Always remember #MuseumsAreNotNeutral

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/art/2026/02/25/smithsonian-volunteer-historians/

La Tanya S. Autry, co-creator of #MuseumsAreNotNeutral, poses a series of thoughtful questions about the controversial acquisition
What Does It Mean to Exhibit the Gun That Killed Emmett Till? 

As someone who questions institutional claims of neutrality and the ethics of curatorial practice, I wonder about the “#museumification” of the #weapon and the ramifications of its display.

https://hyperallergic.com/1045554/what-does-it-mean-to-exhibit-the-gun-that-killed-emmett-till/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Kyiv%20s%20Shrine%20to%20Ukrainian%20Embroidery&utm_campaign=D093025

The latest blog post from Museums & Race asks how our institutions remain responsive to the diverse communities we serve in an environment increasingly hostile towards DEI work.

What does it mean to be a responsive museum, and how can the Museums & Race Report Card help you in your institution, in whatever position you serve.

https://museumsandrace.org/2025/07/15/report-card-spotlight-responsiveness/

#MuseumsAndRace #museums #museumsarenotneutral

The National Park Service is required to install signs with a QR code asking visitors to report anything that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living,” or that, “emphasizes matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance, or grandeur of [natural features.]”

This is literally out of Orwell’s _1984_.

This is not normal. This is not okay.

#MuseumsAreNotNeutral

https://wessiler.substack.com/p/only-you-can-prevent-thoughtcrime

So, you know how there's been this whole museums are not neutral movement for damn near a decade?

I hope museum executives who resisted that movement - who resisted acknowledging the reality of that statement and what it asks of them and their organizations - now realize the cost of their inaction, the cost of clinging to their status quo.

I can't tell you how often (my) reports were ignored because of the risk or because change wasn't convenient.

#MuseumsAreNotNeutral #RealEvalTalk #FAFO

My work in the project "Museums and Society - Mapping the Social" comes to an end this summer.

These are zines done with students that came out of seminars from 2021-2024 at TU Berlin on museum data and social issues, critical annotations, virtual reality, and politics of representation.

Two of these seminars were co-taught with my colleagues Freya Schwachenwald and Pegah Byroum-Wand. Some layouts were done by working groups of students themselves, and several by our student researchers in the project, Meryem Coşkun and Julia Reidy. Thanks so much!

You find the PDFs on the website of our project https://museumsandsociety.net/ and soon on a long-term repository.

#museums #museumsarenotneutral #museumstudies #arthistory #museologie #kunstgeschichte #zines #zine

Images of the World / Weltbilder: A publication on the construction of foreignness and otherness in art.

This booklet in German and English documents a seminar held at the TU Berlin in 2022. The seminar examined how art is used to negotiate and construct worldviews and ideas of foreignness and otherness.

The students explored this question across various Berlin museum collections and with references to other locations such as the Berlin Zoo, focusing primarily on paintings.

Previous version was an interactive website:
https://museumsandsociety.net/en/research/digital-image-worlds/weltbilder

The PDF of the booklet can be downloaded here:
https://museumsandsociety.net/en/news/publications/publikation-weltbilder-als-heft

#museumsandsociety #arthistory #museumstudies #kunstgeschichte
#museumsarenotneutral #museum #museums #colonialism #newmuseology #berlin #studentprojects #zines

Publikation: Weltbilder / Images of the World (booklet is in German and English, EN post: https://hcommons.social/@nullmuseum/112523799669243209)

Dieses Heft dokumentiert ein Seminar im Sommersemester 2022 an der TU Berlin. Das Seminar untersuchte, wie mit Kunst Weltbilder und Ideen von Fremd- und Andersheit verhandelt und konstruiert werden.

Quer durch verschiedene Berliner Museumssammlungen und mit Bezügen zu anderen Orten wie dem Berliner Zoo, untersuchten die Studierenden diese Frage vor allem an Gemälden.

Zuvor erschien eine interaktive Webseite:
https://museumsandsociety.net/de/research/digital-image-worlds/weltbilder

Das Seminar im wurde geleitet von Freya Schwachenwald und Lukas Fuchsgruber. Die Umsetzung als Webseite und Heft erfolgte durch Meryem Coşkun und Julia Reidy (studentische Mitarbeiterinnen im Projekt Museums and Society), unter Verwendung der Referate und Gruppenarbeiten im Seminar.

PDF Download:
https://cms.museumsandsociety.net/assets/weltbilder-3.pdf

#museumsandsociety #museums #museum #arthistory #museumstudies #kunstgeschichte
#museumsarenotneutral