Lauren Canty: Diversity, Inclusion, and Power: How GLAM Institutions can Create Better Environments for Workers of Color
Lauren Canty is currently a collections management intern at the Cumberland Island National Seashore. In 2019, she graduated from New York University’s Museum Studies graduate program where she completed her Master’s thesis “Plantation Museums and the Responsibility of Truth-Telling” about the interpretation of slavery at plantation museums in Louisiana. Lauren is interested in the interpretation of the histories of marginalized peoples in museum spaces. You can find her on Twitter @Lauren_Canty.
It was the summer of 2018 when I began my perspective-shifting curatorial internship at a major history museum. I was half-way through my Museum Studies degree and believed that this internship would be perfect for preparing me for the museum profession. It certainly did, but not in the ways that I initially expected.
I and three other interns were brought into the department of culture and the arts to help with an exhibition about American entertainment history. We eagerly threw ourselves into the work of developing exhibition structure, research, and collections management. We were propelled by the understanding that our efforts were going toward the goal of educating the public with a nuanced analysis of American society through the lens of entertainment. I participated in many rewarding projects during my summer at the museum, but several weeks into the internship, some things began to wear on me.
“As a black woman in the museum field, I recognize that the professional spaces that I encounter will frequently be dominated by white people.”
As a black woman in the museum field, I recognize that the professional spaces that I encounter will frequently be dominated by white people. The classes, conferences, and work spaces that I have been in have shown that to be true. However, before my internship, I naively believed that it would be easier to be confident, proud, and to make my voice heard. I did not account for the feelings of intimidation and isolation that can come with being an emerging museum professional of color in majority white spaces.
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All the curators on the team for the exhibition were men and all but one was a white man. And further, the one Latino curator had only been brought onto the project in the fall of the previous year. I immediately recognized how the race and gender makeup of the curatorial team could affect the content of the exhibition, but I hoped for the best. After all, of the four interns that they took on, one was black (me), one was Latina, one was biracial (black and white), one was Jewish, and all four of us were women. I believed that we could bring differing perspectives to the project. I soon realized that the dynamic was much more complicated.
As both an intern and a black woman, I sometimes felt intimidated in curatorial meetings when I wanted to voice my opinion. Once during an exhibition meeting a curator discussed the visitor experience in the minstrelsy section and how it could negatively affect visitors of color if the staff is not mindful of how the information is both intellectually and visibly interpreted. We had discussed it privately before (as I had been reluctant to bring it up in the curatorial meetings) and I mentioned that it was something to keep in mind as that topic can be very upsetting for people of color. During that meeting it was obvious that others did not quite understand and were in a hurry to make certain design decisions about the area and move on to a different part of the exhibition.
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The issue of diversity was briefly discussed in some meetings; however, I got the feeling the approach was that for now the curators were open-minded enough not to get things terribly wrong, and for the things they were not sure about, they would bring in people of color to help with—like the sections of the history of minstrelsy, and that they would worry about bigger structural issues of diversity later—which is not a horrible approach, but after speaking to former staff members and interns who are women and people color (many who have had similar experiences), apparently the museum as a whole, and the department of culture and the arts specifically, has not been making many strides toward diversity aside from hiring some summer interns who are women and people of color.
Of course, hiring female interns and interns of color is not a small gesture; however, apparently the museum has not made attempts at hiring marginalized people at recent specific instances when they could have, and seeing white men in those very positions mentioned makes it very difficult to pass over this talk as gossip or simply hearsay.
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I believe that institutions in the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) must keep several things in mind when hiring people of color as interns and employees.
Diversity and Inclusion should not end when someone has been hired.
It is not enough to hire people of color as interns each summer, just to maintain the same exclusionary hiring practices for permanent employees. Institutions who follow this pattern must ask themselves why they feel that people of color are good enough to be interns, but not permanently hired. If people of color are mysteriously never “the right person for the job,” extra steps should be taken to make internships stepping stones to employment and not just a one-off experience.
Make space for comments and complaints without fear of retaliation.
It is not enough to simply have people of color in the room if they are afraid to speak up. Create opportunities for people of color to express the macro- and micro-aggressions that they have experienced on the job without fearing that their position could be in jeopardy.
Follow up with complaints.
Comments and complaints about the workplace environment should be seen as concrete opportunities for improvement. Diversity and Inclusion should be a continuous process with the aim of making the workplace as welcoming and safe for people of color as possible.