Making Change Happen: Ensuring Black Museums Matter in the Midst of Multiple Crises
What happens when museums become activists? How might they transform how they partner with communities to defend against social challenges in a rapidly-changing socio-cultural landscape? During this presentation, Harvard Loeb Fellow and designer-activist, De Nichols, will share creative strategies and approaches that museums can leverage to build community-driven coalitions in the address of spatial injustices, residential displacement, and cultural shifts. Strategies will review a range of case studies as it focuses on how these approaches are helping museums The Griot Museum of Black History in St. Louis, MO, transform its practices, leadership, and pedagogy to respond to rapid private development, economic crisis, and public health challenges that threaten its existence.
During this presentation, I will use introduce three case studies from museum partnerships in St. Louis, MO, that I have engaged regarding the address of social injustices within the built environment. This will include:
The collection of my work, “Mirror Casket” (2014), by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African History and Culture, and how the collection process helped to fuel and fund artists-activists during the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, MO;
The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and its 2017 “A Way, Away” collaboration with architects, Amanda Williams and Andres Hernandez;
The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and various museum education and engagement efforts from 2013-2017 that fostered collective impact with neighborhoods and community organizations in the city’s poorest zip codes.
After introducing the community organizing and leadership principles that were key to these projects, I will further illustrate how these strategies are being applied to a current effort: the reimagining of the city’s sole black history museum, The Griot, as its community defends against gentrification, displacement, and cultural loss in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and national economic crisis. In the face of heightened disinvestment and a new private development that has already forced members of its surrounding neighborhood to flee, The Griot Museum has had to make a radical shift in its leadership structure to reaffirm and expand its role as a cultural anchor and renew its relevance as a community asset in the rapidly changing city. Content will unveil the unique partnership structures that are steering its Growing Griot initiative as well as key strategies that have unearthed new possibilities in funding and sustaining efforts across its surrounding community.
Participants in this session will gain an understanding of approaches and processes for collaborating with social justice organizers and members of marginalized communities, creating space for campaign development and strategy, and using exhibits as a portal for community action. They will be equipped with a process to take back to their respective communities in support of making radical change happen in collaboration with existing social movements. And, they will be invigorated with considerations for how to transform their own audiences and put community at the center of institutional programmatic and curatorial strategy.