Abstract
This paper examines three internationally recognized museums – Art Institute of Chicago, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and Nacional Museo de Catalunya – as white sanctuaries, i.e., white institutional spaces within a racialized social system that serves to reassure whites of their dominant position in society. The aim of this paper is to highlight how these museums create and maintain white spaces within the greater context of being an institution for the general public, to better understand how museums can become more inclusive spaces. The empirical analysis of this study is based on collaborative ethnographic data collected over ten years and consists of hundreds of photos and hundreds of hours of participant observations and field notes. The data are analyzed using descriptive methods and content analyses. The findings highlight three specific racial mechanisms that speak to how white spaces are created, recreated and maintained within nationally and internationally elite museums: spatiality, the policing of space, and the management of access. Sociological research on how white spaces are maintained in racialized organizations is limited. This paper extends to museums’ institutional role in maintaining white supremacy, in order to better understand how such spaces can be made to be more inclusive in terms of content as well as patrons.
Presenters
David G. EmbrickAssociate Professor and Director, Sociology and Africana Studies, University of Connecticut, Connecticut, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2024 Special Focus—Intersectionality: Museums, Inclusion, and SDGs
KEYWORDS
Art, Diversity, Inclusion, Racism, White sanctuaries, White spaces, White supremacy
