Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion (DEAI)
in Archives, Libraries, and Museums Resources

Getting Started

This list is by no means exhaustive, but if you are looking to jumpstart conversations within your organization, AAM, SAA and other GLAM organizations recommend beginning here:

  • Museums & Race: A movement to challenge and reimagine institutional policies and systems that perpetuate oppression in museums. Spark a conversation with the Museums & Race report card.

  • MASS Action Toolkit: A compilation of theory, procedures, and best practices to create greater equity within the museum field as well as diagnostic tools to help organizations gauge their readiness for equity work.

  • Empathetic Museum: Maturity Model and diagnostic tools for organizational change across five dimensions: civic vision, institutional body language, community resonance, timeliness and sustainability, and performance measures.

  • Museum Hue: Resources and networking with a focus on community, culture, and careers for museum professionals of color. #MuseumHue

  • Museums Are Not Neutral: Global advocacy campaign aimed at exposing the myth of museum neutrality and calling for equity-based transformation across museums. #MuseumsAreNotNeutral

  • Incluseum: Advancing new ways of being a museum through critical dialogue, community building, and collaborative practice related to inclusion in museums.

  • AAM Facing Change Initiative: Framework, training, and resources for museum boards to build diverse and inclusive cultures within their organizations that better reflect and serve their communities.

Explore

Articles

Activating Diversity and Inclusion: A Blueprint for Museum Educators as Allies and Change Makers by Wendy Ng, Syrus Marcus Ware and Alyssa Greenberg, Journal of Museum Education, Volume 42, 2017: Within the museum field’s recent emphasis on diversity and inclusion to create meaningful experiences for all visitors, there remain problematic power dynamics that maintain white supremacy and re-inscribe disparities in privilege among museum workers and visitors. We introduce guiding principles of allyship and practical strategies for enacting equitable relationships with visitors and staff across lines of social difference, providing a blueprint for a rigorous approach to how museum educators can activate diversity and inclusion to create social change (Additional articles on DEAI can on the right of the article under the “People also read” tab).

Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion: Leaders and members of the American Alliance of Museum discuss stereotypes in exhibits, conversations about race during guided tours, welcoming immigrants and refugees into your community, hiring practices, and much more on DEAI in past articles and webinars.

What Should A Museum Look Like in 2020?: As the art world experiences renewed scrutiny, Vanity Fair’s Kimberly Drew discusses templates for changes with Curator Thomas J. Lax – MOMA, Art Critics Jessica Lynne and Taylor Renee Aldridge – ARTS.BLACK, Interim Director Laura Raicovich – Leslie-Lohman Museum, Visual Artist Nekkia McClodden, Curator Legacy Russell – Studio Museum in Harlem, Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist – Serpentine Galleries, London, and Curator Taylor Brandon (Published in the September 2020 issue).

Working in Solidarity – Anti-racism work is uncomfortable, but worth it by Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko, Director - Illinois State Museum

If I Ran a Museum in the US Right Now by Linda Norris, Global Networks Program Director for the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience

Systemic Bias & Racism of Preservation by Twisted Preservation – A Cultural Assets Consult Group share their insights and struggles, and plans for a more an inclusive future.

Driving Tour

Dividing Lines: A History of Segregation in Kansas City: Journey through the history of segregation in the Kansas City metro, primarily through its real estate. The tour is designed so that you can safely drive through the city at your own pace while hearing stories about each area you travel through. Nathaniel Bozarth, ethnographer and host of the “Wide Ruled” podcast, narrates this 90-minute drive, bringing in interviews from several area students and notable city figures Sid Willens, Bill Tammeus, Mamie Hughes, and Margaret May. “Dividing Lines” was created as a part of the Johnson County Library’s “Race Project KC.” The Library’s Civic Engagement Committee and Tanner Colby’s book “Some of My Best Friends are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America” inspired much of the ongoing work of Race Project KC (After the tour, consider supporting one of KC’s many fine Black-owned KC restaurants as a way to deepen your cultural experience).

Podcast

Cultura Conscious: Join Museum Educator Paula Santos, a podcast addict and lover of everything arts and culture, in conversation with other museum and cultural workers, educators, artists, activists, and leaders about how we work with our communities and the public at large.  She is particularly interested in how the work we do in museums, non-profits or other cultural organizations intersects and is informed by larger questions of race and equity in society (If you only listen to one episode, let it be Ep. 1 Equity and Power in Museums with Keonna Hendrick it’s a great starting point for the conversations we’re currently having).

Webinars

SAA’s Cultural Diversity Competency: We all would like to believe that we are aware of Cultural Diversity Competency (CDC), but what exactly does it stand for? Helen Wong Smith says it’s the ability to function with awareness, knowledge, and interpersonal skill when engaging people of different backgrounds, assumptions, beliefs, values, and behaviors. In this workshop you’ll be challenged to examine personal perceptions that might surprise you and, you’ll be introduced to strategies that will increase your ability to practice inclusion. This webcast provides the four skills to employ CDC and the five stages individuals and organizations can implement to improve relations with internal and external communities.

Critical Conversations Series: The University of Missouri-Kansas City Division of Diversity and Inclusion is hosting a series of critical conversations to address systemic racism in the United States. The panel discussions are in a Zoom town hall-format and feature UMKC faculty, staff, students and volunteer leaders who represent the topic being discussed. The town hall sessions are open to UMKC faculty, staff, students, volunteer leaders, community partners and the community at-large. The sessions are free, but pre-registration is required online. Upcoming panels include The Future of Policing in Kansas City, A Discussion with Mayor Lucas (10/5) and A Dialogue Among Women of Color and White Women in Higher Education (10/7). Summaries of past sessions can be found online.

Leading with Empathy and Allyship: Join Melinda Briana Epler, CEO of Change Catalyst, each week to learn how to be a better ally and advocate, and lead with empathy. Each week she’ll discuss a new topic - xenophobia and Asian identity, islamophobia and Muslim identity, mental health, indigenous power, Black intergenerational trauma, disability advocacy, trans and gender non-conforming allyship, Latinx leadership, LGBTQIA+ leadership and more – with professionals. Past conversations can be watched online.

Racism, Unrest, and the Role of the Museum Field: On June 3, attendees of the AAM Virtual Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo came together to hear from Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, and Lori Fogarty on the museum field’s role in combating racism. In the heat of the country’s reckoning with police killings of Black people, the conversation was an opportunity to come together as a community and listen to these powerful voices discuss how we can rebuild our field and our society for the better (AAM made this conversation available to all, in recognition of its urgent value to museum institutions and professionals).

Works in Progress Webinar: Digitization policy to counteract histories of exclusion: https://www.oclc.org/research/events/2020/100120-digitization-policy-counteract-histories-of-exclusion.html

Additional Resources

Smithsonian Magazine’s 158 Resources to Understand Racism in America

Introduction to Conscious Editing Series