Museums and Social Justice

A manifesto for museological change that examines the outcome when acquisitions policies, permanent collections and exhibitions become increasingly important battlegrounds for social justice.

Museums are facing a reckoning. Thrust to the forefront of difficult conversations around toxic philanthropy, increased corporatization, decolonization, repatriation and legacies of theft and looting, many of our cultural institutions are undergoing a period of radical transformation, seemingly redefining their very function and mission to address new public concerns. But who owns the past? How bloody is too bloody? And whose museum is this, truly?

Museums and Social Justice addresses these questions and more, shedding light on pressing issues such as why an oil giant attempted to sponsor an arctic exhibition at the British Museum; why Berlin's Humbolt Forum is exhibiting British-looted objects from Benin; and why the Baltimore Museum of Art has made a public commitment to acquire more works by women artists. Using such events as case studies, Dr. Maura Reilly engages with pioneering arguments in and around matters of diversity, access to heritage, decolonization, patrimony and racial equality, and outlines specific action plans to confront these challenges, avoid reputational controversy and maintain confidence in our public institutions.

About the Author

Maura Reilly is director of the Zimmerli Art Museum and Professor of Art History at Rutgers University. She is the founding curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where she launched the first public programming space devoted to feminist art in the US. Reilly has authored a number of books on contemporary art, including Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating, published by Thames & Hudson in 2018.

Liisa-Ravna Finbog is a Sami museologist, scholar, duojar, writer, curator and artist from Oslo, Vaapste and Skanit.