"Inclusion" is a word, a concept, a value, a set of practices, but what should it mean for museum staff and leaders as they envision new ways of being a museum in an emergent future? Political and environmental upheavals, and now a global pandemic, are transforming the museum landscape forever. How can our paradigm for understanding inclusion continue to transform as well? This book offers a new paradigm for understanding inclusion grounded in a retrospective of museum worker efforts to test the limits of inclusion, a reflection on inclusion's advantages and limitations in practice, as well as the integral concerns of racial equity and social justice. Questions throughout the book invite readers to reflect on how their own experiences can add to, and expand on, new ways of thinking about inclusion in museums. Museum workers and lovers can use this book as a tool for engaging with "inclusion" anew, and as a terrain for collaborative inquiry and world-building that can help us imagine and realize new potential for museums in the future.
Aletheia Wittman co-founded The Incluseum in 2012 and currently acts as co-director. Wittman is also a consultant supporting organizations in the midst of navigating inclusive transformation. From 2017-2020 Wittman worked at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle, the first to hold the position of Interpretation Programs Manager and part of the team that launched the redesigned museum in October 2019. From 2012-2016 she managed exhibits as well as youth and family programming for the Seattle Architecture Foundation (SAF). Aletheia holds an MA Museology from the University of Washington where she researched emerging curatorial practice in art museums and how those practices engage with social justice issues. Rose Paquet co-founded, coordinates and dreams with the Incluseum. She was born and raised in French- speaking Belgium and has worked for a host of museums, including art and natural history museums, community- based museums, and a museum without walls in Alaska. Rose currently lives in Savannah, GA where she is working on her dissertation and learning about the unique challenges that cultural heritage organizations in the Deep South face in terms of truth, justice, and reconciliation. She is part of the Chatham County Community Remembrance Project Coalition in partnership with Equal Justice Initiative to memorialize documented victims of racial violence and foster meaningful dialogue about race and justice. Porchia Moore is Assistant Professor and Department Head of Museum Studies at the University of Florida. She is co-director of The Incluseum. Formerly Consulting Curator and Inclusion Catalyst at the Columbia Museum of Art, Moore presents regularly at museum conferences such as AAM, MCN, Museums and the Web, AAAM, and others. Moore coined the phrase, "The Inclusive Museum Movement" and has served as one of the original architects of Museums and Race, advisor to Museums as Site for Social Action, and is the co-creator of The Visitors of Color project. Dr. Moore holds a doctorate in Library and Information Science and a graduate certificate in Museum Management from the University of South Carolina and the McKissick Museum. A critical race scholar examining the role and function of race in museums and cultural heritage institutions, Moore is an IMLS Laura Bush 21st Century Cultural Heritage Informatics Leadership Fellow.
Transforming Inclusion in Museums speaks directly to those who care about inclusion in the museum. The book's pages are filled with resolve, energy, urgency and great deal more to inspire and equip us all to join the movement to transform museums.--Nuala Morse, Lecturer in Museum Studies, School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester The Incluseum, through the leadership of Porchia Moore, Rose Paquet, and Aletheia Wittman, has contributed immensely to building a vocabulary, a world view, and a guide to social justice work in the museum field. This book provides a reflection on and a documentation of this important work, including a much-needed history of museum social action in the last decade. Transforming Inclusion in Museums: The Power of Collaborative Inquiry should be on the bookshelves of all who wish to understand the evolution of inclusion as a concept as well as its power to change museums today and in the future.--Gretchen Jennings, Museum Consultant This highly engaging book draws on the authors' richly nuanced body of collective knowledge and experience to offer up a critical and deep examination of the shifting concept of inclusion. Their insightful and expansive analysis reveals the urgent need for cultural institutions to go far beyond half-hearted, sometimes grudging and bolt-on, efforts to invite in new voices and experiences towards a radical remaking that tackles systemic and deep rooted cultures of inequity. As generous and compelling as it is challenging, this important book is essential reading for anyone interested in the social potentials and possibilities of the museum.--Richard Sandell, co-director, Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, University of Leicester Transforming Inclusion in Museums is an essential guide with timely questions, insights, wisdom, and foundational teachings for the deep work needed to build more inclusive, equitable, and accessible cultural institutions.--Amy Batiste, Founder and CEO, Creative Catalysts Much like public schools, public museums are often vexing institutions. But history shows that organizing and struggle works; museums can be moved toward openness and inclusion, as this indispensable and inspiring book details. Its authors declare, 'We must act before the cycle of forgetting begins again' and Transforming Inclusion in Museums makes that invitation irresistible.--Therese Quinn, Professor and Director of Museum and Exhibition Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago
