Teaching museums how to welcome everyone
Cecile Shellman loves museums, classical music and other beautiful things. She’s devoted her life to making the things she treasures more accessible to everyone, especially those historically made to feel unwelcome in the spaces she cherishes.
Born in Jamaica and educated at Brigham Young and Harvard universities, Ms. Shellman understands the feelings of alienation many nonwhites feel entering a museum.
Having spent her young adult years in Utah, Idaho and Massachusetts, where she met and eventually married the man who became her husband in 2005, her specialty is not only making cultural gatekeepers aware of their blind spots but also helping them become willing partners in dismantling barriers.
“I was always keenly aware of various forms of privilege and systems of oppression that pervade academia and the museum world,” Ms. Shellman said. “I saw how, despite the ‘for the people’ mantra that was parroted by these organizations, very few BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, people of color] and people with economic need were included or welcome.
“During my undergraduate experience at Brigham Young University in Utah, I was one of about 10 Black people on campus out of a [population] of 30,000 students,” she said.
“In my professional life beginning in 1991, I have always been ‘the only one’ — the only art dealer of color, only curator of color, only exhibitions director, community outreach specialist, etc. — in any of the institutions in which I worked,” she said. “Also, I was one of very few [people of color] in these institutions. It was often alienating, lonely and very revealing.”
Ms. Shellman has been a practitioner of several arts as well as an underground railroad conductor of sorts around — and sometimes through — cultural gatekeepers who want to maintain the status quo. She’s a painter who earned a BFA from Brigham Young and a graduate certificate in museum studies from Harvard. She’s also a poet and a singer.
Her very long resume includes a stint at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. She was also the first artistic director at the August Wilson African American Cultural
Center, as well as director of the Pittsburgh Public Schools’ Culturally Responsive Arts Education initiative.
But Ms. Shellman, who has lived and worked in Pittsburgh for 15 years, is best known for her awardwinning work at the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, where she had a direct hand in trail-blazing exhibitions and initiatives at all of its museums.
Among other things, she worked to raise the profile of the award-winning 2014 exhibit “RACE: Are We So Different?” — a multimedia multiroom exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The success of that show led directly to the creation of the diversity catalyst position, which Ms. Shellman was appointed to fill and which helped to put the museum on a more inclusive path.
These days, she is a muchin-demand independent consultant to museums and art institutions that want to change what has been decadeslong insularity regarding diversity, equality, accessibility and inclusion issues.
“When museums or other arts organizations come to me for help, they are institutionally ready for help and change,” she said. “They are self-aware and humble enough to recognize the kind of transformation that needs to happen at all levels of the institution.”
That doesn’t mean it’s easy.
“In some institutions, the heart is willing, but the flesh is weak. It’s difficult to bring hundreds of people along at the same time, waiting on some voices and positions to be willing and able to discuss anti-racism. But when specific systems cannot be changed quickly and thoroughly in order to ameliorate the culture of the entire institution, the rhetoric and theory is all that remains,” she said.
“That’s not enough. These are real concerns with real implications. Working with individual organizations that have already committed in substantive ways but need help in operationalizing their commitment is what I enjoy doing most,” she said. As a consultant, helping institutions live up to the aspirations and goals they’ve agreed to in theory is a big part of her job.
Because of COVID-19, crowds at the few museums that are open nationwide are a lot smaller now, but her firm, Cecile Shellman Consulting, has managed to keep busy.
In the wake of the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, every institution is thinking about the scourge of racism and the importance in inclusivity and diversity. “If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that there is nothing more constant than change,” she said.
“It’s also a scorched earth moment for museums. Everything has been razed, burned to the ground and needs to be built up again. Museums are realizing that the [diversity] programs some had started to develop over the last few years are not robust enough.
“Some were only willing to focus on increasing the number of [Black, Indigenous, People of Color] in their employ. One institution insisted that since it was located in a neighborhood where there were only 13% Black residents, it was doing just fine with employing that same percentage — even though the employees were in nonprofessional, low-paying and part-time positions that would never see advancement up the ranks.
“Many are [hesitant] to admit that museums are founded on white supremacy, rife with racism, sexism and patriarchy,” Ms. Shellman said. “They are finally understanding how museum culture contributes to systemic racism and systemic oppression in other forms. A mirror has been held up to their collective faces, and they don’t like the reflection.”
Ms. Shellman hires assistants to help with some presentations and consultations when needed, but she primarily works alone with the client’s team. Her rates for video interaction, workshop facilitation and speaking engagements are listed on her website. She is well paid for her time and has rave reviews from current and past clients to justify it. She knows she can help provide a path to a more diverse and resilient museum space for those willing to listen.
Her advice to young people — especially minority young people contemplating careers in the spaces she is an expert in — is straightforward.
“You have to love it,” she says. “I do! It takes patience, stamina and ingenuity. No two organizations or individuals will be alike, and it’s not enough to have knowledge about critical race theory or anti-bias training.
“What you should aim for is entering a cultural space and incrementally examining its worst practices, compassionately convincing the leadership and staff to turn those into best practices. The ultimate goal should be to make sure every visitor and staff member is emotionally, physically and psychologically safe.”
“In some institutions, the heart is willing, but the flesh is weak. It’s difficult to bring hundreds of people along at the same time, waiting on some voices and positions to be willing and able to discuss anti-racism.”