Informalities in the art museum: mobilizing educators’ professional learning for policy renewal

AbstractAs art museums reckon with their colonial roots and ongoing exclusions, critical—if not activist—discourse and approaches have begun to inform even establishment museums. However authentic, intentional, or successful such efforts have been to date, this trend has resulted in exhibitions, programming, and, for some, structural change that imagine individual, collective, and institutional transformation is possible. It is in this context that professional development focused on equity and social change is on the rise. Looking beyond training, this chapter examines informal professional learning; specifically, its role and value in supporting progressive reimaginings of who art museums are for and what they can do. Drawing on qualitative research I conducted with gallery educators in Scotland during the first wave of COVID-19, I consider how informal learning can be leveraged to enact personal and organizational change in a post-pandemic future. In my discussion I propose a tentative framework for critically engaged informal learning and key areas for policy renewal in art museums. Mobilizing this data for critical analysis responds to both a paucity of literature on transformative professional learning in art museums and a lack of research and policy attention to informal learning among educators more broadly.Keywords: Art museum educationCOVID-19 pandemicinformal professional learningpolicywhiteness AcknowledgementsI extend my sincere thanks to the educators who agreed to participate in this research.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Throughout, I opt to use they, their, and them in the singular to protect participants’ anonymity.2 I recognize here the baggage and debate that comes with this term. I choose it for this study over other common options such as learner or participant to underscore the learning role of educators themselves and to avoid confusion with research participants. Here, “visitor” also connotates invitation, being welcomed and served, and, under ideal circumstances, feeling at ease, if not at home. At the same time, the term visitor also acknowledges that (1) even when collections are publicly owned, the institution’s gateholders control and determine access to them and (2) visitors don’t have the same power in the museum space as volunteers or paid educators. I use the terms ‘visitors’ and ‘publics’ interchangeably while recognizing my ongoing struggle with this terminology and that neither term captures the range of positive and negative experiences that people experience in art museums, nor those of people who don’t go to museums. In a recent article on the ethics of care and art museum education, Kletchka (Citation2023) proposes borrowing the term bodyminds (McRuer & Johnson, Citation2014) from critical disability studies to address the dilemma of presence/absence in the physical space of a museum.3 This article is one of three manuscripts from my Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-funded, PhD dissertation, which drew on critical adult learning and museum scholarship to analyze data from 17 open-ended interviews and two focus groups I conducted with volunteers in Canada (2017) and paid gallery educators in Scotland (2020). Participants in this study all signed detailed information and consent forms as required by Concordia University’s Human Research Ethics Committee to obtain Certification for Ethical Acceptability for Research Involving Human Subjects (# 30012896).4 As a museum scholar-practitioner, I included both scholar and practitioner research in my review.5 These authors’ definitions of informal professional learning activities vary in terms of intentionality and the presence of learning objectives.6 Freelancers were paid for their time according to the Scottish Artists Union payscale.7 In her discussion of museum educators and race talk, Murray-Johnson (Citation2019) points to an important distinction between classroom and gallery educators of particular relevance here—time, and the trust that is built through multiple encounters commonly found in a formal learning context (but rarely in a museum and gallery setting).8 I elaborate on this concept further in my PhD dissertation.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.