Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
Visitor Promise and Guidelines, The Walters Art Museum
Visitor Promise
Welcome to your Walters Art Museum. Our mission is to bring art and people together for enjoyment, discovery, and learning.
We strive to:
Maintain the museum as a free, welcoming, and accessible environment for all people.
Preserve and share the works of art and buildings in our care for future generations.
Create a partnership of mutual respect, active listening, and open dialogue with our community.
Thank you for your participation and support.
Behaviors that interfere with these goals are not permitted in the museum, including but not limited to: behaviors that harass, abuse, or endanger museum visitors, staff, or volunteers, including discriminatory language or conduct; behaviors that endanger the art, buildings, or grounds; or behaviors that impede the experience of others. Museum staff will ask any individual who engages in these behaviors to leave museum property.
Call for Proposals MIAHE 2020
Mapping International Histories of Art Education Conference is intended to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of ideas, issues, information, and research approaches utilized within the historical investigation art education in the international context. The organizers of the conference seek paper proposals that center on major historical events as well as overlooked people and episodes/issues within the national and international terrain of art education, including but not limited to K-12 public and private schooling, museums and community-based art education and higher education. Paper proposals that focus on historical research methods, cultural contexts, individuals, institutions, and events within and related to local and global art education are encouraged. A post-conference website and publication of the conference proceedings will be developed where copies of papers as well as a selected bibliography of historical research resources will be made available to the conference attendees.
Historical research over the past 5O years in art education has primarily focused on Anglo-European and North American contexts. Missing from the contemporary discourse are inquiries into the history of art education from non-western, non¬ Anglophone milieus. Mapping International Art Education Histories conference seeks to highlight these varied voices of research and scholarship to address the following questions (but not limited to):
What alternate questions might be raised through new interpretations of International histories of art and design education that could forge new connections and alignments for global art education in the 21st century?
What actions are needed to actively include diverse geographic and linguistic participation we increase the possibility of generating a more robust discourse in the field of art education?
How can we foster and amplify the long-marginalized histories that have the potential for transforming the field of art education?
How do we generate new interpretations of international histories of art and design education to create diverse connections and ways of knowing for global art education in the 21st century?
How meaning is produced in historical research and representations locally and globally?
Presenters are required to submit the following:
500 word summary of the paper to be presented
5-10 references supporting the research (APA 6th edition style)
5-7 keywords
Name & Institutional Affiliation & Email address (can we have separate boxes here that include Name, Rank/Title, Institutional Affiliation, Email)
Professional Biography (100-150 words)
Proposal Deadline: January 1 2020 (firm). Proposals will not be accepted after this date.
Proposal Notification Date: By March 1st 2020
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeBRNn6HbWyN7K1fRBejPHIIYeSJ-ivDaVWRyNRV5cstDdjOg/viewform
Elaine Heumann Gurian at MuseumNext, 2018
World Refugee Day at the Met
Museums Are Contested Sites, Post I
Embracing Empathy and Confronting American Racism in Museums
Kaywin Feldman is director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. When she assumed her post this spring, as the first woman to lead the institution, she followed a nearly three-decade stint by Earl “Rusty” Powell III as the leader of a museum established in 1937 with a donation by financier and art collector Andrew W. Mellon and subsequently supported by federal and private funds. Prior to the National Gallery, Feldman served as director of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where she created a Center for Empathy and the Visual Arts and presented exhibitions such as “Art and Healing: In the Moment,” a group show in 2018 inspired by the police-shooting death of Philando Castile in Minnesota two years earlier. She is also a past president of the Association of Art Museum Directors and a past chair of the American Alliance of Museums.
Bryan Stevenson is a public interest lawyer and the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a socially minded advocacy organization based in Montgomery, Alabama. Last year, he and EJI established the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery with a shared purpose to tell stories of slavery and racism in America. The memorial in a six-acre park includes 800 large steel monuments, one for every county in the U.S. where a historical racial terror lynching has been reported. The museum one block away is near a dock and rail station where tens of thousands of black people were trafficked during the 19th century. Stevenson is the author of several books, including the best-selling Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014). He also gave a talk, at Feldman’s invitation, at the “Art and Healing” exhibition in Minneapolis, as well as the keynote speech at this year’s annual meeting of the Association of Art Museum Directors.
Feldman and Stevenson convened for a conversation at the ARTnews office in New York.
Decolonizing the Art Museum
Museums have long considered themselves above the fray of the political. But the past 18 months have brought unexpected challenges, and leaders across the country are being confronted with an urgent question: How do museums reconceive their missions at a time of great societal reckoning around race and gender, and as more diverse audiences demand a voice and a sense of accountability?
Museums as Safe Spaces or Comfort Zones
“And as museums open up for participation around collections, documentation, program activities and exhibitions, a key ingredient is trust. With trust contribution, collaboration and co-creation is possible. If museums are perceived as safe spaces for contribution and collaboration, if the audience trusts the museum, it is possible to achieve real social impact in society.”
https://medium.com/@kajsahartig/museums-as-safe-spaces-or-comfort-zones-some-thoughts-37aaaad0b535
Decolonizing the Art Museum: The Next Wave
“Art can illuminate the fissures in society and in return offer opportunities for healing. But should artists be the only ones to bear the brunt of this responsibility? If museums want to continue to have a place, they must stop seeing activists as antagonists. They must position themselves as learning communities, not impenetrable centers of self-validating authority.”
By Olga Viso—Ms. Viso is an independent curator and museum consultant, and a former museum director.