Strategies for inclusion from around the world – Craig Middleton

STRATEGIES FOR INCLUSION FROM AROUND THE WORLD – CRAIG MIDDLETON AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

So I’m Craig Middleton. I’m a curator and producer, and currently the assistant manager of exhibitions, planning, and development at the National Museum of Australia. Which means I’m responsible for creating the temporary exhibition programme from conception to delivery, and everything that involves.

So I’ve been asked to reflect on how people, and lives, and stories have been excluded from museums historically, and now. And this is both a really simple question, and it’s also a really complicated question. It’s simple because we know that exclusion exists, and we know that when we walk through the galleries of museums that we visit, that there are many, many stories missing. But it’s complicated and complex because the ways in which that exclusion operates is often invisible. It’s unthinking and that means it’s structural and what I would call insidious. It’s the worst kind of exclusion because for many, it’s invisible.

Now, exclusion happens everywhere in a museum. From the objects that the curators choose to collect, from the presence or absence of stories in the interpretation, and the exhibitions, and the displays. How those interpretations are framed, how a museum reaches out to communities to tell particular stories or to tell the stories they’re already telling. To the conventions that dictate design. Design of exhibitions, design of buildings, it’s really that broad and overarching. So I guess to put it more simply, museums often attempt to represent a particular place, a particular community, or a particular topic. And historically, they’ve attempted to do so with very singular narratives. To try allow these stories to have some kind of grand narrative that makes sense in a holistic way. And we know that this singularity doesn’t, or isn’t, in keeping with how communities and societies operate, and have operated. So these singular grand narratives, they privilege often the most wealthy and powerful people in those communities or associated with those topics.

And despite a well known understanding of marginalisation of race, of class, of ability, of sexuality, and gender, museums continue to operate in this way, and privilege a particular story. A story that, when you’re talking to a museum professional, might say is one that belongs to their core audience. Now for me, core audience is, it’s very much a choice. The people who already come because they can see themselves in that museum in that space in those stories. So museums, they choose the stories that they’re telling. And they do so in a way that they suggest, or we suggest, is for our core audience. And those are the people who already see
themselves in the stories that we present, in the objects on display. And they’re the people who are already coming. They’re already coming and we serve them, and we continue to serve them.

But many lives and experiences are not represented in those stories. Or at worst, even considered in the planning and development of exhibitions, and programmes, and events. An example for me, growing up in a settler colonial society, is that when I grew up, I interacted with museums that told a really common story. It was one of male labourers taking a leap of faith and journeying to the colonies to build a new and prosperous life. And these men would often bring with them their young wives, and maybe two or three children. They would eventually buy land, and build a house, and live this constructed Australian dream if you like. Away from the shackles of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

And you know, this is a really common story, and it’s one that you find in museums in Australia. But what’s important to mention about this story, is that it has  historically been told in isolation as the Australian story. As this singular narrative. This is that grand narrative that I’ve been talking about. And stories like this, when they are told in isolation, work to exclude those who have been impacted by that very story. And so I’m talking about First Nations communities, indigenous
communities, whose way of being in the world, whose governance and social structures, were deemed not sophisticated enough. And so had to be, at best controlled, and at worst eradicated.

So I want to begin talking about inclusion strategies, with a caveat that I suggest that inclusion strategies need to be developed and adopted with a critical lens applied to them. So for me, too often inclusion, very simply put, is about inviting people in. But often this invitation doesn’t necessarily come with any kind of structural change. It’s like hey, we’re having a party. I want you to come to my party. You’ve never been to my party before. But when you come to my party, I
need you to dress like me. I need you to sing like me, and I need you to dance like me. So inclusion in these terms does little to challenge the structures of power and privilege that operate to exclude those who are already excluded, and continue to be marginalised. It’s tokenistic at best. And it’s not to say that inclusion strategies are not important, they very much are. But rather than working towards this idea of homogenization, inclusion should strive to change the lives, and ideas, and minds of everyone to embrace difference, to acknowledge the complex lived experiences of humans, of people. And that difference is beautiful. And complexity
and messiness is beautiful.

So first and foremost, museum professionals must be aware of their own privilege. So I identify as a queer person, a person with same-sex attraction. But I’m also white. I’m cis-gendered. I went to university, and I have a full time job in a government agency. And these all contribute to my privilege. And just because I am marginalised because of my sexuality, that doesn’t cancel out my privilege.

And so it’s important that as museum professionals, we acknowledge this privilege and our position, and then the power that we hold because of that. And there will always be blind spots. All of us have our blind spots. But by doing this, and by doing this practise of acknowledging and building awareness of our own selves, we can then build awareness in the projects we’re developing. So thinking about exhibitions, thinking about displays and events, we need to be thinking about whose story we’re telling. Who we’re including, who we’re excluding, and then take it one step further. What are those inclusions and exclusions doing? Are they working to  reaffirm a dominant way of understanding the world, at the exclusion of other ways of understanding and knowing the world? And if we are critically self-reflective and we ask ourselves these questions, we start to fill the gaps in those blind spots. And we won’t fill all of them, but what we’re doing is we’re reducing the barriers for people to experience museums in the way we aspire them to.

Museums in the future, for me, would offer ideas, and knowledge, and stories. And not try to present them as matters of fact, or things we must learn. But they might offer us ways to think about the world differently. They might offer us ways to allow us to make sense of ourselves in the world. And acknowledge that irrespective of the place we’re in right now, that diversity will continue and people will change and societies will change. And that we’re always in this ongoing state of complex change. And that knowing the past is to know many pasts. It’s not to know one past.