Last week, Aletheia and I were in Minneapolis to work on a project we are developing (with a handful of other folks) at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (more on that in the near future). While in town, we got to witness the arrival of the 2015 Museum Network Conference attendees, which included our friend and collaborator nikhil trivedi. This was our first time meeting in person after working together for nearly a year (you can read his contributions to the Incluseum blog here, here, and here)! On Wednesday night, nikhil delivered an ignite talk entitled: Towards and Anti-Oppression Museum Manifesto. I am impressed by the amount of powerful content he was able to pack into five minutes. We are excited to share the video of his talk below. You can also access the text and slides here. -Rose
Towards an Anti-Oppression Museum Manifesto
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Hey Rose, Alethia and Porchia,
I’ve put in a lot of work to explore these same themes. I have an upcoming book chapter “Social Inclusion and the Gatekeeping Mechanisms of Curatorial Voice: Are Museums Ready to be Agents of Social Justice?” in Progressive Community Action: Critical Theory and Social Justice in Library and Information Science. In this chapter, I argue museums must first become more socially inclusive (in their collections, their exhibits, and their policies) before they attempt a role of social justice advocacy.
What do you think? We all want to change the world – make it more socially just – but can we truly do that if we have not first self-reflected upon the museums in which we work? What is the social legacy of our museum? We ask museums to be agents of changes, but are they truly ready to do so?
Laura-Edythe Coleman
http://www.lauraedythe.com