Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

As cultural institutions move towards more socially conscious awareness, we should fittingly reexamine how art museums can potentially become inclusive spaces of cultural empathy. To this end, art museums need be extracted from frameworks of dormancy and instead considered as spaces of civic engagement. By opting to redefine museums as civic sites, they are opened to be contact zones among diverse cultural spheres. This research analyzes art museums as sites of sociocultural pedagogical transformation by applying Gloria Anzaldúa’s borderland theory as a lens through which to explore the “border cultures”—or third spaces—that develop within socially charged civic sites. The relevancy and application of borderlands as a metaphorical grid applied to museum galleries delineates the meeting points between opposing cultures to promote transition and experiential exchange. By reconceptualizing border theory beyond geographical spaces, negligence in identifying and understanding the multitude of encounters facilitated within museums through the exhibiting of artwork can be overturned in order to better fully represent communities and aid in the interpretation and agency of marginal cultures, heritages, and experiences. I engage key concepts of defining space and cultural agency in order to draw a parallel between two non-traditionally civic sites: the art museum and a de facto ceiba tree monument in Miami, Florida’s Cuban Memorial Park. By exploring the ceiba as a socially transformative space, I examine how borderlands form and what transpires in the interstices between cultures and how these encounters can be used to increase relationality and cultural exchange within art museums.