Tania Talks Museums with Smithsonian's Dr. Deborah Lynn Mack, Part 2
In the last post Dr. Deborah Lynn Mack, Smithsonian’s Director of Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past and Associate Director for Strategic Partnerships at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, talked with me about a range of museum topics. Our conversation continues in this post. We left off talking about an upcoming exhibition featuring five HBCUs that she’s co-curating. Part of the project involves sharing collections from the participating schools online with the public. The last post left off as Dr. Mack explained this component of the exhibition, and she asked if I knew about George Mason University’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.
Tania Sammons
No, I do not know about the Roy Rosenzweig Center, please share.
Dr. Mack
Roy Rosenzweig was a public historian and collaborated with Indiana University historian David Thelan. They did a lot of work in public history about how Americans remember and understand the past. Their research was a unique combination of audience-centered work, theory, and historical documentation. They co-authored a seminal publication in the late 1990s that I encountered at that time: The Presence of the Past. The chapter entitled “History in Black and Red” has always stayed with me. They clearly presented the idea that different cultural communities bring their own cultural frameworks and memory references to history. When African Americans reference “history” they tend to reference a broad shared community and extended family past; they tend to reference multiple generations of broadly shared experience in their thinking and description of the American past. At the time of their data collections, Rosenzweig and Thelan reported that was not true for most Whites, whose reference points were socially narrower and more demarcated.
Tania Sammons
I would say that's still largely true, although there are some people who connect with a larger group like those of Irish or Scottish ancestry.
Dr. Mack
Their work informed our interpretive approaches in many ways. When Black people talk about “we,” they automatically are referencing a greater “we”. I should say African Americans, being an anthropologist. For nationals of most African countries, it is different. The longer I have lived, and the more I've experienced this, I've come to understand how unique African American community cultures, regional cultures and national identities are, because in many ways we historically had to reinvent ourselves. There are ways in which people have affinities to a country or a language or whatever. We were brought from many different places and cultural worlds, and we had to redefine who we were.
I'm not saying that this is the best or only way of approaching identity but understanding how we have come to define ourselves in this country helps us understand why we do what we do, or how we approach cultural work, fundraising work, institution building work. An understanding of this concept helps shape strategy. And again, it informs a combination of issues, including how we work in collaboration with others. Most of our work is highly collaborative.
The Smithsonian, in my view, historically had a generally poor reputation in the African American community, some of it earned, some of it accidental. It is often assumed that the Smithsonian is “the expert” for all kinds of issues, including societal issues. This is not so by any stretch. Being the biggest research museum complex in the world doesn't mean you're the best.
The widespread civic uprisings associated with Covid and the murder of George Floyd provided an opportunity to look long and hard at itself. Secretary Lonnie Bunch garnered support to launch a massive institutional self-examination that led to inclusive processes in restructuring and researching program priorities. This was an opportunity to make changes that had not been made in decades. If Smithsonian is going to be a 21st-century museum and a 21st-century leader and representative of the American people, we have to be accountable to all of our people in this 21st century nation.
Tania Sammons
You get into that in the 2021 online interview with Robbie Luckett for the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University. I’m including a link to that interview for people who may want to go a little bit deeper to learn how your background, both in and out of the field, informs your current work. I’m also including a link to a talk you gave at an Ontario Museum Association meeting in Canada in 2018. Your presentation about the development of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the work of the museum’s Strategic Partnerships department, which you lead, is both informative and instructive. I appreciate your openness and willingness to share your experiences and vision.
Going back to the Smithsonian. Do you think the Smithsonian is a better museum now?
Dr. Mack
Yes, a lot better.
Tania Sammons
How? Also, how do you see the Smithsonian in comparison to other museums? Do you see the collaborative approach that you have taken at the NMAAHC, and more generally the Smithsonian, showing up at other museums? Is that a trend?
Dr. Mack
The office that we established, the Office of Strategic Partnerships, and our strategy of work at the Smithsonian is now replicated in other museums. It's part of the new American Women's History Museum and the Museum of the American Latino, both in development, and at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Tania Sammons
Those are all Smithsonian museums.
Dr. Mack
Yes. There are many more museums doing this work now. And art museums have accelerated this kind of thinking because they tended to fall far behind other kinds of museums in their organizational structures. Mainstream art museums really suffered from public and professional backlash beginning in 2020. They have historically not been as responsive to U.S audiences. They felt that they were “different” and “special” and didn’t have to follow recommended best practices in the field. We all have different focus associations, but in terms of shared practices, art museums have moved from the far right closer to the center, and over the past four years there have been significant generational changes in board and staff leadership. They were also critiqued harshly by foundations because the funding world has changed and looks nothing like it did even a decade ago.
A lot of places that routinely receive foundation support no longer do, or they've had to change in order to be competitive. It's now far more competitive with an increasingly level playing field.
Tania Sammons
I've seen a major expansion of subjects related to Native Americans and African Americas in museums in my 30ish-year career in the museum field. I see museums looking at and recognizing other perspectives, and these cultural differences are reflected in museum exhibits and presentations.
Dr. Mack
What you've seen is the expansion of the acknowledgement.
Tania Sammons
Yes.
Dr. Mack
It’s because of changing U.S. demographics. If museums were to proceed on the audience attendance they had 15 years ago, they'd have to close their doors.
Tania Sammons
I can see that happening. I imagine we’ll continue to see this shift.
I’d like to hear from you about your favorite museums, or maybe an exhibition that you especially liked. Not something you've worked on, but rather something you've encountered. You mentioned the museum in Marseille. Would that be one of them?
Dr. Mack
I'm proposing a Smithsonian Journey to Marseille that will be co-hosted by that museum, and it will be focused around the globalized history of foodways.
I was recently in Santa Fe at the International Folk Art Museum, which I had not been in since the 90s. I was pleased with what they've done. They have really diversified the voices, the perspectives, and who they profile in a general way.
The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. I really liked the more nuanced story of how and why she decided that Santa Fe reflected her values and her art. That's something we're see increasingly in more complex storytelling, not just the art itself standing center stage.
There was an extraordinary exhibition on Alma Thomas that will always stay with me. It was extraordinary. I saw it at the Phillips, but it was co-organized by The Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia, and the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk. The whole framing of it followed her family and life journey; how she spent her career teaching art in Washington, DC, high schools, and why, in her 70s, she had to change her artmaking. The exhibition is about her journey as much as it is about her artistic production.
The Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian’s community museum, recently opened a fabulous exhibition on a century of Black arts education in Washington, DC. The community-centered narrative featured multiple artists whose legacies are part of the art canon, like Sam Gilliam, Alma Thomas and others. It also features the historical change-makers in the community that created and fostered accessible arts education for the Black community and Black schools. It's beautifully done. It feels very intimate and highlights numerous first-person voices. It is multi-generational in scope, spanning from the 1880s through today. It's a great exhibition.
There were elements in that presentation that made me think about the HBCU exhibition we're working on. We're dealing with some HBCU collections that have not been accessible. I've recently experienced opening boxes of collections with one HBCU university museum registrar who was hired a year ago. This is the first time in the history of this institution that there has been a collections registrar on staff. The quality of professional practice that we're seeing on the ground and the pipeline development of the next generation of professionals engaged in this work is one of the biggest rewards of this project.
Tania Sammons
I've never been to the Anacostia Community Museum.
Dr. Mack
It's a great museum under the direction of Melanie Adams, who brought her special strengths in community history to the museum. ACM highlights Anacostia as a neighborhood over time as well as the greater metro DC region. ACM also hosts the Smithsonian's Center for Environmental Justice. Climate change is one of three pan-institutional strategic areas at the Smithsonian. These are: Reckoning with Our Racial Past, Engaging Rural Communities, and Climate Change.
There's a biannual Women in Environmental Leadership Conference I've attended twice now that comes out of Anacostia. They've done a lot in terms of cleaning up the Anacostia River, and there's a multi-year urban waterways program. In another two years they anticipate that people can fish safely and bathe in the Anacostia River for the first time in like 50 years. A lot of our work is with community museums, because for many people that's going to be where they have the greatest access and input. Their stories, their neighbors, their local issues come out in those museums.
Tania Sammons
Do you see everything through the lens of your work, or phrased another way, what motivates you? Is it your work, or is it a drive to communicate and connect with people?
Dr. Mack
I experience places and institutions that are doing strong work that has impact. One of our functions is to connect these institutions with resources, and those resources may be institutional or partner or funding support. We also work to strengthen museum organizations, which is why I have served on the boards of the Association of African American Museums (AAAM), the Southeast Museums Conference (SEMC), the US National Committee, the International Council of Museums/USICOM as well as on the advisory board of my own community museum in Ridgeland, South Carolina—the Morris Center for Lowcountry Heritage.
Tania Sammons
Given your experience, do you have an overarching suggestion for people working within the field?
Dr. Mack
Organizations need to step back every five to seven years, review and make sure that goals, processes, and deliverables are meeting their service goals.
Tania Sammons
Good advice. Thank you.
One last question. You must have seen the King Tut exhibition that toured America in 1977. Lee Prosser, Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, whom I interviewed for Tania Talks Museums, credits King Tut as his inspiration for going into the field of archeology, and ultimately museums. I loved King Tut, too. I think it was a cultural and generational phenomenon. Neither of us saw the exhibition, we were too young. At the time, I didn't know anyone who actually saw the exhibition, but I know you did. Were you inspired?
Dr. Mack
No.
Tania Sammons
Because you were already interested in the subject?
Dr. Mack
I was already interested. I worked for the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute Museum [now called the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC)] as a work study student for three years. I unwrapped mummies and baked clay tablets and things of that sort. That's when I was in Egypt for the first time, with archeologists. I was able to go below ground within the pyramids. I also visited the Kush region and pyramids in Sudan with Sudanese archaeologists. What interested me was the cultural geography, the transformation of that part of the world from a huge forest to a desert, and the migration and human impact on the environment. It was fascinating. I felt [the King Tut exhibition] was interesting because I was in Egypt. I'll be in Egypt again sometime this next year. But I am more interested on the extensive research on the workers and worker communities, including women and families, of the period that have been unearthed and researched.
Tania Sammons
That sounds interesting. We’ll have to save that topic for another time.
Thank you very much for sharing your time and insights about your work, as well as your thoughts about museums, culture and communities.
Dr. Mack
You’re welcome.