice as one answer to the supposed contemporary crisis of relevance in museums.
Unlike public programs and education, people inside and out of museums often treat exhibitions as sacred and somehow apolitical. Rectifying this misunderstanding is an important part of my work. Display produces and maintains ideology, so, regardless of a museum’s political position or supposed lack thereof, museums are cooks in society’s ideological kitchen. They either support extant ideologies or build alternate ones.
[1] Stephen Greenblatt’s essay, “Resonance and Wonder” provides the foundation from which I can argue that exhibitions for social justice will be more effective when they intentionally blend resonance (intellectual relevance) and wonder (embodied emotional experience). I use “embodied emotional response” instead of “wonder” because I want to emphasize the ample definition rather than as having to do only with positive emotions.
Museums can and do work for social justice, the equitable distribution of risks and rewards in society. The resulting questions – how do museums work for social justice? What is the state of that work? And how can we do it better or differently in the future? – drive my inquiry. My dissertation is a practical toolkit for curators today, surveying and analyzing contemporary tactics of curatorial work for social justice. I hypothesize that this kind of work requires both engaging visitors in critical thought and inciting an embodied emotional response in them.[1]
This dissertation uses and builds on memory and affect studies, cultural and institutional history, social justice studies, and cultural policy, applying them to museums. It contributes to museum studies as it evaluates many curatorial practices in a diverse set of institutions. Rather than reexamining museums’ ability to work for social justice, this project maps practices that can support this work and demonstrates ways to integrate and improve on existing curatorial tools. I propose curatorial work for social justice as one answer to the supposed contemporary crisis of relevance in museums.
Unlike public programs and education, people inside and out of museums often treat exhibitions as sacred and somehow apolitical. Rectifying this misunderstanding is an important part of my work. Display produces and maintains ideology, so, regardless of a museum’s political position or supposed lack thereof, museums are cooks in society’s ideological kitchen. They either support extant ideologies or build alternate ones.
[1] Stephen Greenblatt’s essay, “Resonance and Wonder” provides the foundation from which I can argue that exhibitions for social justice will be more effective when they intentionally blend resonance (intellectual relevance) and wonder (embodied emotional experience). I use “embodied emotional response” instead of “wonder” because I want to emphasize the ample definition rather than as having to do only with positive emotions.