"Strategies for Creating African American Museums and Cultural Spaces," an Owl & Ibis Presentation by John Cruickshank

Image: Courtesy of John Cruickshank

Kudos to John Cruickshank for his outstanding presentation, "Strategies for Creating African American Museums and Cultural Spaces." Here is a PDF version of John's PowerPoint slideshow.

In his comprehensive presentation John covered the institutional history of African American museums, background on Julius Rosenwald and the schools he created, and the views of two prominent African American museum directors, Lonnie Bunch and Bryan Stevenson.

John's presentation was particularly focused on the Our Legacy: The Griffin-Spalding African American History Museum in Griffin, Georgia. John is a member of that museum's steering committee.

John's Statement of Argumentation

In the United States, we have generally done a very poor job of

creating cultural spaces that help us understand our history, who we

are, the nature of our problems and how those problems emerged.

The American South is littered with iconography designed to

memorialize and honor the architects and defenders of the

Confederacy. They are symbols of a false narrative of the virtue of

racial hierarchy, of the acceptability of white supremacy. Artists and

cultural leaders and institutions have in many ways been complicit by

not creating an honest accounting of this history.

John’s Conclusions

~ Museums should be a place that gives the public not just what it wants, but what it needs

~ Museums have a social justice role to play

~ Museums always take a point of view by what they choose to exhibit and what they decide not to exhibit and what gives the public not just what it wants, but what it needs

~ Museums should use African American history as a corrective, to help people understand the fullness, the complexity, the nuance of their history

~ Museums should be driven by scholarship and the community

Thanks, John!

}:>&~:)