In the introduction to “Spaces of Care: Confronting Colonial Afterlives in European Ethnographic Museums,” Dr. Wayne Modest and Dr. Claudia Augustat propagate an understanding of care in the museum that is grounded in Black feminist and Indigenous activist scholarship. They invite museum practitioners to seek alternative possibilities for what the museum can be, with the understanding that “care is self-evidently connected to museum practice. After all, to curate – one of the primary tasks of the museum – means to care.” At the crux of this statement is the question: for whom does this care exist?

Museums have long been viewed as quintessential sites for the preservation of cultural objects and belongings. However, the framework of care that guides these practices simultaneously obscures and affirms centuries of colonialism, extraction, and epistemicide. The prioritization of such forms of display has exposed the contradictions within the museum and has brought it to a point of rupture. In the wake of mass layoffs across departments, continued discussions around repatriation and restitution, and dissent along with funding cuts to a wide range of museums, we seek to gather in pursuit of paths forward.

“Moving Towards Life: Community and Care in the Arts and Cultural Work” asks: How does care manifest itself in the arts and cultural spaces? How has care functioned as both a life-affirming practice and, at times, an exploitative and harmful one? What would a museum that cares for its communities to the same degree as its objects look and feel like?

Over two days, this convening will bring together curators, educators, artists, memory workers, museum visitors, and creatives to wrestle with and answer these questions. Through a panel discussion, facilitated conversations, and artistic interventions, attendees will consider the possibilities and limitations of the museum as a generative space. From this, we hope to push for alternative practices within and beyond the museum that move away from flattening and negligent representations, and towards life.

“Moving Towards Life: Community and Care in the Arts and Cultural Work” is a virtual and in-person convening organized as part of the Simmons Center’s MA in Public Humanities course “Decolonization of Museums: Nations, Museums, Anti-Colonialism and the Contemporary Moment.”

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