Inclusive Approches (Asynchronous - Online Only)
Decolonizing Living History Museums in North America View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Pierre Walter
Living history museums aim to recreate 'authentic' simulations of historical sites, lifeways, and people. Visitors 'time travel' to a site and immerse themselves in an imagined past. Interpreters in period costumes play historical roles, demonstrate livelihood and cultural practices, speak in period dialects, and generally engage visitors in learning about the site, people, culture, and time period depicted by the museum. Exhibits have a spatial, temporal and thematic organisation, and draw on visitors' imaginations and their five senses. In North America, most living museums take the form of 'frontier' colonial forts, 'ethnic' European villages, and mining and colonial town sites. These sites are presented predominantly from the historical perspective of dominant white European settler-colonials, and mostly exclude the narratives and experiences of First Peoples who inhabited the sites 1000s of years before the arrival of Europeans. These First Peoples today often continue to live nearby museum sites, but are seldom meaningfully involved in museum design and interpretation. Further, when First Nations are represented, they, and the violence of settler-colonial history towards First Peoples, are often portrayed through settler-colonial historical lenses, myths, and stereotypes. This paper looks at how some living history museums have begun to introduce decolonizing historical narratives, exhibits, and interpretation in regard to First Peoples. These narratives sometimes take the place of, but more commonly, are added alongside, settler-colonial perspectives. In general, however, decolonizing design practices help to create more inclusive museum spaces for First Peoples, and as well as more authentic educational experiences for settler-colonial visitors.
Radical Inclusivity and Resistance: Exploring the Role of Museums in Community Building, Cultural Production, and Social Change Through Philadelphia Assembled View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Brisa Smith Flores
While museums may pride themselves on the diversity of its visitors and exhibitions, many popular practices employed to demonstrate multiculturalism are not as inclusive as these institutions may think. In many cases, community outreach and programming efforts often maintain top-down colonial practices established at the beginning of the history of museums. In order to present solutions that challenge museums’ colonial past, this exposition evaluates how social justice initiatives and exercises of communal cooperation encourage more non-traditional museum visitors to feel welcomed and reimagine themselves as producers of knowledge and culture. It examines the impact of a special exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia Assembled, to provide a tangible model that demonstrates radical ways of including community members into curatorial, programming, and public spaces within the museum. It also argues the museum functions as a hegemon, or an institution with cultural power, which has the responsibility to consider its impression on communities of color and low-income, while actively working towards serving these communities more directly and equitably. Another important component is to acknowledge how neutrality often sides with the majority and to create an equitable space, museums must be prepared to listen deeply, work through disagreement and maintain the empathy to negotiate with their local community members. Lastly, taking all the aforementioned information into consideration, this composition analyzes how allowing space for community members to make decisions, address political issues, and present their own forms of knowledge within an exhibition, transformed the museum into a new postcolonial artistic paradigm.
Engaging with Museologies of Inclusion View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Virginie Rey
How museums engage with inclusive representation has become a pressing issue since the late 1980s, with communities asking for fairer and more inclusive museum representations, practices, and environments. However, the ways that museums and their communities respond to inclusiveness is very different depending on the region. This paper explores what inclusion and pluralism translate to in museums of the Middle East and North Africa, a region fractured by colonialism, wars, authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism and economic pressures.
Redesigning Museum Educators In-training Courses in Time of a Pandemic: The Case of “Public Engagement and Digital Experiences” Module at University Roma Tre Post-graduate Courses View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Antonella Poce, Mara Valente, Deborah Howes, Maria Rosaria Re
This paper illustrates the reorganization of two post-graduate courses, “Museum Education. Theoretical aspects” and “Advanced Studies in Museum Education” promoted by CDM (Center for Museum Studies) - Dept. of Education at Roma Tre University, carried out during the Covid-19 pandemic, and to analyze the education strategies adopted in terms of museum professionals development to face the Covid-19 museum and universities 2020 Italian lockdown. In particular, within the new educational module offered to students and titled “Public Engagement and Digital Experiences”, particular attention has been paid to the analysis of the strategies adopted by museum institutions from all over the world to face the COVID-19 lockdown in terms of digital experience and visitor expectations. This was realised through the ideation of original activities designed by considering the specific target needs and the most suitable mediation tool. The results emerging from the quantitative evaluation of the module, taking into consideration the activities and digital tools proposed, show the efficacy of the courses reorganization, in terms of transverse and professional skills development in university students, innovation and collaboration in particular. Moreover, the data analysis gives useful indications in term of university online lectures, laboratory activities and practices in e-learning mode, evaluation tools and methodologies aimed at soliciting professional development of in-training museum educators in university learning context.
Blending Technology, Multisensory, and Interactive Approaches for Enhancing Visually Impaired Visitors’ Experiences in Museums View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Roberto Vaz
New, renewed, and innovative museum experiences are constantly being provided to the general public. But millions of visually impaired persons worldwide are still deprived of access to enjoying and engaging with collections. People with visual impairments generally experience many barriers when visiting museum exhibitions, given the visual centricity of these exhibitions. The situation is worsened by a frequent lack of physical, intellectual, and sensory access to exhibits or replicas, increased by the inaccessibility to use information and communication technology-based alternatives or augmentative communication resources that may allow different interactions to sighted visitors. Few studies analyze applications of assistive technologies for multisensory exhibit design and relate them with visitors’ experiences. This research explores an accessible exhibition — Mysteries of the Art of Healing — mediated by technological solutions in ten interactive moments of the on-site visit, developed for the Pharmacy Museum of Porto. Evaluation results with twenty-five participants who visited the exhibition in situ revealed its applicability within this context, and global satisfaction results showed to be very positive and mainly correlated to four variables. It concludes that visually impaired visitors’ limited experiences in museums could be surpassed and their visits enhanced by moving beyond accessibility, embracing inclusion, and focusing on the creation of multimodal and multisensory approaches to promote engaging, memorable, and exciting visiting opportunities for all.
