This year has been full of great collaborations, exciting changes and new opportunities for the Incluseum! As the year ends and we prepare to move forward, we are grateful for the time to reflect on the many projects we have been part of in 2015. Here are several highlights from our year related to the Incluseum blog and beyond.
- Aletheia and Rose joined AAM’s Diversity Committee (DIVCOM) as co-chairs and have been participating in planning, program support and policy-related work that supports this professional network.
- Rose, Porchia Moore and Margaret Middleton presented an AAM Session on the power of words and tailored the session off-the-cuff to respond to discussion taking place at the AAM Annual Meeting and recurring issues of import at the conference. Then they wrote an article about it for the journal Exhibitionist due to be published in early 2016.
- Aletheia facilitated an Incluseum Design Workshop at the Washington Museum Association Annual Conference at Maryhill Museum in June.
- Aletheia traveled to Washington DC to participate in a Ford Foundation sponsored Diversity & Inclusion Workshop Summit hosted by the National Museum of African Art and Dr. Johnetta B. Cole. You can read about it here.
- Aletheia gave a Pecha Kucha lightning talk about the Incluseum at the Cultural Congress in April at Seattle Center. The theme of the Pecha Kucha was Culture + Technology; models for advancing community.
- Rose presented the work carried out by the Incluseum at the third annual Digital Scholarship Showcase held at the University of Washington.
- Rose and Aletheia completed their work with All Rise, a City of Seattle Public Art Project in the Cascade neighborhood. You can read about their installation, The Power of Place, and the process of putting it together here.
- Rose and Aletheia started work with an advisory group for a museum in the mid-west which will work towards launching a brand-new opportunity to support inclusion and the proliferation of museum best practices in 2016. More on that later!
- Aletheia and Rose had their article “Bringing Self-Examination to the Center of Social Justice Work in Museums” published in AAM’s Museum Magazine. You can read the full article here.
We are also excited to announce that Aletheia is currently transitioning toward a work schedule that allows her the time to take on more Incluseum related projects! This will expand the Incluseum’s capacity to accept advisory, consulting, workshop facilitation, and public speaking opportunities in 2016.
Happy New Year!
the incluseum 
Happy New Year Incluseum. Thank you for all the important work you did throughout 2015. At Leadership Matters we hope that as you work for diversity in the field in 2016 that you keep issues of gender on the table. To quote from our own January 1 post, “We continue to believe that inclusion at its most basic level is first and foremost about equality between the sexes. It does not exist in most American and global workplaces. But without it, diversity in every other sense of the definition is just so much window dressing.”
Keep up the good work and best wishes for 2016,
Joan and Anne @ LeadershipMatters
Hi Joan and Anne,
Thank you! We have a post on gender equity in the museum field in the works as we speak and we look forward to hearing your thoughts when we post it. Our take on gender equity is informed by our investment in an intersectional approach in that, experiences of gender are inextricably tied to other experiences/privileges/oppressions (such as those associated with race, class, sex, ability etc.), and so it is important to address gender as an integral part of inclusion and anti-oppression work in museums. Look for it later in January! – Aletheia
And here is the post we were mentioning! Would love to hear your thoughts! https://incluseum.com/2016/02/08/gender-equity-and-museums/
Hi, folks.
Good post, and an especially interesting “echo” given one of the responses we just got on our blog. We’ve learned a lot from talking with you and reading your posts, and yes, the thought bubble in people’s heads when someone says gender is women, and not necessarily in a good way. Maybe going forward we need to talk instead about workplace equity?
I think we both believe–but Anne may have thoughts of her own–that abysmal salaries contribute to the field’s lack of diversity and to the Mellon’s 60-percent women among museum workers. As careers become more female, salaries are depressed. Who’s left? White women who have second incomes and can afford a less than adequate salary in exchange for “doing what they’re passionate about.” Bottom line: with more equitable salaries there will be more people (forget gender) at the table.
Keep writing. The more people talk about these issues, the easier it will get.
Joan Baldwin