"Fetishizing Silence" No More
Social Justice & Museums Resource List on Twitter. Yes, it's been around and growing since 2015, so I guess that's a lesson I should visit Twitter more often. Now I've found it, a huge thank you to Autry who likely has a gazillion other things she could be doing rather than putting this list together. But there it is, a labor of love, and ours to read, absorb, use, amend, edit and add to. And by being open and editable by anyone, the list is a model for the change we all hope is on its way in museums and in the museum workplace. Another and perhaps more important thought about Autry's list is this: If you're having a particularly bleak week or month--it is February after all--think about what this list means for the museum field. Try and imagine Autry, or anyone else for that matter, creating it a decade ago. I'm not saying it couldn't have happened, but it didn't. There wasn't any appetite for it, and the field--except at the margins-- was content being its benign, patriarchal, misogynist, racist self. Even the list's vocabulary highlights change. Take the verb "decolonize," which by the way, wasn't added to the Oxford English Dictionary's new word list until 2018. The earliest pieces on the list using "decolonize" date to 2016. And yet, today the word is everywhere. None of that means there wasn't good work being done 10 years ago or that there weren't folks saying that the emperor had no clothes, but museums and heritage organizations weren't the most woke job sector. Are we there yet? Good Lord, no. But have things changed? You betcha. If Autry's 47-page list isn't enough, she's also one of nine new interviewees for the revised edition of Leadership Matters due out this fall. That group of nine is a powerful band of humans with a lot to say. While we utilized the same criteria looking for new interviewees as we did for our original book in 2012--equity and variety in race, gender, geography--six years made a huge difference both in the what people were saying, the work they do, their willingness to merge personal and organizational values, and their belief that the days of a single, preeminent, white, binary narrative superseding all others is OVER. Do I sound too Pollyanna-like? Maybe, particularly when you compare this post to last week's. But if I do, it's because I'm old enough to remember a time when discussion of any of these issues often resulted in a conversation that went something like, "You might want to think about what you just said. This is a small field and you don't want to damage your chances of moving ahead." Sean Kelly from Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP), and another of our nine interviewees, used the phrase "fetishizing silence" in a radio interview recently. He was talking about the way ESP administrators used an unholy quiet to inspire penitence, but that phrase could just as easily apply to the way the museum world approached workplace grievances, racists remarks, and sexual harassment. If you deny it's happening and fail to provide appropriate avenues to file grievances, you can almost pretend all is right with the world. Scanning the articles on this list, it feels like we are in the middle of a sea change. Maybe not everywhere, but enough so there is a new normal. And for anyone suffering from "otherness," anyone who needs support, ammunition, a sisterly voice, a shoulder at the barricade, it offers aid, examples, history and context. Use it, add to it, keep change happening. Joan Baldwin Image: Changing Tides by Ellis O'Connor
