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Racism, Unrest, and the Role of the Museum Field: A Conversation at the American Alliance of Museums Virtual Annual Meeting (2020)

In the midst of a nation-wide shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and just prior to the American Alliance of Museums (AAM’s) Virtual Annual Meeting (May 18 and June 1-4, 2020), a 46-year old Black American, George Perry Floyd, Jr., was suffocated under the knee of a white police officer, while that officer’s three colleagues stood by, on the streets of Minneapolis, MN in the United States. A bystander’s video of Mr. Floyd’s pleas to breathe and cries to his late mother went viral around the world. The event triggered a global civic uprising, with weeks of sustained nationwide and global protests against systemic racism and police brutality under the Blacks Lives Matter movement’s name. To provide support and give direction to the museum community, AAM added a General Session to their Virtual Annual Meeting program, “Racism, Unrest, and the Role of the Museum Field,” structured as a conversation between Johnnetta B. Cole, Lonnie G. Bunch III and Lori Fogarty. In addressing “what could and should be our role as museum professionals in the struggle against systemic racism?” they emphasized the importance of the United States effectively confronting issues of race and racial violence and our museums to recognize that museums have been built on the power of white people over people of color, and particularly Black people. They encouraged museums to help “find truth, find insight, find nuance,” since they are “better suited than most to define reality and give hope.” The discussants urged museums, whose missions are based in stories, objects, and heritage, to be part of and to heed their communities’ call for action and, first and foremost, to be places for people and “whose missions are about imagining a better future.”.