A summary of diversity practice
A series of key points for each of the three categories – race/ethnicity, sexuality, disability - provides the basis for developing some critical tools with which to approach all projects, not just those that are deemed to be of minority interest.
These may be indicated as follows and show a good deal of overlap. They are signposts on the road to practices of embedded diversity and are intended to inform all strategies and policies for collection development, interpretation, access, representation, outreach/educational work and new audience initiatives. (16)
Race/ethnicity
- Think more globally making connections with local stories and the global
- Be wary of stereotypes and if used, place them alongside other representations which provide a fuller picture – for instance, there is a great deal of focus on working class BME populations after World War II to the neglect of the middle classes. Conversely, pre-World War II much of the collections focus on those from middle class backgrounds to the omission of the working classes.
- Be wary of tokenism which can further marginalise – if there is little material for any one community, is there any way of contextualising it to give the artefact more substance, or is there a way of highlighting it in the exhibition design to give it greater prominence? This is aside from the need for proactive collecting once significant gaps are noted in collections.
- Appreciate racial/ethnic cultures not as bounded entities but in a dynamic dialogue with a whole array of other influences
- Think across historical and cultural parameters to try to understand the changing articulation of key terms used to describe diverse identities. For instance, does the term ‘black’ mean the same now as it did in the 17th century? What were the other terms of reference for people from different racial/ethnic backgrounds at the time? How did people conceive and classify physiognomic differences? How politicised were these identities and in what ways?
- Explore cultural links horizontally – that is, across communities, so as not to always presuppose that cultural change just relates to an exclusive and straightforward dialogue between diverse ‘others’ and a monolithic western culture
- Attempt positive representations and public debate but not to the point where it disallows critique and where pejorative material is not displayed.
- Be appreciative of the intersections of class, gender, disability, sexuality etc which confound any attempt at providing rigid culturalist representations
- Be appreciative of individual differences in terms of how people wish to be identified in the contemporary scenario – whether racial identities are something they wish to highlight or not would vary from person to person. This is more a matter for public display then it is for documentation records.
- Involve racial/ethnic groups and experts at every convenient point in the use and interpretation of collections.
- Provide worksheets and trails for the general public – perhaps described as the Asia Trail, the Africa Trail etc. This is a very easy and manageable way of navigating the various exhibits in an interactive manner which would also demonstrate the cross-cutting influences of London as a world city throughout the centuries. But care should be taken that second-layer interpretation away from the main displays is not simply used to sidestep the issues of fair and equal representations.
Sexuality
- Appreciate the changing contours of sexuality throughout the ages, in terms of particular identities, and the prejudices of the present day.
- Do not confuse the act or appearance of sex with sexuality – that is, reference to sodomy does not in itself mean homosexual identities.
- Be appreciative of the norms of the day – where bisexual conduct for instance is not seen as anything exceptional.
- Be mindful of how people prefer to be described – whether this is something they want to highlight in terms of their sexuality or not is of crucial import especially for public display.
- Be appreciative of how the politics of gender is a strong determinant in terms of how, for instance, LGBT people have been treated throughout the ages.
- Have a flexible framework which appreciates the differential ways prejudice works – the way it intersects with issues of race, class and gender presents a radically different series of configurations: it is experienced very differently for instance by a constituency which is upper class and white but which defies the norms of patriarchy, and one which is working class and/or from BME backgrounds.
- Understand the fluidity of sexual identities especially when it comes to transgendered identities that defy biological assumptions about male and female.
- Refrain from emphasising the sensational as is the effect of sexual matter, and place material in a setting which allows the appreciation of three-dimensional and holistic, mundane lives, not just ones based on sex.
- Recognise the politics of public and private identities - that is, unlike most other diverse identities which are visible on the body, this is an arena which could well be kept private and therefore concealed for a whole range of reasons which raise questions about whether visibility and public representations need not be about empowerment for specific individuals.
- Involve relevant groups and experts at every convenient point in the use and interpretation of collections.
Disability
- Be mindful of how people prefer to be described and recognise individual differences in terms of their self-ascription. If the person or family is alive, do they want to be described as ‘disabled’? How would they describe their disability?
- Address whether their disability influences or shows in the object. If so, should the link to disability be made more explicit or not? Could it be done in other ways such as accompanying workshops?
- Appreciate the everyday lives of disabled peoples. They are not to be seen just as ‘freaks’ or ‘heroes’, that is, it is not just as headline news, the sensational that needs attention, but also the mundane, the unremarkable, without which a picture of three-dimensional lives cannot be woven.
- Appreciate the changing discourses to do with ‘normal’ bodies and ‘abnormal’ bodies, ‘sanity’ and ‘insanity’ throughout time. The perceived ‘natural’ link between disability and illness needs to be countervailed.
- Where impairments are held to be visually extreme, is there a means of moving away from the idea of normalising them through cure or surgical intervention in representations? (17) In other words, could we see disability as ‘normal’ and in what circumstances?
- Distinguish the differences between disabled groups and the implications for representations of their social lives
- Be imaginative about how to quarry, understand and represent disabled lives as well as the lives of those described as mentally ill.
- Being ‘stared at’ presents difficult issues for representations of physically disabled peoples. Could other kinds of senses be challenged in the spectator e.g. through oral histories, inventive channels of sensory experiences, empathic stories and comparisons?
- Thinking about the mode of display is crucial here – the website would be less suitable for contextualising sensitive subject matter. In-house exhibitions provide a more controlled space to explore multifaceted contexts.
- Consider the intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, disability, sexuality etc which confound any attempt at providing heavily circumscribed representations of disability.
- Involve groups and experts at every convenient point in the use and interpretation of collections.
Key recommendations
- An audience development position statement and action plan needs to be linked to all major frameworks and initiatives so as to ensure that diversity is confidently embedded throughout all museum practice including collections development, maintenance, interpretation and access. This is a prerequisite if the life and role of museum collections are to be embedded in people’s lives.
- Backlogs in collection cataloguing, description and digitalisation need to be made good in all departments and made accessible, and areas of further research and enquiry highlighted for future work. This requires not just descriptions of the objects, but also real or imaginative stories associated with them as a means of interpreting the collections in more ways than one.
- Collections need to be opened up to new audiences and in the process, coherent research of local communities and their demographics needs to be conducted and recorded. Dedicated staff, space and facilities need to be factored in to museum plans and budgets to publicise and enable this service. This requires measures to remove barriers to equality of access to collections and their meanings, interpretations and uses.
- Documentation highlighting actual and potential links to diverse identities should be ongoing and continuous. Labels and detailed descriptions, especially those made for temporary exhibitions, should be pooled together for recording purposes. All the work and energy that go into the design and realisation of temporary exhibitions should be built upon in a systematic way in the future.
- A thriving research culture needs to be further promoted in museums. More partnerships with researchers and educational/research institutions should be encouraged and where both parties can gain. This also opens up the range of funding bodies that can be approached for any project.
- Links should be made with other useful resources in real or virtual exhibitions – books, archives, libraries, museums etc. There is also immeasurable scope for essays by staff to be incorporated in the Museum of London website. This encourages reflection on practice and current work, is a record for posterity and allows another means of engaging publics.
- A directory of community and individual expertise on diversity needs to be created and shared across departments.
- A directory of business, private, specialist and community-based collections relevant to diverse populations should be maintained for collaborative work.
- Relationships should be nurtured with organisations, communities and individuals over time, not simply on a tokenistic, or project basis, but over the long-term. This need not necessarily mean involving the same people and groups in projects all the time, but could be something as simple as keeping them informed of upcoming events or maintaining a dialogue whereby they are made to feel that the museum is like a welcoming, second home, rather than a ‘high and mighty institution’ that they occasionally visit.
- New work should be commissioned to fill in identified gaps in collections whereby partnerships with artists and community-based organisations are encouraged and maintained in order to shed new light on collections and their uses and interpretations.
See essay pages: