NathanY Museum Ethics

Racism and sexism are things we've been told are bad since we were children. Yet, did this solve the problem of racism and sexism? No, of course not. Everyone whether they realize it or not, grows up with a bias know as, well, implicit bias. This is why it is important to listen to minority staff members when they express concern over their treatment in the museum and recognize how they treat people who they may have biases towards. Yet how does one recognize this bias? In the article by Jennifer Edgoose, Michelle Quiogue, and Kartik Sidhar, they describe removing implicit bias as "[...] discovering your blind spots and then actively working to dismiss stereotypes and attitudes that affect your interactions" (Sidhar, 2019). Educating or exposing yourself voluntarily yourself on one particular group can remove bias. One thing that they do not bring up that would be a crucial step to finding bias is to think of the area you grew up in and how they treated outsiders. After t...

 This week, I read A Team of Curators Designs a System for Indigenous Artists to Thrive In by Thea Tagle and He Left a Museum After Women Complained; His Next Job Was Bigger by Robin Pogrebin and Zachary Small. In the article by Thea Tagle, she reviews a new "de-colonized" exhibit called yəhaw̓. She further explains that this exhibit is not decolonization per say, but rather a way to support indigenous artists with the community. "Together the curators aimed to challenge notions about who creates Indigenous art, what that art can or should look like, and how Indigenous art is presented to the world." (Tagle, 2019) This is interesting in how exhibits for indigenous cultures typically function. Usually, it's art from long past artists, which isn't encouraging. Showing future artists and encouraging them through programs within the community is a great way to help these creators grow in a positive way. Adam Sings In The Timbers, “Indigenizing Colonized Spaces...

 This week I read Reinventing Museums: Pandemic Disruption as an Opportunity for Change and Workers at Philadelphia Museum of Art Vote to Join Union . The first article discusses reinventing museums after the effects of the pandemic. The main example used is are museums in Venice, where they seek to create a digital artist creative class, that would lead to "converting empty B&Bs to student housing; offering incentives to arts organizations to open local outposts; creating coworking spaces to support start-ups and individual entrepreneurs; drafting regulations that discourage day-trippers and cruise-ship tourism while encouraging long-term stays." (Merrit, E Reinventing Museums ) The second article discusses the 181-22 vote to establish a museum union in Philadelphia, another result of the corona virus pandemic. The Philadelphia Museum was close to closing and had to create a union to secure the benefits for their workers in the uncertain future. This will allow the work...

 This week I read about how Colorado Museums are doing reparation for Native American artifacts. This doesn't just mean returning the objects however. This includes respecting the tribes culture by separating certain objects and creating relationships with tribes (Simpson, 2019). After reading and realizing the impact Shelia Goff had on the History Colorado Museum, its clear to me that museums don't need to simply return the objects they contain, but also establishing relationships with the tribes that owned them. Staying with these relationships allows these tribes to educate not only the museum curators but also the public on their culture and traditions. This attitude of establishing relationships with Native American tribes has spread to other museums as well. According to Chip Colwell, the senior curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, "It allows institutions to not just work mechanically, but really to try to do the right thing, to try n...

Through out history, colonialism has robbed many cultures of their heritage by stealing objects and claiming them as their own. While this has occurred for centuries, one of the most infamous examples of a culture stealing and refusing to return an object. The British Museum still holds not just an object, but the remains of the Torres are on display. (Shariatmadari, 2019) While there were talks of returning the remains to their country of origin in 2012, I could not find any information confirming the return of their dead ancestor. ( Request for Repatriation of Human Remains to the Torres Strait Islands, Australia | British Museum , n.d.) Keeping a human on display is an odd unintentional display of ethnology-science, implying the biology of humans living in the Torres are different to the rest of the world. Using the remains of an evolving human is one thing, but keeping a homo sapien there yields no scientific results.    Here's an idea of how far apart the two areas are as...