Editorial

This edition of Museums and Social Issues follows on from our special volume on the subject of repair, which brought together scholars and practitioners to highlight the roles that museums can play in addressing fractured relationships, be they within cultural institutions themselves, with the non-human world, or with local audiences and communities. In this issue, a more expansive scope returns, with papers spanning a range of topics and domains – from innovative exhibitionary practices, to social media, to the climate crisis – all of which carefully explore how museums are responding to and shaping their societies.

As this issue goes to press, the picture facing many museums is a complex one. While the direct threat of the COVID-19 pandemic to the health of the sector has receded, many museums are now facing a raft of issues. In economic terms, state support during the pandemic has ended and museums around the world are dealing with inflationary pressures. This has led to reductions in museum activities and has implications for audience access during a cost-of-living crisis (Stephens, 2023). Meanwhile, the work of addressing and advocating for marginalized groups – such as platforming LGBTQ voices – has become more fraught as museums are drawn into culture wars, particularly those confected by right-wing populist politicians. The recent firing of the director of the National Museum in Budapest for not adhering to anti-LGBTQ government directives is particularly chilling (Schrader, 2023). And while museum responses to the war in Ukraine were generally praised, the more complex and fraught Israel/Palestine conflict has led to mis-steps and the erosion of trust with particular communities. This brief list is illustrative of the range of social issues museums now navigate, constantly moving between local and global concerns and debates.

Despite such demands, in the UK, where half of the editorial team is based, there has been a palpable sense that social engagement and activism are an increasingly central part of museum work. Such an example can be seen at the Manchester Museum, which reopened following redevelopment in early 2023 with a range of co-curated exhibitions, the recruitment of a Social Justice Manager, and the creation of an Environmental and Social Justice co-working hub within its premises. This work of centering the museum within the community is achieved through inclusive curatorial practices, which aim to empower communities to represent themselves, and acting as a local hub for activist groups, creatives, and entrepreneurs. The success of such an approach was evident as the museum attracted 50,000 visitors in its first week of reopening (Museums & Heritage Advisor, 2023). This is an outstanding example but the energy and guidance which has catalyzed such approaches has come from leadership by the Museums Association, who have placed a strong emphasis on social justice across climate, race, LGBTQ, and disability issues (Museums Association, 2023).

An important, if overlooked, factor that may explain some of the momentum behind such a drive is likely the time that the pandemic gave to museum professionals to critically reflect on their practice. Anecdotally, conversations the editors have had in recent years with curators and museum directors reveal that for all its stressful and disruptive consequences, the museum closures caused by Covid-19 offered space to think about both important social issues (not least race, representation and inclusivity), and alternative ways of doing museum work. It is likely that we are now seeing the fruits of this intellectual labor, albeit constrained by financial pressures such as the cost-of-living crisis.

Moving forward the journal will seek to attune our work more precisely to these contexts. A hallmark of Museums and Social Issues since its inception has been its ability to put its finger on the pulse of pressing and emergent issues that museums must navigate. This was perhaps best exemplified in the early themed issues of the journal, which brought together key voices from the sector to discuss topics such as sustainability, race, health and incarceration. In this spirit, our editorial focus will sit squarely on the theoretical underpinnings of engaging with social issues, and the lived, practical experience of implementing them within and beyond museums. In practice, this means a move away from some of the more empirically-focussed research we have published in recent years, and a move towards the critical and creative thinking which is vital to such progressive museum work.

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In the first paper of this issue, Kris Morrissey and her colleagues have conducted an extensive literature review that examines how STEM learning is engaging with social issues through informal learning environments. This work, and other studies by the same research team (see Morrissey et al., 2021, 2022), is useful to scholars and practitioners as it highlights existing approaches but also important gaps in research surrounding science communication. This focus of the study lies primarily in the US, but the rigorous methodology the authors deploy is a useful template for similar studies in different regions.

Dayna Obbema’s paper adds to the body of literature concerning how museums are addressing the climate crisis. While this issue has become a central concern for the museum community in recent years, the enthusiasm of practitioners to take action is often hamstrung by a lack of skills, knowledge, and resources (cf. NEMO, 2022). Obbema’s work deals with this problem in the Canadian context through detailed survey work and deftly exposes the principal barriers to action that museums face. Obbema includes an appendix with the full results of her research, providing a rich source of data for both museum professionals and policy-makers looking to understand the practicalities of climate action.

Emily Stokes-Rees presents an analysis of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Center in Fayetteville, New York. The Center consists of a historic house honoring women’s rights and abolitionist pioneer – Matilda Joslyn Gage – which deploys a radical exhibitionary approach that spurns passive reverence for artifacts but instead attempts a more ambivalent relationship with objects with the aim of provoking dialogue. Stokes-Rees contends that such an approach is an effective way for the museum (and museums more broadly) to activate their collections in line with social justice agendas – an approach which is in keeping with the radical spirit of the museum in this case. This work exemplifies emerging affective approaches to exhibition design which are increasingly seeking to unsettle or challenge visitors, with a similar example being the “curating discomfort” approach adopted by the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, Scotland (The Hunterian, 2023).

Finally, Sophia Bakogianni’s analysis of how visitors respond to museums' social media posts is an important contribution to understanding the qualitative nature of museum communication in digital environments. The paper is particularly useful in helping to identify the manner in which museums can promote social justice through the extended reach of digital platforms, and how this differs from engagement work in the physical realm. Specifically, museums who have strong credentials as trusted institutions must work out how to navigate in a digital context characterized by distrust and “fake news.” Bakogianni draws on detailed, mixed-methods analysis of the social media output of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, to inform her analysis and demonstrate how impactful such work can be.

December 2023