Back to Basics

Earlier this year, I was delighted to receive an invitation from the International Council of Museums (ICOM)'s Network for Aviation Museums to present at their annual conference in Ottawa, Canada. Erin Gregory, Curator for Aviation and Space at Canada's Ingenium, read my book and wanted me to share insights into storytelling best practices specifically tailored to aviation museum professionals.

In light of the crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion playing out in cultural spaces in the United States controlled by (or beholden to) the federal government, including our national parks (compare with this version) and, most recently, the Smithsonian, I find myself revisiting the assumptions at the heart of what I call "ethical praxis" in museum storytelling. 

In the preface of Storytelling in Museums, I argue that "Storytelling in museums gains its relevance through the primacy of mission-driven audience engagement." What stories a museum chooses to tell, and which "characters" and "events" are considered important, are thus determined by how it frames its mission, and who it imagines as its audience. 

Mirrored windows in New York City, 2024

In 2022, I took it almost for granted that "modern museums embrace educational missions, often imagining an audience of curious non-experts, eager to learn about people, places, and ideas that may be unfamiliar to them, but whose humanity is universally recognizable." Such a core philosophy would lead naturally to a "windows and mirrors" educational model through which visitors would embrace both familiarity and novelty in the stories they encountered in museums. 

With curious nonexperts in mind, museums would be duty-bound to present a wide variety of stories to meet their visitors' needs. This viewpoint takes as its foundation the notion that audience identities are multifaceted and that majorities benefit from learning about minorities and vice versa. This is what it means to tell as complete a story as possible. This philosophy also pertains to events. Balancing the monumental with the everyday produces similar experiential responses alternating awe and resonance as the "mirrors and windows" model does for empathy. 

Attacks on the value of diversity beg both the question of who is considered part of the audience, and what is a valid mission for a museum. Effective education requires trust. And in turn, effective education helps us better differentiate between education and propaganda. Would-be-propagandists seek to limit the scope and content of museum storytelling precisely because they do not want to encourage curiosity. They want visitors to see the institution's power, but not their own. Visitors are encouraged to evaluate their worth through proximity to the limited subject-matter considered worthy of monumental storytelling. Respect for top-down power narratives requires enforcement to be maintained. Thus, only the heavy-handed approach is valid. And one heavy-handed approach must be replaced with another.

To see this, all you need to do is examine the anti-DEI backlash. Its most adamant advocates perceived a heavy-handed militancy in the efforts of institutions that sought to emphasize minority voices while claiming the need to actively replace or remove old majority voices. Of course, as I've explained repeatedly, storytelling is a choice. It is never neutral. But revised emphases must take old expectations into consideration. And, revisions are best achieved when you go back to basics.

I cannot accept a model for museum storytelling that disrespects curiosity and shuts down critical thinking. Such a model corrupts a beautiful tool for engagement. But we might have to start closer to the beginning when dealing with people who have come of age in an environment of one-sided media. We must reestablish ourselves as containers for multitudes, as promoters of learning, as places where the empathy necessary to innovate humanity is nurtured and encouraged. It seems we may need to reestablish our self-respect if we wish our institutions to sustain our curiosity and the next generations' questions, the questions needed to propel us into a better future.