Safe spaces for vital discussions
Local museums work together to create atmosphere to teach, talk about racism
It’s not unusual for museums to partner up to bring temporary exhibits to town. Nor is it out of the ordinary for museums to recruit community experts to do educational programs around the exhibit’s theme.
But when asked about the partnership between the Milwaukee Public Museum and America’s Black Holocaust Museum to bring the Nelson Mandela exhibit to Milwaukee for its U.S. premiere, MPM president Ellen Censky said:
“This is very different.”
It’s the first time MPM has partnered with another museum as a presenting partner, and the first time an extensive advisory council was created, with dozens of community members to help guide programming and outreach.
Censky said there have been discussions at the public museum for years about the museum’s changing mission within the community and how to work with other museums in the future.
Censky believes the public museum, with its natural history focus, can work with museums like the Black Holocaust Museum – which educates visitors about the ongoing legacy of slavery and the Jim Crow era – to bring topics to the community that are relevant to both institutions’ audiences.
“There’s a community of museums in Milwaukee,” said Censky. “And we need to not be isolated and separated. We can partner with each other where we can help advance each other’s missions.”
Creating opportunities for conversations about race
Bringing the Nelson Mandela exhibit to Milwaukee turned out to be the perfect opportunity to do just that.
The public museum decided to partner with the Black Holocaust Museum because, as Censky pointed out, it wouldn’t be right for a museum with a largely white board and audience to present an exhibit on its own about an iconic Black freedom fighter against racism.
“I’m blessed that Ellen asked us to be a part of this,” said Robert Davis, president of America’s Black Holocaust Museum. “She had the fortitude to say, ‘We don’t know what we don’t know, and we need your help in creating this community around this man that was so important to this world.’ ”
Davis said a big part of his museum’s role in presenting the exhibit has been in creating the advisory committee – a collection of community leaders, youth groups, churches, social justice organizations, academics and other cultural institutions.
The goal was to bring diverse voices to the table to create programming that will extend the life of the exhibit well after it leaves Milwaukee on Aug. 1.
The programming has featured virtual panel discussions, school curriculum ideas and book clubs. There are also “community check-ins” scheduled – virtual sessions where people can have deeper conversations about racism both in history and in the present day.
“When Ellen and I started talking about this partnership, I said we’ve got a very small bandwidth, just a few fulltime employees, but the value we can bring is creating this committee, suggesting people who are influential in Milwaukee’s Black and brown community,” said Davis.
Eve M. Hall is the president and CEO of Milwaukee Urban League, another member of the advisory committee. She applauds the public museum for recognizing the need to have a Black-led institution partnering on this exhibit, especially during this time of racial reckoning.
“Sometimes museums don’t necessarily leverage the platform that they have to have such discussions,” said Hall. Museums, she noted, often host exhibits where people come and then leave, but don’t focus on outreach or how to engage the community around the exhibit’s themes.
Creating opportunities for education about race
The museum leaders say a starting point to those serious discussions needs to be education about the history of racism and civil rights movements, both around the world and here in Milwaukee.
It’s an education that doesn’t always happen in schools and in some ways is becoming more controversial as lawmakers attempt to legislate how the history of racism is taught in schools. Museums may be able to fill some of that educational gap.
Reggie Jackson is a teacher, journalist and the co-owner of Nurturing Diversity Partners, an organization that educates community groups about race relations and equity. He is also the head griot (storyteller) at America’s Black Holocaust Museum.
Jackson said a key part of the Mandela exhibit is that it tells the story of Mandela’s whole life, from his childhood in a rural South African village to learning about legalized racial segregation in Johannesburg, to his difficulties maintaining relationships with his family while fighting racism.
“Museums can tell stories in creative ways where you can get all these elements of people talking about their experiences,” he said. “Museums can create an experience that humanizes people.”
Jackson noted his favorite way to study history is to choose a time period and then learn about how different groups of people experienced that time period, something he calls parallel histories. He thinks that partnerships between museums can contribute to that type of learning.
“I hope more people will be aware of the breadth of how many different museums we have that tell different parts of history,” said Jackson. “People can learn the history of Milwaukee by getting different pieces of that story at different places they go to. We can broaden students’ interest in the place they live in by taking them to multiple places.”
The Jewish Museum Milwaukee, another participant on the advisory committee, is one of those places. Patti Sherman-Cisler, the museum’s executive director, said their goal is to share Jewish difficult histories with other diverse groups who also have difficult histories.
“Museums exist to hold artifacts or art or documents in the public trust, but how do we become a living museum? How do we connect with the public that we serve? How do we become a place for dialogue, and what is our role in ensuring that that dialogue happens in a safe space?” Sherman-Cisler said.
Being part of the Mandela exhibit advisory committee gave the Jewish Museum an opportunity to broaden that role. It also allowed them to bring a different perspective and experience to the Mandela exhibit.
As part of the Jewish Museum’s Global Museum Passport series, they held a panel discussion about the South African Jewish Museum, which Mandela helped to inaugurate in 2000.
Many people aren’t aware about the presence of Jews in South Africa, Sherman-Cisler said. The discussion, she noted, explored the “communal evolution of two oppressed groups,” and whether the two groups supported each other during apartheid as Jews supported Blacks during the civil rights movement.
Creating opportunities for social justice advocacy
Beyond education, the museums’ partnership reflects an evolution in museums nationally that goes beyond telling people’s stories, to being a space to talk about what that history means for what’s happening today, to advocating for social justice movements.
Robert Smith, a member of the advisory committee, is director of Marquette University’s Center for Urban Research, Teaching and Outreach. He said museums must be responsive to the demographics of the cities they serve.
“Our demographics demand that historical and cultural institutions appeal