Abstract
As research subjects, Black men art museum educational leader identities are absent. The presence of these professionals’ lived experiences as well as how they navigate cultural colonialism and hegemony are equally anomalous. Investigations into art museums as spaces where underrepresented people exist but are inconclusive or their recommendations go ignored.
Cultural institutions and informal learning spaces are emerging as contested points of antiracist pedagogy and decolonization. Museums have become community centers for underrepresented groups in their neighborhoods as some museums’ purpose have evolved to the needs of changing demographics. However, for these notions to advance further, extreme progress towards access, diversity, equity, and inclusivity must be enacted on the side of institutions.
This research explores the lived experiences and ontologies of groups that experience culture and society in ways that are dichotomous to traditional experiences and knowledge generation in museums. As informal education spaces representing a particular culture, museums and have a powerful responsibility to present accurate, complete truths to the public, but in many ways still refer to authoritative, culturally hegemonic interpretations.
By enabling and validating narratives that disrupt authoritative traditions, new educational leaders can subsume the vacuum that is left and create new forms and perspectives on pedagogy in museums. Introspection into the experience and identities of Black men—as extreme outliers in narrative and presence within cultural institutions—can advance this research, sustaining their presence and the spaces they work within.