Provocation: Are museums relevant for social and environmental justice today?

Asante, Sheila; Cummins, Nelson; Giblin, John; Loovers, Jan Peter Laurens

Provocation: Are museums relevant for social and environmental justice today?

Resource type

Journal article

Creator (person)

Asante, Sheila

Cummins, Nelson

Giblin, John

Loovers, Jan Peter Laurens

Date published

2023

Abstract

JG: I work at National Museums Scotland. Our vision is 'inspiring people: addressing the challenges of our age'. Arguably, two of the most important of these challenges are social and environmental inequality. I've worked in or with museums for over twenty years. One of the reasons that I have done so is because I believe that museums can help to address these challenges through collections and displays work. I believe that museums have the potential to enable people to come to understandings of how the world is shaped as it is, including its inequalities, and to inspire people to create alternative, hopefully more equitable, futures. Clearly though if this is true, depending on what we present to people, museums also have the potential to create, maintain or exacerbate inequities. The provocation set for the opening of the 2022 Museum Ethnographers Group conference considers this potential. Each respondent was asked are museums relevant for social and environmental justice today? If so, how? And if not, why?