(This article is an abridged version of a presentation made at the Office of Museum Programs Awards for Museum Leadership debate, July 24, 1992. Ms. Brown delivered the statement in the negative for the resolution: "Our society does not need culturally or racially specific museums."
(See OMP Bulletin Number 1) The position taken by Ms. Brown was held for the purposes of the debate only and does not necessarily reflect the personal or institutional positions of the participants.)
THE IDEAL AND THE REAL
As a child of the Civil Rights movement, I would never have anticipated that thirty years later I would be working zealously to create an institution that focused on the accomplishments and achievements of Black Americans. In fact, I believed that by the time I was an adult my peers and I would have equal access to job opportunities, the ability to live in any neighborhood without fear of reprisal, and that I would see myself and my people depicted in a non-stereotypical manner in the media, literature and even in museums. Such has not been the case.
I will concede that great strides have been made in the past thirty years. However, a new age fosters new problems and new twists on past solutions. We live in a society where for every remedy there is a caveat. While all citizens are allowed and encouraged to vote, gerrymandering and onerous local election laws can dilute the power of that vote. Though African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans and Latinos now have access to corporate America, they are often marginalized and isolated in the work place. For every two steps we take forward, we seem to take one step back.
I often liken the African American museum movement to the Black studies movement of the sixties. This movement did not represent a call for separate but equal access to information about the history of persons of African ancestry; it called for inclusion in the standard curriculum and opportunities for concentrated study. The legacy of the Black studies movement is that it enabled scholars, hungry for knowledge, to engage in in-depth research that eventually found its way into public school text books and informed courses in art, anthropology, literature and history in universities throughout this country.
However, a body of scholarship long neglected and invalidated requires on-going attention. The fact that Princeton, Harvard and Yale have African American Studies Departments does not mean that land grant Black colleges should forego pursuing these courses of study. Indeed the approaches and points of view are very different. The life experiences of these diverse purveyors of knowledge make their approaches equally meaningful in an ever-evolving world.
The rapid growth of the African American museum community in the late sixties parallels the growth and interest in Black studies in the university community. Many of these museums were stabilized during the Bicentennial when federal funds were available for the interpretation of American history. The recent Columbus Quincentenary provided similar opportunities for some Hispanic institutions to interpret the impact of the encounter on their history and culture.
I hesitate to call African American, Latino, Native American and Asian American museums ethnic-specific, for I believe that historically all American museums have been ethnic- or culturally-specific by virtue of their exclusionary practices. Accordingly, I will refer to these museums as community focused. I use this term because, as communities shift and change, these museums recognize the need to adjust their programming in response to community concerns. These museums offer their communities information that they often cannot obtain consistently from other museums and they often encourage their communities to identify issues in need of interpretation.
Three examples of community focused museums are the Smithsonian Institution's Anacostia Museum, the Chinatown History Project in New York and New York's Jewish Museum. The Anacostia Museum is currently developing an exhibition called "African Mosaics" which broadens the traditional concept of African Americans by examining the cultures of recent immigrants_many of whom are of African descent_ in Washington, DC, and examining their interactions with one another. The Chinatown History Project, which is located in a building that was once a public school serving Chinatown and Little Italy, has explored the relationships of former students of the school; and the Jewish museum recently examined relationships between Blacks and Jews in an exhibition which is now traveling called "Bridges and Boundaries."
These museums and others, such as the Tenement Museum in New York, the Baltimore City Life Museums and the Mexican American Museum in Chicago provide us with glimpses of communities that seek to have their history as well as their on-going evolution reflected in the museum's exhibitions and programs. These are indeed living museums that have a call and response relationship with their users.
THE ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF COMMUNITY FOCUSED MUSEUMS
In fashioning a mission and vision statement for the proposed National African American Museum at the Smithsonian Institution, we
have adopted certain principals which we believe will enable us
to create a community focused museum which is inclusive but does not compromise or water down the experiences of African Americans in an effort to alleviate the discomfort of others.
We are interested in presenting multiple points of view. Most exhibitions display objects which are discussed from a singular point of view. Museum visitors are often given the impression that museums reveal the authoritative truth. In a figure drawing class, everyone may be drawing the same model but each student's vantage point is different; and no two drawings will be identical. Similarly, each of us has a unique vantage point for viewing the history of our times. We will attempt to entertain more than one voice and offer opposing opinions. The documentary series, "Eyes on the Prize," is a rich resource because we hear views that may be diametrically opposed to our own. This level of discourse invites debate and enables us to show diversity of opinion both within and outside of the African American community.
We are committed to exhibitions that are biographical and autobiographical. However, we will seek to identify human interactions that shape leadership as well as learned and conceived attributes which lead to excellence and achievement. As an example, if we were to focus on the life of A. Phillip Randolph, we would consider the lives of Pullman porters and their families in different regions of the country. We might also interview frequent commuters as well as persons who worked closely with Randolph. Biographical profiles should include the well-known, local heros and the average citizen. The making of history is a group endeavor.
We will explore exhibition themes which elucidate human experiences. A good example of an exhibition which exemplifies a human experience is "From Field to Factory" at the National Museum of American History. This exhibition, which documents the experiences of African Americans leaving the rural south to settle in the industrialized north, has credence for anyone who has known the experience of migration. Accordingly, an exhibition on the impact of voter registration and exercising the right to vote can be meaningful to all citizens of this country. An exhibition which we are planning, tentatively called "Three Generations of Black Adolescence," can resonate for any person who remembers his or her own adolescence, or is currently raising an adolescent.
We will engage in a comparative analysis of issues. The enslavement of African peoples is an area that many wish to see interpreted. In doing so we feel obligated to examine the many faces of slavery including indentured servitude, the forced servitude of other ethnic groups as well as the experiences of early African migrants throughout the Americas. A similar approach can be take with subjects such as the Black press, hospitality industries, crafts movements, personal adornment and political movements. A comparative approach can be effective for a broad range of subjects in a variety of disciplines.
Museums are places where people should be able to learn, think and debate. They are also places that are supposed to be around long after we are gone. They should reflect the ideas, accomplishments and creative endeavors of a society. In this country, during most of its history, some voices have not been heard. Either others have spoken for them or their contributions and views have simply not been reflected. Community focused museums acknowledge as valid the experiences of people of many ethnicities, cultures and socio-economic backgrounds. They are in the forefront in collecting for the next century and they are beginning to tell the stories of all Americans.
(Claudine Brown is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Arts and Humanities, Smithsonian Institution, and Acting Project Director for the National African American Museum Project at the Smithsonian.)