Re-presenting Disability Discussion Quesrtions: #14-16

Reading #14 “Out from Under” gives us a close look at the development of an exhibit created by Disability Studies faculty and students at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. The exhibit was created to be part of the Abilities Arts Festival, which celebrates disability art and culture. The faculty and students all come from
backgrounds in community organizations and working with disabled people. They developed strong communication ties with disability groups throughout the planning process. Their goal from the start was to make the exhibit progressive and activist, pushing visitors to reconsider their views of disability. A key point to make is that the exhibit was developed in isolation of historians and museum professionals, and it was a huge success. Do you think that involving museum professionals would have hindered the creative efforts of Ryerson’s team, by imposing too many concerns over controversy or political correctness?

You can view a virtual recreation of the exhibit HERE.

Reading #15, “Transforming Practice” focuses on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and an exhibit about Nazi treatment of people with physical and mental disabilities. They were either killed or sterilized to prevent them from adding ‘defective’children to society. As part of programming to supplement this exhibit, the museum hosted a series of talks under the title INSIGHTS. Harriet McBryde Johnson, a disabled lawyer and activist, was invited to participate, and the museum made a major push to increase its accessibility in preparation for her visit. Many physical features of the museum were updated for better access, and staff also received much informative training on serving visitors with disabilities. I’m speculating that the museum would not necessarily have taken such initiative, if Johnson were not slated to be a guest for the INSIGHTS series. Using this example as ‘food for thought’, should high profile disability activists pursue
museums as venues to spotlight causes, and subsequently bring accessibility into the consciousness of more museum professionals, who have much power and authority to set high standards of accessibility?

Reading #16, “Reciprocity, Accountability, Empowerment” describes emancipatory disability research practices. People with disabilities have often been the subjects of research, but have not had the power to participate in shaping and guiding it. That power has always been in the hands of the researchers, as the true ‘experts’ on disability, but emancipatory practices push to empower disabled people as experts on their own lives and experiences. Involving disabled people in
the research process enables their questions and concerns to be addressed, not just the specific objectives of non-disabled participants who tend to fact-gather and analyze results without input from the disabled subjects of their research. In what ways can museum professionals use these emancipatory practices to increase accessibility and responsibly represent disability in museums?

The following link is a brief overview of emancipatory
disability research in use at the Museum of Science in Boston: http://informalscience.org/research/show/3084