Readying the Museum was formed in January 2021 in response to the uprisings of 2020. At that time, a loose cohort of artists and museum directors came together to address systems of supremacy, inequity and power structured and enacted by the museum sector. Through a process of research, learning, and discussion the cohort was tasked to create a method and/or practice that could empower museum leaders, board members, artists, arts workers and individuals at all levels of an institution to undo those forms of supremacy in their own museums. The unique quality of bringing together directors, artists and workers aims at shifting power and accountability within the museum hierarchy.

Readying The Museum is funded through a collaborative grant offering from The Ford Foundation and Mellon Foundation.

As you navigate this site, begin to ask yourself some of the following questions regarding museums and the sector: Where does power reside within the museum? What is my proximity to wealth and power? How does accountability show up within this institution and to whom is this institution accountable to besides the IRS? What relationships do I hold with the communities surrounding the museum? Who are the most marginalized and most vulnerable members of my museum’s community and what are their consistent demands of the museum? How do members of the museum's community provide input into the museum's structures beyond representation? Are other members of the museum's community a part of the decision making mechanisms of the museum; if so, how and if not, why? How does wealth operate and control within the museum's structure?It is important for individuals to do the personal work to ready themselves. Read the website with others, listen to the Readying The Museum podcast series, read and work through the reflections, download the journal writings articles guides, discuss the topics and methodologies with others regularly and begin to implement the learnings however you can. For institutions especially, RTM recommends forming facilatated cohorts of their own to engage with the methodologies found within this site.

This website hosts a set of documents, tools, podcasts, downloadables and guides that address issues and offer frameworks for new methodologies within the museum sector. Readying The Museum is a solutions based methodology and the cohort hopes that individuals and groups will work with the tools provided within to ready themselves for the rewarding though difficult work of undoing, relearning and forming accountability. We hope that you will download, listen, read, share and work collectively towards an accountable institution.

The cohort members of Readying The Museum are committed to developing and continuing this work, recognizing that institutional change comes with sustained, ongoing dedication. Members of our cohort may shift as schedules and work positions change, but the core of the work remains. As we launch this website we are entering a second phase of our work which requires additional development of phase one and carrying this work to different museum leadership, arts workers and communities.

Phase Two of Readying The Museum will include the following:

(1) Publicly launch and distribute Readying The Museum's deliverables and outcomes to museums and other non profit institutions; artists, arts workers, journalists, funders, philanthropists, board members and community members.

(2) Further the work of Phase One with collective and collaborative input and ongoing development from our community of practice as well as workers, community members and executive teams at every level of the institution.

(3) Produce practical applications of our learnings, including presenting workshops, working retreats, and presentations inside of institutions to develop the practice of our methodology. The cohort will continue the work of readying museum leadership, philanthropy artists, and art workers for sustainable transformation.

(4) During Phase Two, our working groups will continue to meet and deepen their engagement with our communities of practice.

The cohort will expand our scope to consider the mechanics of policy, taxes, business models, respectability politics, wealth management, institutional governance and philanthropy. We are broadening our focus as we understand that these are the additional structures that allow museums to maintain the many forms of supremacy, privilege, and lack of accountability present within the sector.

This website and our work are inherently imperfect and troubled by many of the same biases we seek to reveal within museums. We began this project, as so many do, reaching out to people within our networks and slowly, through relationship building, expanding that network. Readying The Museum began when two women (Black/Brown, artist/director, both cis-gendered) with related but different positional privileges within the museum sector created a cohort and brought together voices of people they were in right relationship with, and whom they believed desired to learn and grow to develop a methodology for accountability within museums.

Despite the unique qualities of this collaboration, it also presented limits of representation, identity, and experience. Some people left the initial cohort along the way, others joined mid process, and still others participated but asked to remain anonymous. Their voices are represented unevenly in this work as was their preference. However, through our base building and community of practice partnership efforts, journal commissions, and overall accountability, we sought to reach beyond who we knew and who we are, and widen the circle to include those most impacted and precarious in their communities of art, museums, and culture. Widening the circle of contributing voices and deepening some relationships we have built is how this work will continue into Phase Two.

If you feel like you are the person asking this question, please write to us. We seek to hear from and form best relationships with those invisibilized and precarious inside of the museum sector. Please email us at info@readyingthemuseum.com.

The Readying The Museum cohort believes every museum or institution, no matter how small in size or budget, is composed of individuals who can begin by embarking on personal reflection and accountability practices towards transformation. We encourage you to read, work through, and discuss the topics set forth in this website. It is especially essential for white identifying leadership and individuals with wealth to commit to the journey of personal reflection, learning and ultimately, tangible actions that produce accountability. Time and critical thinking, however, are labor, and so within any budget this work must be compensated in some way. This is especially crucial for Black, Brown, Indigenous, Latinx, Trans and other precariously labored participants or for those whose monies and resources are limited.

Our cohort is advocating for more resources into the sector to support this work within institutions. While we recognize that it is challenging to allocate budget or obtain additional funds, in practice, carving out resources and allocating dollars does speak to the seriousness of this work for an institution and its executive and trustee leadership. Begin now by seeking colleagues and others with whom you can have these conversations in earnest.

Please feel free to contact info@readyingthemuseum.com and let us know the nature of your question and our project manager or a cohort member will respond. We receive a consistent influx of questions so we ask for patience as we work our way through correspondences.

Please know that this work is iterative, responsive and adaptive. We would be glad to hear and learn further. Please send us an email at info@readyingthemuseum.com and we will respond.

Please read through the website and sign up for updates. You may email us at info@readyingthemuseum.com and please do follow us on social media @readyingthemuseuminfo.

Readying The Museum is not a diversity initiative. Our aim is to create systemic change by offering a framework and methodology that helps reorient accountability within museums. This involves new imaginings for resource distribution alongside equitable labor practices, and the inclusion of local communities, including artists and artworkers, into the structures of power, wealth and accountability within the museum sector. In this sense, we view this work as critically foundational and something that can strengthen the whole body and ecology of the museum sector, while resisting representational and performative directives that can create repeated patterns of harm inside institutions.

While our work does seek to evoke more tangible and equitable policy and practices within museums, these changes are not limited to human resource, operational, and programming concerns.

We seek to build learning cohorts of artists, arts workers, directors, and trustees ready to shift accountability toward the local communities who museums serve, and to advocate for the distribution and access of museum resources across a spectrum of institutional and community imaginaries.