about Museums, Culture, and Justice to Explore in Your Classroom

Museums are public resources that can offer rich extensions to classroom educational experiences, from tours through botanical gardens to searching for family records in the archives of a local historical society. With clarity and a touch of humor, Quinn presents ideas and examples of ways that teachers can use museums to support student exploration while also teaching for social justice. Topics include disability and welcoming all bodies, celebrating queer people’s lives and histories, settler colonialism and decolonization, fair workplaces, Indigenous knowledge, and much more. This practical resource invites classroom teachers to rethink how and why they are bringing students to museums and suggests projects for creating rich museum-based learning opportunities across an array of subject areas.

Book Features:

• Links museums, classroom teaching, and social movements for justice.
• Focuses on the cultural contributions of people of color, women, and other marginalized groups.
• Organized around probing questions connecting history and contemporary events, museum formats and content, and activities.
• Includes pull-out themes and resources for further reading.

Therese Quinn is an associate professor and director of Museum and Exhibition Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“It is with this brilliant new book by Therese Quinn that I have gained an entirely different framework for seeing and experiencing and valuing museums, particularly as vital resources for social-justice movement building.”
—From the Foreword by Kevin Kumashiro, Kevin Kumashiro Consulting, and author of Bad Teacher! How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture

“Therese Quinn’s book is a perfect example of scholarship in practice. Quinn contemplates some of the foundational themes related to (in)justice in a manner that interweaves theory, practice-based knowledge, and applicable suggestions. Quinn’s fluent and accessible writing, structured around 10 essential questions, acknowledges the need to be cautious and critical of our current educational and museum practices and encourages the reader to become active in building more ethical, collective, and inclusive practices.”
—Anniina Suominen, associate professor of art pedagogy, School of Art, Design & Architecture, Aalto University

Contents

Singing in Dark Times: A Series Introduction xi
William Ayers

Foreword Kevin K. Kumashiro  xiii

1. Introduction: Are Museums for Everyone?  1
Museums Delight and Surprise 1
Museums Also Disappoint 2
Museums Want Us—Do We Want Them? 2
Museums and Cultural Justice 5
Museums and Social Movements 6
Teaching Museums 7
Learning Museums—Chapter Topics  8

2. Who Made the First Museum?  11
A Woman Made the First Museum 11
Origin Stories Reveal and Create Value 12
Looking Back to Look Forward 14

3. Why Do Museums Collect? 20
A Collection in Every Classroom 20
Collections, Science, and the Privilege of Curiosity 21
Sciences and Other Ways of Knowing 22
Museums for the Future 23
Our Full View 25

4. What Have We Learned from the Past and About the Present That Can Help Us Shape the Future?  29
Museum Revolutions 29
Return Wakanda’s Artifacts! 30
Decolonize Is a Verb 32

5. How Can Museums Welcome All Bodies?  38
Access and Experience 38
Designing to Include  40
Nothing About Us Without Us! 41
Creative Access 42

6. How and When Should Museums Respond to Everyday Events?  47
Museums Are Not Neutral 47
Collecting and Archiving as Action 48
Museums Taking Sides 48
Exhibits as Agents of Change  49
Rethinking Museums 51

7. What Is It Like to Work in a Museum?  56
People Make Museums 56
Museum Work Is Work 58
What Makes a Good Workplace? 60

8. How Can Museums Celebrate LGBTQ People’s Lives and Contributions?  66
Holding Hands at the Museum 66
Centering Queer Lives  69

9. What Can Museum Practices Teach Us About Collaborating and Sharing Authority? 77
Becoming Leader-Full  77
Collaborators and Co-Curators 78
Resist Curation  79
Making Exhibits to Build Community 80

10. Why Do We Pay to Visit Museums? 84
Museums Belong to Us 84
The Burden of Fees 85
Free Museums 86

Conclusion 90

Index 91

About the Author 96

2021 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award