Equity has been a prominent concern in the museum world for at least forty years, yet research shows that most museums around the world underserve poor and marginalized groups. Although many museums have tried to change their programming and activities to integrate community perspectives and reach a broader audience, museum practitioners continue to report backsliding and resistance.

This research-to-practice project explored how and when museums were able to make lasting changes in their organizational approach to racial equity. It brought together the worlds of museum research and practice by forging a collaboration between researchers and practitioners at the Science Museum of Minnesota, The Garibay Group, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The project combined two complementary approaches to understanding organizational change: a cross-organizational study that compared how different museums approached the challenge of racial equity, and an action research study that attempted to catalyze deliberate and far-reaching change in a single museum.

Both studies took advantage of an unusual set of circumstances involving the groundbreaking exhibition RACE: Are We So Different? Designed by the American Anthropological Association and the Science Museum of Minnesota, the RACE exhibition traveled to more than 50 museums around the United States and was seen by over four million people. Many museums that hosted RACE described its impact as transformative. In 2015, the RACE exhibition returned to the Science of Museum of Minnesota as a long-term installation.   

The cross-organizational study examined how 29 different museums responded to the RACE exhibition, documenting through interviews how each museum chose to host RACE, adapted or supplemented the exhibition, and reflected on its significance for their own practice. After interviewing leaders from 28 museums, researchers selected five cases to explore in greater detail through additional in-depth interviews, and added a 29th museum that was currently hosting the RACE exhibition. Out of the original sample of 28 museums, 24 reported some form of organizational change resulting from their experience with the RACE exhibition; 21 of these identified at least one way in which the RACE exhibition affected their approach to racial equity. Closer analysis of the data paint a more complicated picture: rather than being transformed by the RACE exhibition, many museums in the sample used the RACE exhibition to advance their own organizational goals, only some of which were related to racial equity. Often, the pivotal decisions that shaped the long-term impact of the RACE exhibition appeared to take place before the exhibition arrived, as each museum reflected on whether to host RACE and how to prepare for it. Most museums struggled to sustain meaningful reflection about race and racism over time, with many conversations couched in evasive, race- ambiguous, and coded terminology. Our ongoing analysis focuses on effective strategies for sustaining and deepening reflection, as well as the different racial ideologies (e.g., colorblindness, diversity, anti-racism) that shape reflection and action in museums.

In the action research study, the RACE exhibition served as the departure point for a range of activities that touched almost all aspects of museum practice. Most of these activities were guided by five "learning groups" assembled for this purpose. Four of th groups were focused learning groups, each with a specific charge, to explore programmatic or structural areas for change within SMM with respect to racial equity. The fifth group was a leadership leadership group that connected the four focused learning groups and included both project staff and museum leaders. Each group completed three inquiry cycles in which its members worked together answer questions and enact change in their respective areas before ultimately shifting their responsibilities to existing operational groups in the museum. The outcomes of their work include (but are not limited to) the adoption of a museum-wide equity statement, the creation of new data-gathering tools (such as a museum-wide survey) to track equity within the museum, and the integration of equity into diverse facets of museum work ranging from human resources to visitor interaction to the executive leadership structure. The learning groups also engaged in a systematic reflection and writing process, summarizing their challenges, accomplishments, and lessons learned. Although lessons from this work are not easily reduced to a few sentences, one dominant theme is the need to consider multiple audiences at both ends of the process, and the value of the learning groups as a planning and reflection network that mediated between top-down and bottom-up responses to equity-related data. The action research team also found that the development of theories of change served a crucial role in advancing the goals of equity-related work--but also that the theories themselves were in some sense transitional objects, less valuable as "finished products" than as clarifying exercises and instigators of the next set of concrete actions. At the close of the project, the action research team was completing an extensive practitioner guide summarizing these and other lessons.  

Last Modified: 11/11/2020
Modified by: Noah R Feinstein