#what started as a pretty simple sketch turned into a multi-hour experiment of playing with textures and digitally emulating papercraft

[thewanderingmask]

unicorn smajor hours again.

happens a lot around here

[wellesleyunderground]

Wellesley in Art: Hannah Heller ‘09, Museum Educator (@museum_matters)

Hannah Heller is an NYC based freelance museum educator, and has taught and worked on research and evaluation projects in several cultural institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., Whitney Museum of American Art, El Museo del Barrio, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Design. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Art & Art Education program at Teachers College, and holds a MA in Museum Education from Tufts University. Her research interests include developing orientations towards social justice through close looking at art; she believes art can play an active and healing role, especially when addressing difficult topics such as race and racism in a group setting. Follow her on Twitter @museum_matters! Interview by Tiffany Chan ‘15, Arts Series Editor

Q: What is your ‘origin story’? How did you know that you wanted to pursue a career in the arts? In museums and education specifically?

I actually took a course my last semester senior year at Wellesley on “art museum issues,” which really opened my eyes to the inner workings of museums, and the prospect of museum work as a viable career.  

After graduating I did my first unpaid internship (out of about a thousand) abroad with an upstart website creating content on Israeli artists. While there I applied to museum studies MA programs and ultimately came back to Boston for my Museum Education MA at Tufts. It finally made sense to me why I was so drawn to the art history courses I had taken at Wellesley but for some reason didn’t excel at-- I was missing the personal connection, the humanity behind these objects, the “why” of the work. The more collections and audiences I work with the more certain I become about the power of art and my role in facilitating those experiences.

Q: What was your professional journey like? How did you get to this job?

After finishing my MA program I went to intern at Lincoln Center in NY with their guided tour program. The internship turned into a full time fellowship, which turned into a job and I ended up staying there for about three years advancing ultimately to manage their entire volunteer corps, part time staff, and summer interns. But after a couple years I realized that even though I was working super closely with our audiences in a customer service role, I was no longer doing work that felt as meaningful as anything I did as an unpaid intern working with the tour program and helping shape those prolonged, more educational experiences. I also found that I missed school a little bit, that I still had questions about the nature of my work that I wanted to research. So I quit and went back to school to get my Ed.D. in Art & Art Education at Teachers College, where I am currently finishing up my 4th year.

Being back to school affords me the opportunity to get back into freelance museum education work, and finally delve into and sharpen some of those questions I had related to practice, creating a really productive theory/practice feedback loop. I get to read all this theory, apply it to my work, see what works and what doesn’t, go back to the literature and sharpen some of those ideas, and try it all over again.

Q: What does a normal day look like for you?

Because I’m a freelance educator, and I’m also in school, every day looks like really different. But most days start with a morning school group tour at one of the museums I teach at (I teach at three), or at one of the schools that my museums partner with. Each of my museums coordinates several school partnerships, and will send educators like me out to the schools, and then invite the students to come to the museum a couple times-- I love partnerships because I get to know the kids so much better than I would on a one-off field trip. I love field trips too; depending on the museum, it’s either an hour-long gallery tour where we focus on maybe 3-4 art works and include lots of sketching and movement activities, or a tour plus art making workshop.

Then I clean up, and I might jump on the train and teach another tour/program at another museum, or go the library, do an observation for my research, or go to a coffee shop and do some curriculum writing/planning. What’s really fun about my job is at each of my three museums the exhibitions switch up every couple months, which means I’m always doing research on something new. I like to say that I know a little bit about a lot of different things. The switching up goes for the audience too; on a given day I could be in a kindergarten classroom, teach a tour to 9th graders, do some planning for a college internship program, and finish up the day doing a “VIP” tour at a corporate sponsor event.

And then I come home and shift into admin mode-- answer emails, respond to bookings, send some invoices, follow up with teachers, plan or collect materials for the next day, etc etc. I’m always carrying around a tote bag or two full of art materials.

One thing that helps clarify my job for other people is to explain that NYC is super unique in that people like me get paid (pretty well too, relatively) to do this work, whereas in a lot of other cities the work is done by unpaid volunteer docents. I can make $50-$150 an hour depending on the program (though of course I don’t work a 40-hour week at that rate!). I think that’s a gesture to the competition in this city, and the high standard for museum educational programming that that competition supports. It also means that a part time teaching gig typically requires a MA degree, 4+ years experience, etc etc, all these bonkers qualifications that can make it really hard to break into.

Q: What was your ‘eureka moment’ in wrestling with race and the art world? Or was it even a moment or rather a long process?

I point to Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson in the summer of 2014 as a turning point for me. Obviously it wasn’t the first time a Black person was extradjudicially shot by a White police officer, but it began to feel impossible for me to both witness the explosion of discourse in the media that his death spurred, the advent of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and also do nothing about it. My journey started with having conversations with friends and family about their reactions to Ferguson and subsequent shootings, which were often really uncomfortable and awkward.

It was particularly hard with my family; I notice a trend with a lot of people in my Jewish social networks, where so many Jewish Americans come from families where their grand or great grandparents came here with nothing after experiencing profound oppression in their home countries, and then were discriminated against when they got here, but then climbed the ladder, achieved the American dream, etc etc. So when you bring up discrimination against another group of people, there’s almost this knee-jerk reaction among older Jewish people I’ve spoken to be like, oh, don’t tell me about oppression, I get it. It was pretty shocking at the time, since I’d only known the privileges associated with being brought up in a close knit Jewish community, so for me it was like-- well all right, let’s take this history of oppression, and see if we can harness that experience towards alleviating current forms of oppression where we can. The more awkward it got the more it signalled to me how necessary these conversations are, particularly amongst White folks purporting to be “progressive” and liberal, but also can’t be bothered to really address these issues critically (ie  in a way that would address their own privilege).

Running parallel to these personal conversations was a field-specific awakening to our own equity issues, and lots of people have done amazing work to bring attention to racist hiring and curating practices, as well as cultural barriers to success for employees of color. The big question for museums has to be: how can we hold ourselves to treating our guests equitably if we can’t even treat our own fairly? Tackling diversity and equity issues in museum work has to have a multi-pronged approach, and I’ve sussed out my own little niche in this much larger conversation by examining the various techniques museum educators use to discuss race and other equity issues using objects as the catalyst.

More recently, my research is focusing on manifestations of whiteness in gallery teaching. I think centering whiteness in a conversation about anti-racism is important so that White people can first of all name it, critique it, and figure out what it means for them first as individuals and then as part of a system-- we can think specifically about museum education in these terms-- that on one hand acts as the oppressor but which can also be used dismantle the status quo. And the only way this happens though is if we ALL (managers, educators, curators, directors, board members) make a shift from conceptualizing our various roles as supporting a "culturally sensitive," or "multicultural," or perhaps just at a base level not-racist neutral stance, to being full on, explicitly anti-racist and anti oppression.

Q: How have other people responded to your writings?

So far so good! I’ll always be nervous as a White person to discuss this work publically; am I offending anyone, have I said something problematic, etc etc. But the bottom line is POC can’t do this work alone, and they put themselves out there every day just by existing, so writing the occasional journal article or blog post seems really like the least I can do.

Q: What are the best ways that we can start productive conversations regarding race and art?

Such a great question, and there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but in my experience as a museum educator, there’s some really simple, go-to tools in our educator toolboxes to help navigate these conversations authentically and productively. The question is about starting, and I like to start with the art. Gather some basic observations from the group, see where they’re at and go from there. Object based learning provides a really nice context for having conversations about difficult topics without it being explicitly about the people involved in the discussion. There’s a sense of safety there, where we’re talking about the artwork, not ourselves per se. I like to choose objects based on what aspect of a counter story to the dominant narrative they can reveal. This counter story can say something about the artist, the content, the subject-- something that reveals a turn away from the dominant (while, male, straight, cis, "able" bodied) canon. A lot of educators feel like they can't talk about oppression because their institutions' collections don't explicitly treat the topic (ie are made by and picture all White men). So pick an object and ask students to create narratives to fill in the gaps. Who isn't there? Why? What if the artist was working today in your neighborhood, what might look different? What if YOU were the subject-- how would you be represented? (I obviously take certain liberties when it comes to "respecting" the "intent" of the artist which some educators or managers may take issue with. So be it).

When problematic comments based on biases and assumptions do come up, and that’s where those educator tools come in. One tool I like a lot is inspired by Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), which is a student centered methodology for looking at art. Part of the method involves asking the question, “What do you see that makes you say that?” when a student makes a comment the includes an inference. So if a student says something like, “I think that painting looks weird,” you can respond by saying okay cool, what do you see that makes you say that, putting the onus on them to back it up. That being said, while we like to say there’s no right or wrong answers in art, sometimes we do get a problematic comment and my position is I don’t want to validate those, but I do want to turn it into a learning moment. So when that does happen, I’ll say something like, “okay, you’re making an observation based on a racial stereotype xyz; what do you see that makes you say that?” More often than not the student is forced into this “aha” moment of oh, I don’t really know why I think that, maybe I need to readjust my thinking.

Another tool we have is language. It’s our primary mode of teaching, and I think museum educators need to shift from thinking of verbal discourse as non-neutral terrain; it’s either helping or it’s hindering. I’m digging into this idea more in dissertation research, but my pilot data suggests that the more explicit educators can be in our facilitation of dialogue with our language, the more productive our conversations will be. So, for example, most museum educators paraphrase each student comment (or I think they should!)-- those paraphrases are great opportunities to insert appropriate language and vocabulary. In other words, we can keep our teaching student centered, without mirroring their biases.

Q: What are several steps that we can/should take to be better allies/educators within the arts world specifically?

Something I have observed is that not only is it really tough for POC to get through the doors and actually hired in meaningful museum positions, but also the culture of privilege, exclusivity, and whiteness that pervades museums makes it really hard to sustain POC in those positions should they get there. Museums have a problem with distinguishing between performing diversity and actually achieving equity. Cultural change needs to happen on every level of management, but it begins on an individual level, and requires a transfer of power. It just does. So whenever I see a job posting I post it right away in a job forum specifically for job seekers of color. I share my salary info. I recommend POC to positions. I’m super honest with my POC colleagues about which institutions/managers I know of who are supportive and progressive, and which aren’t. I’m not in a position right now to be hiring people or shifting workplace culture on a large scale, but I’ve worked hard to identify what power I do have and try and push the needle towards equity in the ways that I can.

But to all those managers out there, whatever your field, I encourage you to rethink the qualifications you use to hire, and the culture you create in your workplaces. I’m pretty obsessed with Nonprofit AF, a blog on inclusion in the nonprofit world and can recommend the following articles on shifting those practices:

Our hiring practices are inequitable and need to change

When you don’t disclose salary range on a job posting, a unicorn loses its wings

Basing pay on salary history is a harmful, borderline-unethical practice that we need to abolish

Why we need to end the culture of “Cultural Fit”

Q: Traditionally, introductory art history classes focus on works within the Western canon and there is a specific way that instructors analyze the works and that students remember the works. Simply put, these intro classes prioritize rote memorization of a very specific way about thinking about/talking about art. What do you think that institutions can do to change or amend the way we teach introductory courses to tackle issues of race?

Representation is key. At every moment of time in every place POC were making art, being represented in art, funding art projects, etc. It is a fallacy to suggest that like, all Classical art is of White people by White people. There were tons of POC Greeks and Romans hustling and making cool shit. I follow medievalpoc on Twitter, which is an account that highlights contributions by POC during the Middle Ages in Europe, an era we traditionally think of being exclusively White…  because that’s what we’ve been taught it was. Professors need to stop being lazy and seek out those opportunities to break out of the canon.

I think art history professors need to also address the circumstances contributing to lack of representation in the arts. Like, cool let’s study Jeffersonian architecture but if you’re not also talking about the Black enslaved people who built it then you’re doing it wrong.

For what it’s worth, I don’t mind the rote memorization. I sort of love knowing(ish) when a thing was made, or what museum I could find it in. In a weird way I find that information has served me pretty well. But if you’re going to make me memorize what year Stonehenge was made then you better also make me memorize the dates and provenances of those Dogon masks too.

Q: How have your teaching practices evolved as a result of grappling with this issue head-on?

I experienced a big shift in my teaching after collecting my pilot data during an interview with a POC educator and she said something I'll never forget. I was asking about her thoughts on the pedagogical role of discomfort (it was something I was big into at the time, problematizing discomfort in a field that prizes "soft" skills, emotional intelligence etc). And she was like yeah, I get it, some kids need to made to feel uncomfortable in order to shift their thinking, but for the most part (I'm paraphrasing her response here) I mostly work with POC students and to be honest I want to think about how to get them to feel comfortable in this space that traditionally doesn't feel safe or comfortable for them. How can I help make it feel like it's theirs too? She cited a Banksy quote, "art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” And since then I've really shifted my teaching to thinking about well okay, I'm clearly White -- these Black or Latinx kids do not need me to tell them about racism-- they live with it. Yes, I can facilitate the conversation if it's coming up for them, but if the students want to talk about color, or shapes, or what random stories or emotions are emerging from an abstract work or whatever I'm open to that too-- basically what's going to help these kids feel some ownership here.

That all being said, if it's a bunch of White kids from the suburbs or whatever, believe me they will be made to feel at least a little uncomfortable at some point during my tour. I see my role as someone who strives towards allyship as a White person to be someone who models what it looks like for a White person to talk about their own complicity, think about systems of oppression on both individual and systemic levels, and ultimately help students take the next step to think in terms of: what can I do?

Q: What is one thing that you wish the general public knew about the art world?

So many things! If I had to pick one I think I wish more museum visitors understood that the label text on the wall offers just one story, one way to interpret the work. It’s probably an interpretation guided by lots of curatorial research, precedence, art historical facts, etc. Which is all great and important, but those interpretations don’t take into account our own stories, our memories, associations, questions, problems, wonderings, etc etc. I encourage visitors to not even read the labels at first; who cares who made it-- just walk into the room and go up to the work that draws you in the most. What’s drawing you to it? Where do your eyes want to go? What knowledges can YOU bring to help you interpret its significance for YOU? A lot of people approach art like there’s one answer, but the thing is I’ve spoken to artists and nothing excites them more than observing visitors react personally to their work and see things in it that the artist never even saw themselves. At the end of the day the best art is art that offers endless entry points, and I wish visitors felt more empowered to make meaning in a way that makes sense to them, not the way dictated by others.