EXHIBITIONS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
Exhibitions for Social Justice assesses the state of curatorial work for social justice in the Americas and Europe today. Analyzing best practices and new curatorial work to support all those working on exhibitions, Gonzales expounds curatorial practices that lie at the nexus of contemporary museology and neurology. From sharing authority, to inspiring action and building solidarity, the book demonstrates how curators can make the most of visitors physical and mental experience of exhibitions.
Drawing on ethnographic and archival work 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, this project steps back from the detailed institutional histories of how exhibitions come to be. Instead, it builds a set of curatorial practices by examining the work behind the finished product in the gallery.
Demonstrating that museums have the power to help our society become more hospitable, equitable, and sustainable, Exhibitions for Social Justice will be of interest to scholars and students of museum and heritage studies, gallery studies, arts and heritage management, and politics. It will also be valuable reading for museum professionals and anyone else working with exhibitions who is looking for guidance on how to ensure their work attains maximum impact.
Elena Gonzales is an independent scholar focusing on curatorial work for social justice and the roles of museums in society. She received her doctorate in American Studies at Brown University in 2015 and her Masters in Public Humanities from Brown in 2010. She has curated exhibitions since 2006 and has taught curatorial studies since 2010, becoming a 2012 Ford Dissertation Fellow and a visiting scholar in American Studies at Northwestern University from 20112015. She is co-chair of the exhibitions committee at the Evanston Art Center and co-editor of Museums and Civic Discourse: History, Current Practice, and Future Prospects, a digital public humanities project.
Museum Meanings
Series Editors: Richard Sandell and Christina Kreps
Museums have undergone enormous changes in recent decades; an ongoing process of renewal and transformation bringing with it changes in priority, practice and role as well as new expectations, philosophies, imperatives and tensions that continue to attract attention from those working in, and drawing upon, wide-ranging disciplines.
Museum Meanings presents new research that explores diverse aspects of the shifting social, cultural, and political significance of museums and their agency beyond, as well as within, the cultural sphere. Interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and international perspectives and empirical investigation are brought to bear on the exploration of museums relationships with their various publics (and analysis of the ways in which museums shape and are shaped by such interactions).
Theoretical perspectives might be drawn from anthropology, cultural studies, art and art history, learning and communication, media studies, architecture and design and material culture studies amongst others. Museums are understood very broadly to include art galleries, historic sites, and other cultural heritage institutions as are their relationships with diverse constituencies.
The focus on the relationship of the museum to its publics shifts the emphasis from objects and collections and the study of museums as text, to studies grounded in the analysis of bodies and sites; identities and communities; ethics, moralities and politics.
Also in the series:
Colonialism and the Object
Empire, Material Culture and the Museum
Edited by Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn
Museum Activism
Edited by Robert R. Janes and Richard Sanders
Exhibitions for Social Justice
Elena Gonzales
www.routledge.com/Museum-Meanings/book-series/SE0349
EXHIBITIONS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
Elena Gonzales
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2020 Elena Gonzales
The right of Elena Gonzales to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 9781138292611 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781138292598 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781315232812 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
CONTENTS
| AAM | American Alliance of Museums |
| AZA | Association of Zoos & Aquariums |
| CCHW | Chicago Coalition of Household Workers |
| CHM | Chicago History Museum |
| CHS | Chicago Historical Society |
| DoVE | Dimensions of the Visitor Experience |
| LPZ | Lincoln Park Zoo |
| MAH | Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz |
| MASS Action | Museum as a Site of Social Action |
| MCA | Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago |
| MFACM | Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum |
| MOA | Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver |
| MoT | Museum of Tolerance |
| NMAH | National Museum of American History |
| NMAI | National Museum of the American Indian |
| NMMA | National Museum of Mexican Art |
| OBE | Outcomes-Based Evaluation |
| PBS | Public Broadcasting Service |
| SJAM | Social Justice Alliance of Museums |
| SoC | International Coalition of Sites of Conscience |
| UBC | University of British Columbia |
| UConn | University of Connecticut |
| UIC | University of Illinois at Chicago |
| USHMM | United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |
This book would not have been possible without the generosity of many museum professionals and scholars who shared their time, expertise, and experiences with me. First, Id like to acknowledge my network of sites in the Chicago area for help with research. At the Chicago History Museum, thank you to Randy Adamsick for always helping me find my way in the museum world and Chicago. Thank you to Peter Alter, Jill Austin, Joy Bivins, Russell Lewis, Phyllis Rabineau (now retired), John Russick, and Nancy Villafranca. Thank you Emily Graslie and Alaka Wali for your tireless and fascinating work at the Field Museum. At the Hull-House Museum, thank you to Jennifer Scott, the fearless director. Thank you to the many former staff members who have supported my work: Naomi Blumberg (now of CHM), Lisa Lee (still at UIC), Lisa Junkin Lpez (now of the Juliette Gordon Lowe Birthplace), Heather Radke (curator, audio producer, and public historian), Rima Schultz, Amanda Signore, Teresa Silva (still at UIC), Peg Strobel, and Irina Zadov (now at the Chicago Park Districts Art and Nature Department). At the Illinois Holocaust Museum, thank you to Amanda Berrios, Shoshana Buchholz-Miller, Rick Hirschhaut, Emily Mohney, Devon Pyle Vowles (now at the Art Institute), Kelley Szany, and Arielle Weinenger. Clifford Chanin, now the Senior VP for Education and Public Programming at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, was instrumental to helping me understand his curatorial project,
