Abstract
My thesis paper attempts to evaluate and critique three university-affiliated museums’ efforts towards community engagement. I use my position as a museum-worker and a student of museum studies to approach scholarship on the basis of social justice informed community engagement practices. This socio-cultural critique utilizes a post-structuralist feminist and intersectional framework all informed by social justice-based concepts of an equitable museum. I look at the question and engage multiple avenues of both qualitative and quantitative research on three university-affiliated art museums. My data collection consists of a survey posted at the entrances of the chosen museums, personally combing through museum websites, and examining the physical spaces surrounding the museums. This mixed-method approach works to analyze the four main tenets of community engagement within a museum: programming, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging. I argue that according to visitor input, both private and public university-affiliated museums need to focus more efforts toward conversational exchange between the public and the institution. My final solution to improve equitable museo-community exchanges is twofold. Firstly, to hold ‘community listening sessions’ allowing all members to speak to museum staff in a conversational face-to-face manner, and secondly, to supplement employee training with materials that correspond with these beliefs.
Presenters
Olivia CiminoStudent, MA in MUSE, University of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
Community Engagement, Equity, Social Care, Care-Centered Engagement, Museum Reform, Belonging
