Bringing History to the People

In efforts to democratize museums and other cultural spaces lies an ever-present question: who has access to the space? This can be viewed in terms of physical location - a museum near a public transportation hub is much more accessible than one on a dirt road in the country - but also in terms of economics. Generally speaking, museums charge admission. And if they don't, it costs money to request off from work and travel to the museum to visit it.

In From Storefront to Monument: Tracing the Public History of the Black Museum Movement by Andrea Burns, access to museums is discussed in relation to four African American museums: the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago, the International Afro-American Museum in Detroit, the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum in Washington, D.C., and the African American Museum of Philadelphia. All founded over a period of fifteen years, from the early 1960s to the United States' bicentennial in 1976, each museum had to contend with questions of access.

The first three museums, founded by African Americans for their neighborhoods, faced urban renewal and its disproportionate impact on communities of color in America's major cities. To combat the division of what had been thriving neighborhoods by newly constructed highways, the International Afro-American Museum (IAM) and the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum (ANM) developed mobile exhibits, meant to reach members of the Detroit and Washington, D.C. black communities who for whatever reason could not access the physical museums. The DuSable also sent volunteers into Chicago's South Side, carrying models of museum exhibits. Instead of relying on the people to come to the museum, these neighborhood museums brought art and history to the people.

If we want to make museums more accessible to all people in our communities, how do we do it? Physically moving the site is expensive and may remove access from one group of people to bring it to another. Mobile exhibits, however, can travel to communities and bring them history they may not have known of otherwise. The DuSable Museum currently has a van that runs during warmer months, telling the story of its namesake Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable and ensuring that children in Chicago, no matter their ability to travel to the physical museum, still get to learn their history.