Change Is Required

Avi Y. Decter; Marsha L. Semmel; Ken Yellis

doi:10.5771/9781538161678

Summary

Change is Required: Preparing for the Post-Pandemic Museum is a book about the future of American museums. Like other institutions, museums and zoos, historic sites, gardens, and arboreta, were powerfully affected by the nested crises of the pandemic. These unprecedented crises challenged American museums. Adapting to novel circumstances and uncertainty became the order of the day; improvisation in policy and practice the new norm.

Amidst upheavals and disruptions, a number of American museums have charted new directions for themselves and their communities. Many museums have taken a decisive turn to digital programming. Others have taken a turn toward community, developing new kinds of collaborations with their neighbors and local audiences. Still others have moved issues of equity and justice—internally and in the world—to the center of their institutional concerns.

In every part of the country—and in every type of museum--museum workers are challenging old assumptions, conventional narratives, and customary practices as they look to the future. In Change Is Required, a unique array of 50 museum professionals--representing different disciplines, positions, and experiences--share their thinking about assessing needs and possibilities, managing people and resources, and building productive new relationships with neighbors, communities, and partner organizations.

These authors argue that change is necessary--inside and beyond the museum. It is futile and unproductive to default to the old “normal.” To achieve greater relevance, impact, equity, and inclusiveness, museums need to reconsider their leadership models, organizational culture, internal structures, and community collaborations Bristling with personal passion, informed by experience, and focused on the future, the essays in this volume convey the urgency to rethink traditional museum practice, offering visionary—yet practical—routes to future museum success in a volatile, complex, and ambiguous world.

In its depth and range, this book constitutes an invitation to join in the growing, lively discourse about possible futures for museums in America. The invitation extends not only to museum professionals, but to all those interested in cultural affairs and institutions.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2022
ISBN-Print: 978-1-5381-6165-4
ISBN-Online: 978-1-5381-6167-8
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 290
Product type: Edited Book

1. Contents No access
2. Foreword No access
3. Acknowledgments No access
Introduction No access Pages 1 - 12
1. CHAPTER ONE A Wake-Up Call No access
2. CHAPTER TWO Making Lemonade No access
3. CHAPTER THREE Beyond Command and Control No access
4. CHAPTER FOUR Getting Lost on Purpose No access
1. CHAPTER FIVE The Virtuous Circle No access
2. CHAPTER SIX Expanding Museums into Digital Spaces No access
3. CHAPTER SEVEN I Went to a Bar for Time Travelers No access
1. CHAPTER EIGHT Beyond the Handshake No access
2. CHAPTER NINE Notions of Permanence, Visions of Change No access
3. CHAPTER TEN Slaves Lived Here No access
4. CHAPTER ELEVEN We Are Each Other’s Harvest No access
5. CHAPTER TWELVE Communities over Collections No access
1. CHAPTER THIRTEEN Speaking Truth to Power Begins Internally No access
2. CHAPTER FOURTEEN What Keeps Me Awake at Night No access
3. CHAPTER FIFTEEN Museums, Disability, and “Uncertain Afters” No access
1. CHAPTER SIXTEEN Caretakers of Our Histories No access
2. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Collective Collection No access
3. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Broadening the Institutional Purpose of Zoos in the Post-Pandemic Age No access
1. CHAPTER NINETEEN On Bearing Witness No access
2. CHAPTER TWENTY Holding the Space We Make No access
3. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Discovering Connections No access
1. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Self-Worth, Trust, and Wonder No access
2. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Protect People, Not Things No access
3. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Courageous Imagination No access
1. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE From Silos to Social Networks No access
2. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Equity and Collaboration No access
3. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Collaborative Knowledge Production for the Twenty-First-Century Museum No access
4. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Hitting Reset on Hiring and Advancing in Museums No access
1. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The (Unfulfilled) Promise of Evaluation No access
2. CHAPTER THIRTY Word Processing No access
3. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Measuring Our Value(s) No access
1. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Museum Relevance in the Context of the Earth System No access
2. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Social Justice No access
3. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Are We Serious about Changing the Equation? No access
4. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Purpose Is the Only Thing No access
1. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Thoughtful Agility No access
2. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN The Unredeemable Museum No access
3. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT Museums, Aesthetic Experience, and Design Justice No access
4. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE The Water We Swim In No access
5. CHAPTER FORTY More Show, Less Tell No access
6. CHAPTER FORTY-ONE The Optics of Museum Equity No access
7. CHAPTER FORTY-TWO Will We Lose the Love to Labor at Museums? No access
8. CHAPTER FORTY-THREE Make Me a History Museum I Actually Care about No access
9. CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR Collapsing Enclosures No access
10. CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE A Constellation of Interpretation No access
11. CHAPTER FORTY-SIX “If an Object Sits on a Shelf in a Dark Warehouse, Does It Make an Impact?” No access
12. CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN Change and Opportunity No access
13. CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT Co-designing the Future No access
Postscript: What We Have Learned No access Pages 269 - 272
Further Reading No access Pages 273 - 276
Index No access Pages 277 - 288
About the Editors No access Pages 289 - 290