I believe in the spirit of collaboration. Over the past several years, I have been honored to serve in leadership and co-creator capacities for a number of national projects. Learn more about these projects and how to get connected below.
The Visitors of Color project is a tool for all museum professionals who want to learn more about the lived experiences of visitors of color. We share stories about the visitor experience of people of color and/or marginalized persons. We center the voices and experiences of visitors of color in museums.
Co-created with nikhil trivedi, we view this project as a vital counternarrative project. Since its launch, Visitors of Color is now nationally recognized by the American Alliance of Museums as a top resource on Diversity, Equity, Access, and Inclusion.
Visitors of Color was created in direct response to dialogue surrounding a presentation at the 2015 Museum Computer Network conference, “Museums and Cultural Agency.” In this presentation, Adrianne Russel and I interrogated notions of racial equity, radical inclusion, and hiring practices within museums. Soon after, nikhil approached me about about an idea I had also been exploring–the fact that with all we do in the field, we rarely center the voices of visitors, especially those of color. Visitors of Color was launched that same hour.
This project is not designed to function as “research” so much as it is intended to be a platform for centering voices of color.
The Incluseum is a Seattle-based project that provides a platform for museum and cultural heritage practitioners to critically assess their praxis while exploring what inclusion means for 21st century museums. The Incluseum advances new ways of being a museum through dialogue, community building and collaborative practice related to inclusion in museums.
I am honored to co-direct this project with Rose Paquet and Aletheia Whitman.
In the first year of MASS Action, over 50 museum professionals came together to co-author a critical toolkit. The toolkit is a free and accessible resource for practitioners wanting to obtain pedagogy, shared vocabulary, and new frameworks with which to approach the work of social justice-centered equity and inclusion in museums.
For the past four years, I have been one of a small handful of project advisors in this collective effort to help shift change in the field towards deep inclusion.
Over 200 participants and over a dozen museums participated in the 2018 convening at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, including Crystal Bridges, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other leading institutions.
The Future of Education Road Trip was an opportunity to think locally with educators, museum professionals, students, artists, and community leaders about how they are envisioning—and creating–the future of education
Dr. Nicole Ivy and Sage Morgan-Hubbard, two phenomenal women in museums, organized the first ever Road Trip. When they reached out to me, wanting to ensure that their landmark initiative uncovered the work being done in Southern museums, I was thrilled to lend a hand in gathering the troops for the Charleston leg of this historic road trip. I want to thank them both for allowing me to play a small role in the Charleston round table and for their professionalism, joyous efforts, and dedication to the work of space-making and innovation in museums.
In partnership with The Museum Group, I joined a coalition of advisors and an inaugural cohort of participants to host the first Museums and Race convening in Chicago in 2015. In this role, I advocated for new language and frameworks (intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, etc.) to guide this exploration. In addition, I co-authored the event’s Statement of Purpose with Gretchen Jennings. From there, we designed a series of programs, conversations, and experiences to explore the topic of race and museums at the 2016 American Alliance of Museums.
As a critical race theorist exploring the intersections of race, social justice, and cultural heritage, the invitation to lead and design the very first iteration of the Museums and Race Initiative was thrilling. While I have stepped down from an active leadership role with Museums and Race, it is my pleasure to continue the work of racial equity and social justice with those who have continued the work of this project.
Dr. Porchia Moore 