Just Who is the Museum For? Strategies and Creative Museum Partnerships and Alliances to Reach Diverse Audiences

Abstract:

Museums – where knowledge is stored, objects are preserved, and information is interpreted - are one of the few public places in which individuals from all backgrounds can learn informally about materials and ideas of scientific and cultural significance. Public museums typically engage visitors with this knowledge through in-person experiences - exhibits, interactive displays, classes, lectures, and the like. How people connect with the information offered by museums is dictated by the museum’s design and vision, and is largely controlled by its physical space, which can limit broad engagement of a diversity of audiences. At the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP), we house more than 5 million fossil specimens from 90,000 localities worldwide. Because we are primarily a research museum on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley with limited public exhibit space, public programs about science, the fossil record, and evolution are based primarily upon our array of highly-regarded web resources. As the UCMP continues to revise and expand our educational materials and web resources, addressing the history and legacy of racism and colonialism in our fields, especially in the biological and geological sciences is a primary goal.

Building on this base for our education and outreach activities, UCMP’s new Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Anti-racism Working Group is developing ways to increase the efficacy of UCMP outreach programs for diverse audiences. These initiatives target a breadth of audiences: K-12 and community college students and teachers, undergraduate students on the Berkeley campus, and the greater public. These include (1) unique partnership programs with other museums to increase digital access to fossil specimens, specimen metadata, and virtual field sites, and (2) collaborations with the ocean sciences community to expand access to authentic sea-going research experiences. Through programs such as these, we are increasing the accessibility of information and raising awareness about Earth and environmental science, as well as the diverse communities in science that drive these disciplines.