Beyond gallery walls and performance halls: five essential steps museums and other cultural institutions must take to center people, communities, and cultivate effective societal change

Abstract

ABSTRACT We can commend mainstream museums and much of the arts world in their current efforts to exhibit and showcase much more talents than in past years that highlight women, artists of color, and social issues. However, the collecting and displaying of objects uphold a historical practice regarding the ongoing acculturating of visual expressions, especially those belonging to people of color. Leaders in cultural institutions must go beyond their gallery walls and performance halls to begin to focus on people and communities and to cultivate effective societal change. In order to shift their practice, they must push past their brick and mortars to change cultural esthetic reflected in the general public. A deep dive into cultural entities past and present must take place before they can truthfully move forward into honest realms of representation, access, use of the space, racial and gender equity, etc. For now, it is mostly a cover up, a distraction from the actual problem at hand – their most formative years of creation and the institutional framework. This piece will share five actionable approaches for an effective structural intervention for museums and other cultural institutions.