Opportunities to Create Great Museum Workplaces
Robert J Weisberg To begin, I want to announce Gender Equity in Museums Movement's (GEMM) Pledge to End Sexual Harassment in the Museum Workplace. GEMM released the Pledge November 12. It is available on its website and on Change.org. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics there are 338,000 museum employees in the United States. In 2018, 49.5-percent were women. Based on the two surveys conducted in 2018 by Anne Ackerson and me, and a second by nikhil trivedi and Aletheia Wittman, roughly 49-percent of those identifying as women reported experiencing verbal or sexual harassment at work. I don't know about you, but for me that's a shockingly high percentage. Signing the pledge takes a few minutes. It asks signers to, among other things, refrain from sexist language, to be open to dialogue about museum workers' concerns and needs, and to create and nurture workplaces free of sexual assault and understanding of consent. Maybe you're not someone who signs things, maybe you believe sexual harassment doesn't happen in museums or maybe you think it's simply not your problem. The museum workplace is many things: It's creative, sometimes inclusive, dynamic, frequently stressful, achingly beautiful, and filled with many big and small moments of discovery and learning. Sexual harassment doesn't belong there. You are only one person out of 338,000, but by signing, you tell the world, and most importantly your co-workers, you will do your part. Join GEMM in pledging to help end workplace sexual harassment in museums and heritage organization. And don't save it for later, do it today.
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Last week I gave the keynote at the Association of Registrars and Collections Specialists (ARCS) meeting in Philadelphia. It was an honor and a privilege, but like any new experience, it made me think. Many of the attendees came from large museums--large enough where the curator or collections manager doesn't wear a different hat depending on the day. Based on the crowd, many are women, and many are white. That doesn't make them bad people, but they might be ground zero for the museum world's old-school hierarchical leadership. Other front-facing departments--education, development, leadership--have diversified more quickly, but this world, on which so much depends--if you can't find an object, it doesn't matter how special a curator you are--is in some ways landlocked, caught in a century-old tradition of women caring for and organizing stuff.
That made me think for possibly the umpteenth time about leadership and hierarchy. When you think about diversity, what do you think of first? Be honest. Do you think about race? Gender? Age? You have heard me say--probably too often--how important it is to have everyone at the table, and yet creating a staff who represents your community is a challenge, but say you're successful. Say your department is like a little utopian United Nations. Say they range from Millennials who tolerate Boomers, Christians who work along side Muslims, men who work respectfully with women, gender fluid folk with resolutely cisgender. But you're all in the same department. How does an organization's internal segregation and stratification affect the product, the idea making, the program, the exhibit? None of this may apply if you work at a small museum. You may see your frontline staff daily, and they may also function as security. But what if you're part of a larger organization? How often do you talk with staff outside your department about a project that affects them? Do you speak as equals or as one staff explaining its needs to another? All I'm suggesting is diversity and inclusion is more than just outward appearances. It's more than the Instagram-able group around the table. It's making sure varied constituencies across the museum or heritage organization have a voice. Maybe it bothers you that there are always folding chairs in your newly-redesigned admission area? Were your frontline staff part of the architects' focus groups? How about your volunteer coordinator? Did anyone mention what percentage of your visitors are retired? That's a banal example, but it speaks to how listening to many voices from across an institution makes it a better place. And breaking down hierarchical barriers is another avenue to creating a diverse and healthy workplace. So....the intentional museum flattens hierarchies and contributes to diverse idea-building by allowing staff at all levels to:
participate
disagree with one another
be themselves in the workplace
contribute to the best of their abilitiesJoan Baldwin
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