Reculturing Museums
Embrace conflict, create change
Reculturing Museums
Embrace conflict, create change
Doris B Ash
Welcome
Doris B. Ash is Professor Emerita in science education in the education department at the University of California Santa Cruz. She has been conducting research in museums, classrooms aquaria and other informal settings for decades. Equity is a central focus, using strong, flexible theory to support change.
Why I wrote Reculturing Museums
Museums are not neutral, and I am not neutral. Neutrality is often claimed, but as Jean Lave said many years ago, to paraphrase, we all wear glasses; it’s important to know what color they are. I am telling you the color of my glasses. Societal change has to some degree helped us to be more reflective, and now that I am an emerita professor, I can afford to be more critically reflective of myself, my field and its practices. I am first and foremost a socioculturalist theorist, focusing on activity theory, with equity as a core value of my world and all my work. I have long believed that museums need to change from the inside out, what I have called inreach instead of outreach, focusing on others. I embrace conflict and contradiction as tools for change, and I ask others to embrace conflict throughout this book.
I believe that we are indebted to and must pay attention to history. I believe that resistance is not futile and hopefully, with the help of many, we may engage in new ways to challenge what we call the norm or ‘business as usual’. I argue that we need to change ourselves inside museums before we have any hope of working collaboratively and flexibly with and for the minoritized populations we hope will become part of our museums. Not because we want them to assimilate to White Western European ways of visiting museums, but because we want to expand our own horizons to what other ways we might meet there. As the title suggests, we embrace conflict, and we seek change. I believe that theory is the essential foundation for what we see and do; ignore it at your peril.This book reflects all of this.
From our current stance, we may look back decades from now and recognize that this moment in time is the tipping point for truly understanding that museums must do things differently in order to be the kind of institutions they can and should be for future generations.
I apologize for any errors, misunderstandings or misinterpretation on my part. I recognize I am a white woman speaking of tender subjects, such as Native American rights, in a racialized world. Please understand I am searching but do call me out if I have miss-stepped.That is how I learn and grow.
(from the Preface of Reculturing Museums)
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Reculturing Voice
Whose Voice?
I am an academic and use academic sources; I also use blogs, newspapers and social media because they are more cur- rent and often more relevant to our immediate sociopolitical, cultural world. I have paid special attention to sources that some academics might find marginal. I do not share their view of marginal. It has been my experience that marginalized people, often those ‘emboldened disruptors’ we discuss later, must revert to so-called marginalized forms of communicating, because academic routes are not open to them.
This book has some sensitive material. I make constant reference in the following chapters to how we position the other. We consider Native American artifacts and narratives. I am neither Native nor a person of color, so I have tried to be very careful in what I write, always going to scholars who know more than I. I focus on Native sources that are authentic and consistent with sensitive handling of spiritual matters.
Why this book
This book differs from other museum-based books in several main features. I have purposely and continuously expected conflict and called for dynamic, flexible change at all levels. I argue for the comprehensive and tested, flexible theoretical framework of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to analyze museum systems. I have tried to reimagine equity and social justice as thoroughly integrated in all aspects of policy and practice of museums and their staff. I insist on an examination of power in all of its many manifestations, as well as confront ideological differences, whether recognized or not, as they work in museums.
I recognize that we will need to replace the old with the new while the old is still in place. Some of these topics have been discussed singly before, but very few books that I am aware of have incorporated most or all these aspects into one overview of how we might understand and change museums. Using examples from the everyday world of museums, one goal of Reculturing Museums is to make CHAT more accessible for museum professionals as a practical tool for understanding the seemingly intractable contradictions that plague so many modern museums. I touch on many examples of dialectical relationships, such as the individual vs. social orientation, resources vs. deficit ideologies, monetary vs. social good goals and the relationship between agency and structure.
Use
Each chapter begins with a brief overview designed to let the reader know quickly what material is to be discussed. I then provide a real-world vignette that typifies the particular contradiction/dialectic museums face. The vignette helps us to situate the ideas explored in the chapter. Each chapter ends with a brief discussion of power dynamics, vis-à-vis the topics discussed. Although the order of the book has been carefully planned, we know that the reader often has other ideas; the overviews are designed to allow the reader to pick and choose the order of chapters they wish to engage with. Each chapter is meant to be self-contained but also to be braided with the aforementioned themes so that the interlinking and reciprocity of issues and analyses will become increasingly apparent.This book is the culmination of many years of reflection, doing and thinking. Use it as you think best.
Testimonials:
Doris Ash has written a book that deserves, and rewards, the attention of museum professionals and researchers everywhere. It now seems obvious that museums must change, but few of the increasingly frequent calls for transformation shed light on the gritty specifics - the what, why, and how of change. Professor Ash doesn't shrink from difficult problems, and she doesn't pretend that the answers are easy. By focusing on key "contradictions" that everyone in the field will recognize, she uses familiar situations to show us how museums might be different - and better. Along the way, she makes a strong argument for the value of theory outside of universities, and how museum professionals, as well as researchers, can benefit from thinking in sociocultural terms. I look forward to the conversations that this book will start!
Dr. Noah Weeth Feinstein, Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Over the last two years, headings across media outlets remind us of the identity crisis museums are facing: Why Museums Are Primed to Address Racism, Inequality in the U.S. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-museums-are-primed-address- racism-inequality-us-180978992/), As Museums Move to Diversify, Newly Created Roles for Inclusion, Equity, and Belonging Take on New Significance (https://www.artnews.com/art- news/news/museum-dei-initiatives-1234586127/), and Museums and Anti-Racism: A Deeper Analysis (https://www.museumaction.org/massaction-blog/2020/10/30/museums-and-anti- racism-a-deeper-analysis). While these topics are antithetical, they are not antiquated. The topics are antithetical in that they recognize adversity and for some stir feelings of hostility. They are not antiquated topics because museums still face the challenges of confronting their voices of anti-Semitism, discrimination, genderism, racism, and sexism, and their decisions to display and house objects that “belong”, but in reality are “borrowed” from others. Even though museums are beginning to challenge the inwardness of their day-to-day business and expressing a desire to look outward, these topics are packed with emotion which can place museums in a precarious place.
Because of the past, many are asking, “What does the future of museums look like?” In Reculturing Museums: Embrace Conflict, Create Change, Ash addresses the future of museums by asking and answering the difficult questions. With finesse she smartly paces her questions and answers about change in museums through a sociocultural lens and her well known use of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT). She unpacks questions such as, “Who will go to museums?”, “Who will pay for museums?”, “Who owns the artifact?” and of great importance, “Who gets to learn?”. Additionally, Ash poses answers that are powerful. She is expert in her ability to describe these question in focused chapters while threading their meanings throughout the book. She her book leaves us recognizing that museums should turn inward and recognize these questions and their answers are driven by circumstances within the museum’s control. Within a few years, I hope we look back on her book and ponder why we needed it—currently we do! Dr
Dr. Patricia Patrick, Associate Professor, North Carolina State University
More TESTIMONIALS
In Reculturing Museums, Doris Ash uses a lifetime’s knowledge and experience to ask how museums can and should change. Her key argument is that museums need to change themselves in order to work with those from outside the museum world in socially just ways. Employing a carefully selected set of theoretical foundations and an array of engaging, often powerful, vignettes, Reculturing Museums is rigorous, readable and an invaluable resource for anyone wanting to understand contemporary issues for museums and think carefully about their future.
Dr. Michael J. Reiss Professor of Science Education University College London
Doris Ash’s book... is a critical analysis of how museums function and what they can do to resolve “enduring dilemmas” in trying to be meaningful institutions for all people. Within a deeply researched framework, Ash presents a series of contradictions inherent in the business of museums, using examples and, above all, theory to explicate these dynamics. She argues that two different dialectical theories and critiques of two other theories are necessary to understanding how museums approach their visitors, their objects, and their presence in a society. She examines how we define learning, ownership and equity using these lenses. The material is comprehensive and dense but compelling. Based on her years of research and experience, Ash reveals aspects of museum administration and culture that we often overlook in analyses of museums and how they speak to their internal and external audiences. The book should be one that museum professionals consult and use to reflect on their practices. It makes a unique and central contribution to the field of museology.
Dr. Laura Martin, Arizona Science Center
Reculturing Museums by Professor Doris Ash is a much needed exploration of what transformative social change looks like in museums. The book places social justice and inclusive practice at the heart of an insightful theoretical and systematic analysis of museums and the roles they play in perpetuating structural inequalities. With an explicit emphasis on inward looking organisational change, the book is both challenge and resource for anyone interested in contemporary museum practice.
Dr. Emily Dawson, Associate Professor University College, London