Can We Please Stop Saying that Museums are “Trusted”?
It’s been about a year since the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and Wilkening Consulting published “Museums and Trust 2021.” The report states that museums continue to be regarded as “highly trustworthy.” This statement made me uncomfortable last year and continues to bother me now.
What do I think of trust?
I believe trust is a good thing. Trust is fundamental to love and respect–both in loving and respecting yourself and others. It requires humility and vulnerability. But, trust is only positive to me as an unnamed, underlying quality of relationships. As soon as trust needs to be named, spoken, or labeled, my reaction turns very negative.
When the word “trust” comes up in conversation, I immediately become distrustful or at least skeptical. For example, the phrase “Trust me, I know what I’m doing” is so prevalent that it is described in the Urban Dictionary as indicating a person should not be trusted. Also prevalent in books, movies, reality TV, etc. are the questions, “Do you trust me?” and “Don’t you trust me?” Asking either of these questions is a manipulative exercise of power over someone.
So, when the word “trust” is paired with museums, as in “Museums and Trust 2021” report, it immediately makes me think that “trust” will be utilized by a museum in a manipulative way. I imagine museums would say they will utilize trust for the benefit of audiences and society. But the skeptic in me worries about museums utilizing trust as an exercise of power, whether intentionally or not, in ways that do not truly benefit audiences and society.
What do visitors think about museums and trust?
Over the last year, several experiences in my work with Kera Collective have brought me back to thoughts about the “Museums and Trust 2021” report. Two specific moments highlight a lack of trust in museums by current or potential visitors. These moments are vivid in my memory because they are first-hand accounts of people’s experiences with museums. I have tried to anonymize my experiences below, which has stripped away the vividness of these experiences to readers:
(1) I led focus groups with museum constituents who were completely deflated by a museum’s interpretative strategy that unintentionally perpetuated some white supremacist narratives while claiming to do the opposite. After showing focus group participants some interpretive materials, one participant begged me, “Please, tell me you have something better to show us.”
(2) In interviews about museum visitors’ takeaways from an exhibition, I always ask at the end, “Is there anything else you want to share with the museum?” In one case, a visitor asked me to voice the need for enhanced pay and protection for the museum’s staff–something completely unrelated to the exhibition but important for them to communicate about the museum’s practices.
These examples are from different institutions in different cities, and both arose from conversations in which people never used the word “trust” but implied the lack thereof.
Why do we care about museums (or anything) and trust?
Trust is coveted in many fields. Therefore, there is an abundance of studies of trust, such as trust in government, trust in media, and trust in elections among just a few. But why?
The crux of the matter is that we care about trust because it affects behavior. If you trust someone or something, you make yourself vulnerable to them. Vulnerability isn’t a bad thing, but it does affect power dynamics. And, power dynamics influence behavior.
Ultimately, museums want to influence behavior. We often quote Stephen Weil and his essays digging into the questions of why museums matter. In fact, the “Museums and Trust 2021” report itself emphasizes that museums’ trustworthiness makes them able to influence public attitude and behavior. For that reason, the report is a good advocacy tool to fundraise for museums at the government level as well as from philanthropic organizations. It may also be catalyzing for museum practitioners to know their work can make a difference in people’s lives.
The power of trust to influence behavior is a big responsibility.
What does trust in museums mean today?
Maybe it is the lens through which I have been operating lately, but conversations about museums and trust seem to be more present in the media today than I recall in the past. In part, I think this is due to more critical examination of the museum practice through investigative journalism. As Lina mentioned in her recent post, How Can Museums Respectfully Engage with their Looted Objects?, a Last Week Tonight with John Oliver episode drew attention to looted objects within collections and museum practitioners’ evasion of repatriation. Additionally, back in 2020, Malcolm Gladwell produced two Revisionist History podcast episodes critical of museum practices: Dragon Psychology 101 and Hedwig's Lost Van Gogh.
The broader media’s attention on museum practice feels important. I think it is creating more astute consumers of museums and their practices, which may be why I sense a greater lack of trust in museum practices in my experiences interfacing with people through Kera Collective’s work as audience researchers. While the media’s examination of practices may dilute “trust” in museums, I believe it is good in terms of creating accountability for more ethical and inclusive museum practices. Trust comes with responsibility.
How should we talk about museums and trust?
My final thought is that the museum field should stop calling museums “trusted” or “trustworthy” in both their public-facing as well as internal-facing work. This language is suggestive of a fixed mindset, which I think is detrimental to the industry.
For example, in a recent meeting for a Kera Collective impact-driven strategy project, a museum leader said one of their institution’s distinct qualities is that they are trusted by the community. They said there is “empirical data” that museums, in general, are trusted (not pointing to a specific study of their institution). This raised red flags for me. If museum leaders default to priding their institution as trustworthy, they are operating in a fixed mindset. Therefore, they are unlikely to embrace the humility and vulnerability of the learning mindset that is essential for cultivating and maintaining trust.
And I repeat, trust must be cultivated and maintained. Trust is not fixed or guaranteed. Like inclusive practice, museum practitioners should embrace that trust building is an ongoing endeavor that has no end. The extent to which trust building is needed also changes daily based on the complex systems of people and institutions operating in the world. It is through actions and not words that trust building occurs.
Author’s note: As I was cleaning out my inbox on January 5, 2023, I came across an American Alliance of Museums email about the top five posts of 2022 from the Center for the Future of Museums blog. One of the top posts was "What Does it Mean to Trust a Museum?" by John Voiklis and John Fraser, research colleagues at Knology. There is a lot of synergy between what they wrote and what I wrote, so I wanted to be sure to connect to their post for others who may be diving deep into this topic.
