The opening workshop Museum Work: Hierarchies and Barriers, Exclusion and Inclusion will take place at Birkbeck University of London in May 2023. The workshop is being organized by Kate Hill (University of Lincoln) and Claire Wintle (University of Brighton) wihtin the scope of the Making Museum Professionals network.
The workshop will specifically address how hierarchies and barriers in museum work have historically developed and continue to exist today, and how such hierarchies have been and continue to be challenged and negotiated by those who are excluded and disempowered by museums.
The network Making Museum Professionals is responding to growing campaigns in the museum sector for more equitable hiring and career structures. Across the globe, campaign groups have highlighted the systems of inequality faced by many of those working in and with museums. This new network will support such campaigns for fairness, inclusion, and transparency, by examining the historical roots of the museum profession and the structures that supported them, from the birth of the modern museum (ca. 1850) to the to the present day. It asks how the museum professions contributed to the development of certain skills and working methos. The network also seeks to develop productive links between academics and museum professionals, to create spaces, practices, and outcomes for dialogue between past, present, and future, and to use historical practice as a tool for enhancing contemporary professionalization.
The program for the event and further information can be found here.
Workshop: Museum Work: Hierarchies and Barriers, Exclusion and Inclusion
Invitation to attend a workshop on museum work within the scope of the Making Museum Professionals network, with a presentation by our PI Dr. Andrea Meyer on “Modernizing the Museum – Initiatives and Crises of the German Museums Association (1917–1933),” May 23, Birkbeck, University of London