Mutual aid systems rely on forms of exchange, sharing support and resources, to enable communities to care for their members in the face of difficulty. In May this year, Museum Workers Speak started the Museum Workers Relief Fund, a form of ‘radical redistribution’ that seeks donations from those with means to support US-based museum workers who have been laid off, furloughed, or otherwise severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Those donations are then redistributed as $500 gifts to help recipients stay afloat. In this episode, we speak with Paula Santos, Christian Ramirez and Alyssa Greenberg about the initiative and the role of mutual aid in supporting museum practitioners. While you’re listening, take a moment to support the Museum Workers Speak Relief Fund if you can. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify

It’s been a few weeks since the world was upended in the wake of COVID-19. In this episode, we catch up with an old friend, Sharna Jackson, to hold space for some reflection, some mourning, and some laughter. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify

Even before a pandemic changed everything, we were living in turbulent times. Extreme partisanship defines politics in many countries, inequality grows even wealthy countries, and faith in institutions is diminishing. How do museums create environments of trust, especially where there are histories of distrust, victimisation and oppression? In this episode, we speak with Dina Bailey, former Director of Methodology and Practice for the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, and Tim Phillips, founder and CEO of Beyond Conflict, to consider what we can learn from transitional justice approaches when addressing the painful legacies of the past. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify

Since the #MeToo movement began in 2017, many in the museum sector have wondered when members of our own community would be called to account. In this episode, the Punks are joined by Robin Pogrebin, Zachary Small and Anne-Marie Quigg to explore a major #MuseumMeToo moment and ask how bullying and harassment shape workplace culture.

Over the past decade, museums have increasingly shared high resolution open access images of their collections. Yet there are significant legal and ethical complexities related to digital cultural heritage, particularly when blanket decisions about open access are made without involving communities of origin. In this episode, the Punks are joined by Mathilde Pavis and Andrea Wallace to discuss their Response to the 2018 Sarr-Savoy Report, which addresses intellectual property rights and open access relevant to the digitization and restitution of African Cultural Heritage and associated materials, and come to the conclusion that we need to be discussing digital cultural heritage with far more nuance.

Being Human, the new permanent gallery at Wellcome Collection, explores what it means to be human in the 21st century. In creating the exhibition, the Wellcome Collection worked with two advisory panels - one composed of scientists, and the other of artists, activists and consultants, convened in collaboration with the University of Leicester’s Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, focussed on the representation of disability and difference. The resultant experience embodies the idea that all can and should feel valued and connected. In this episode, the Punks speak with Clare Barlow, curator of the exhibition, and Richard Sandell, Professor of Museum Studies and co-director of RCMG at the University of Leicester, about the intentionality, processes and practices that have shaped this exhibition.

The season for existential crises continued this past month when the International Council of Museums (ICOM) announced that a working group had proposed a new definition for museums and that said definition would be voted on at the ICOM Triennial in Kyoto, Japan. We followed the many conversations that unfolded over the next few weeks, and asked a diverse group of museum colleagues around the world to share their thoughts on the issue with us. What does it mean to be a museum? Who does that definition exclude? And who is the audience for that definition? Guest Contributors Hannah Heller, Armando Perla, Anna Leshchenko, Linda Norris, Maria Vlachou, Jasper Visser, Paul Bowers, Margaret Middleton, Joan Baldwin, Seema Rao and Luis Marcelo Mendes. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify

As decolonisation moves more firmly onto the agenda in museums, so to does its critique. In this episode, we speak with Sumaya Kassim, author of the essay 'The Museum Will Not Be Decolonised', and Nathan “Mudyi” Sentance to ask whether museums can dismantle the colonial gaze. We'll also find out more about the kinds of structural changes inside museums that may be necessary to fully support First Nations people and People of Colour working in our cultural institutions. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify

Unpaid internships are commonplace in the museum world, supported by a culture that suggests “experience” and the chance to get “a foot in the door” are worth the sacrifice of time and lost earnings. This practice necessarily limits the sector’s ability to diversify or become equitable, by ensuring that only those who can afford to work uncompensated can participate. But there is some promise of change afoot! The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) recently made a resolution calling on art museums to provide paid internships. At the same time, the Art and Museum Transparency group, a grassroots initiative to bring transparency to the arts sector through collecting anonymous salary data from the field, launched their recently-launched Unpaid Internships spreadsheet, which aims to shed light on the sector’s reliance on free labor. In this episode, we’re joined by Alison Wade from AAMD, and Michelle Millar Fisher and “E” from the Art + Museum Transparency group to discuss these initiatives, and the implications for the sector of its practice of unpaid internships. Plus, Ed Rodley, Museopunks’ new co-host, makes his official debut. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes or Stitcher

The end of Pride Month does not mean that we should stop talking or thinking about LGBTQIA+ inclusion and queer curating practices in museums. This month, we’re joined by Craig Middleton and Nikki Sullivan, authors of the KINQ (or Knowledge Industries Need Queering)manifesto, and Alison Kennedy and Anna Woten, from AAM’s LGBTQ Alliance Task Force for Transgender Inclusion to discuss queering the museum.

On September 11, 2018, the Board of Directors of the Mountain-Plains Museums Association unanimously voted to require that any jobs or paid internships posted to the MPMA Job Bank would include the level of compensation– whether salary or hourly rate. The MPMA’s move was in line with a move by a number of museum associations to end salary cloaking, or the habit of hiding compensation levels rather than being transparent about them at the start of the hiring process. In this episode, we’re joined by Will Stoutamire and Lauren Hunley (both on the Board of the MPMA), and Michelle Epps, President of the National Emerging Museum Professionals Network, for a discussion about salary transparency in the museum field–what it it, why it matters, and why your institution should be disclosing salaries early and often.

In early 2019, experience designer Ed Rodley asked the hivemind what they saw as the biggest issues facing ppl who make museum experiences in 2019? The answer from Jay Rounds, E. Desmond Lee Professor of Museum Studies emeritus at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, was “A surfeit of virtues.” Rounds proposed that, “There are so many demands for what an exhibit ought to be or do, or how it should be made, that they can paralyze us. Many of these demands seem virtuous in isolation, but some are in conflict with others, and it is impossible to do all of them at once and end up with an exhibit worth visiting. But we have no overarching principle for prioritizing among them, and thus we become so dedicated to being virtuous that we forget how to be good.” In this episode, Museopunks explores this idea of the surfeit of virtues with both Rodley and Rounds, and discovers a moment of paradigmatic change in museums within the USA. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes or Stitcher

OF/BY/FOR ALL is a global movement and a set of tools to help community institutions around the world become more representative OF and co-created BY their communities. In this episode, we’re joined by OF/BY/FOR ALL founder Nina Simon and Rohini Kappadath, General Manager of Immigration Museum (Australia), to find out how to create a museum for everyone. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes or Stitcher

Museum collections in established institutions come with long histories. So how do you change a museum’s canon? In this episode, we speak with Christopher Bedford, the Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director of The Baltimore Museum of Art, about the BMA’s decision in early 2018 to deaccession seven works by blue chip artists in the contemporary collection in order to strengthen its holdings of contemporary works by women and artists of colour. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes or Stitcher

Since the mid-1990s, it has been received wisdom that museums are, or should be, “safe spaces for unsafe ideas.” But is this true? Are museum safe spaces? And do they really deal in unsafe ideas? In this episode, Elaine Heumann Gurian, who is credited with first expressing this idea, helps us unpack whether it continues to make sense in museums today. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes or Stitcher

How can museums participate in transitional justice, which seeks to address massive human rights violations? In this episode, Suse is joined by Omar Eaton-Martínez and Dr. Karine Duhamel to explore the implications of truth and reconciliation in museums. Dr Duhamel has written that reconciliation “as a process based on hope, remains the core animating principle of a collection of stories that brings together the importance of Indigenous worldviews, the need to acknowledge violations as shared history, and the priority we place on empowering communities to share their stories.” In a time when truth has been greatly complicated by politics, there is still significant value in the act of truth-telling. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes or Stitcher

In this special two-part episode, Suse and special guest co-host Desi Gonzales, explore virtual reality in museums. In part two, we take a deep dive into Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s academy-award winning virtual reality installation CARNE y ARENA with VR film-maker Paisley Smith. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes or Stitcher Museopunks is presented by the American Alliance of Museums.

If there is a hot technology in museums right now, it is virtual reality–a technology sometimes credited as being the “ultimate empathy machine.” But can VR live up to the hype for museums? What happens when VR technologies are used to recreate or invoke traumatic experiences? What kinds of scaffolding do museums need to provide when preparing a visitor for these kinds of embodied experiences? And how can museums use VR promote representation and inclusion? In this special two-part episode, Suse and special guest co-host Desi Gonzales, explore the realities of working with the virtual. In part one, Michael Haley Goldman speaks on the prototyping being done at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to experiment with VR, while Kai Frazier discusses the work she is doing with her VR start-up CuratedXKai to provide inclusive opportunities and increased exposure in cultural settings for people of colour. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes or Stitcher Museopunks is presented by the American Alliance of Museums.

With a reticence towards partisan politics, museums are sometimes perceived to be neutral institutions, many avoiding taking a visible stand on issues. But can they really avoid being political when making choices about the allocation of resources, time, and energy? #MuseumsAreNotNeutral is “an initiative that exposes the fallacies of the neutrality claim and calls for an equity-based transformation of museums.” In this episode, LaTanya S. Autry and Mike Murawski break down the #MuseumsAreNotNeutral campaign, while Kaywin Feldman, Nivin and Duncan MacMillan Director and President of the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia), discusses what it’s like to run a museum at a time of crisis. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes or Stitcher Museopunks is presented by the American Alliance of Museums. Graphic Design of the Museopunks logo is by Selena Robleto. Website: Museopunks.org Twitter: @museopunks

The vision of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine, describes how the museum “will reflect and realize the values of decolonization in all of its practices, working with the Wabanaki Nations to share their stories, history, and culture with a broader audience.” But what does it take to decolonise a museum? How does it change the governance structure and the practices of the board? What kinds of frameworks and internal work are necessary to shift the balance of authority within the institution, and turn theory into actionable change? In this episode of Museopunks, Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko, President & CEO of the Abbe Museum, delves into the complexities of decolonisation. Never miss an episode! Subscribe to Museopunks on iTunes or Stitcher