Inclusion In Museums Research Articles

Pursuing Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Collection Development

The Textile Museum of Canada (the Textile Museum) is pursuing institutional change with a goal to meaningfully address and redress absences in its permanent collection of over 15,000 textiles. To support this goal, the Textile Museum developed a Collection Development Plan guided by emerging best practices supporting Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in museums, research into the institution’s historical and existing collecting practices and policies, and focus group sessions and interviews with members of multiple communities. These actions led to a series of recommendations for the Textile Museum to implement. Being represented within the Textile Museum’s collection matters to people, and our findings encourage the institution to value intangible heritage (not only material objects), and to care for collections in ways that enliven them through connections with people in storage, exhibition, and digital spaces. This case study presents the origins, process, and outcomes of this ongoing work to institutionalize new practices and imperatives holistically across departments.

Accessibility and Inclusion in Museums: A Case Study of the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, UK

Accessibility and Inclusion in Museums: A Case Study of the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, UK

Penser et nommer l’inclusion : un horizon pour questionner les pratiques professionnelles dans le champ muséal

As a national observatory and think tank on museums and heritage, the Office for Museum Cooperation and Information (OCIM) has for forty years conducted national, territorial and thematic surveys on the development of museums, heritage, and scientific, technical and industrial culture (PCSTI). It is dedicated to understanding how institutional and professional practices evolve and what are the new and emerging trends in the field, and to supporting museum professionals and institutions in developing their projects and missions. This article presents the first results of the surveys “Approches sociales et inclusives des musées et des lieux de culture scientifique” (Social and inclusive approaches to museums and scientific cultural spaces) (2020, n =74) and “Chiffres clés des acteurs du PCSTI” (Key statistics in the field of PCSTI) (2021, data 2020 – n = 196), both intended to show how public engagement is an integral part of professional practices in mediation in the field of PCSTI in France. The two surveys reveal different ways in which inclusion and participation are embodied in the museum context, with their strengths and limitations. The article reflects on the place of ideas such as inclusion in the design of public engagement programs and strategies and how in recent years the vocabulary has evolved from using expressions like “facing the publics” or “for the publics” to the more inclusive “with the publics.” Who do we include under the umbrella expression “with the publics”? What methods can be used –whether new or not– to encourage public participation and inclusion in museums? How do these methods impact on professional mediation practices, exhibition design, management, and more generally museum thinking? Participatory museum, inclusive museum, citizen museum, museum as forum: what are the possible developments? This article provides insight on the relationship between the museum and the public, their roles and levels of engagement; whether the hope of “being inclusive” or “more inclusive” not as a turnkey project but very much as the spark that ignites a gradual shift with lasting impacts.

Universal Design Principles Applied in Museums’ Historic Buildings

Museums represent an architecturally multifaceted typology. Regardless of their variant focus, their current task is to provide an opportunity for cultural, educational, and exploratory experience for all. The accessibility of the physical environment is important, but so is the accessibility of the perception of the exhibition. This paper deals primarily with spatial and design qualities, which determine the degree of inclusion in museums. The principles of Universal Design (UD) are considered in this regard; therefore, the article reviews means of applying these principles in museums theoretically, and also practically, through on-site evaluation using checklists. Specifically, solutions beneficial for inclusion are examined in an outstanding example, the Graz Museum Schlossberg, which demonstrates many inclusive principles.The aim of the article is to support suitable ways to implement UD in museum architecture with a historical background, one which would meet the needs of the largest possible range of visitors and preserve the historical value of architecture. Beneficial ideas from theory and practice should also be applicable in the future and are commented on in the article.

Communities of disagreement in the museums

The efforts for diversity and inclusion in museums during the last decades have revealed a need for knowledge and competence on how to handle disagreement and opposition. This paper shows how Lars Laird Iversen’s term communities of disagreement can be applied in museums, and examines his claim that disagreement, under given circumstances, can have a unifying effect. The study is based on discussions from a project where a network of eleven Norwegian museums participated, and on the author’s own attempts to implement communities of disagreement at his own workplace. Iversen’s model has proved useful but requires conscious adaptions that correspond to the complexity of the interface between the museum and the audience.

Museums, Activism, and the Importance of Self-Reflection: Book Review Essay

Review of: Apsel, Joyce, and Amy Sodaro, eds. Museums and Sites of Persuasion: Politics, Memory, and Human Rights. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2020, hardback £120, paperback £34.99, ebook £31.49, pp.232. Chynoweth, Adele, Bernadette Lynch, Klaus Petersen, and Sarah Smed, eds. Museums and Social Change: Challenging the Unhelpful Museum. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021, hardback £120, paperback £34.99, ebook £31.49, pp.214. Cole, Johnetta Betsch, and Laura L. Lott, eds. Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion in Museums. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, hardback £61.41, paperback £25.29, ebook £21.67, pp.182.

한국에서의 뮤지엄과 사회 포용

The main role of the museum was to collect, preserve, research, educate, and exhibit the physical evidence of the human environment for the purpose of research, education, and enjoyment, and the public was only an object. However, as the times changed, the museum was required to take on a new role to contain the voices of the public. The museum has become a role for social change by engaging people to determine their place in the world, educating them to achieve their potential, and contributing to reforming them in the future. Museums should be able to function as agents of social change by embracing those excluded from society (those who did not participate in cultural and leisure activities). In this study, I examined the relationship between museums and social inclusion, why social inclusion is an issue in museums at this point, and how museums are coping with the problem of social inclusion through the policies of domestic and foreign museums. Certain conditions must be met for the museum to realize social inclusion, and this study considered accessibility and diversity to be important. Based on previous studies, this study identified the form of barriers to museum access and suggested alternatives. At the same time, they emphasized the need to pursue diversity beyond multiculturalism as our society becomes increasingly pluralistic. This study mainly tried to find the implications of social inclusion in museums through the case of the UK.

The Necessity of Research Practice

The Necessity of Research Practice

Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion in Museums

Book Review

Acessibilidade nos Museus brasileiros:

A presente pesquisa busca mapear a tendência nas pesquisas acadêmicas que discutem acessibilidade e inclusão em Museus no Brasil. Com base nos pressupostos da pesquisa qualitativa do tipo documental, o corpus da pesquisa foi o Catálogo de Teses de Dissertações da CAPES. Os procedimentos metodológicos envolveram o levantamento e a leitura dos resumos. Para a análise dos dados, utilizou-se a Análise de Conteúdo. Foram localizados apenas treze trabalhos que discutem questões pertinentes à Acessibilidade em Museus. Os resultados mostram que é necessário aprofundar a pesquisa na área e promover a consolidação na produção científico nacional.

Measuring Inclusion in Museums: A Case Study on Cultural Engagement with Young People with a Migrant Background in Amsterdam

Measuring Inclusion in Museums: A Case Study on Cultural Engagement with Young People with a Migrant Background in Amsterdam

Visita estimulada e empoderamento: por um museu menos excludente

O presente estudo discute as percepções que o público de visitação estimulada, oriundo de comunidades de baixo poder aquisitivo e/ou baixo capital cultural, desenvolve a partir da visita ao Museu de Astronomia e Ciências Afins. Descreve também o seu perfil sociodemográfico, cultural e econômico. Toma como referência os conceitos de inclusão social, experiência e empoderamento, bem como uma tipologia de público de museus, que envolve o aspecto de autonomia sociocultural do indivíduo em relação ao evento ao qual ele se expõe. O instrumento de pesquisa foi um questionário autoadministrado a 1.258 visitantes, contendo questões sobre o perfil e parâmetros atitudinais de interesse e de motivação, relacionados ao conceito de empoderamento. Conclui-se que o empoderamento se dá pela associação entre as percepções de ganhos cognitivos e de aplicabilidade destes ao mundo social do visitante no nível de suas relações pessoais e de suas relações com as esferas sociais mais externas. As ações de inclusão social em museus devem se materializar como uma política institucional.

Inclusion in museums: a matter of social justice

ABSTRACTCalls for greater inclusion in US museums have recently become hard to ignore. The intersection of inclusion and museums, however, has longer roots and has primarily been understood as a means for museums to ensure and increase public access to their activities and services. Despite the field’s long-standing attention to inclusion, visitor and employee demographic studies do not indicate that US museums’ publicness significantly extends beyond a privileged subset of the population. In this paper, I argue that inclusion in museums is a matter of social justice. Using Nancy Fraser’s two-dimensional theory of social justice, I argue that inclusion efforts in museums have thus far been unsuccessful because there has been (1) insufficient attention to demands of recognition and (2) insufficient coordination of redistribution and recognition endeavours. Developing a proper appreciation of the justice-structured aspect of inclusion is more likely to produce the results to which many museum professionals aspire.

Participatory Action Research with young people in museums

Museums and galleries, having received increased funding to engage in their programmes young people who have traditionally been excluded by museums, are under pressure to demonstrate the impact of the programmes they offer. This paper drawing on a three-year Participatory Action Research (PAR) programme explores the hidden tensions that underpin the notion of young people's inclusion in museums. First it considers the reasons for adopting the PAR approach and presents its key principles. Then it reflects on the research processes and discusses the findings to provide an insight into the quality of the experiences offered to young people. It argues that there is an implicit deficiency perception of youth and suggests the use of PAR as a response both to the need for a deeper notion of inclusion and for research that values young people's voices.

The Story Project: A Model for Achieving Profound Inclusion in Museums

The Story Project: A Model for Achieving Profound Inclusion in Museums

Behind the Policy Mantra of the Inclusive Museum: Receptions of Social Exclusion and Inclusion in Museums and Science Centres

The new UK policy framework for museums aims to reconfigure their social role and organizational identity. Central to this process are the Government's generic concepts of social exclusion/inclusion incorporated into museum policies to make museums more socially responsible and responsive through their contribution to tackling social exclusion. Based on accounts, views and experiences of a cross-section of staff from two science museums and two science centres in the UK, this article examines the ways in which the concepts of social exclusion/inclusion are mediated and configured in museum professionals' perceptions, interpretations and practices. I argue that the concepts of social inclusion/exclusion do not map onto organizational actors' interpretations and experiences in the way envisaged and demanded by the policies. I also highlight some of the unintended consequences and tensions that can arise in the course of museums' and museum professionals' attempts to balance the social inclusion role with other demands and pressures.

Guest Editorial

Guest Editorial