Cultura Conscious Paula Santos

What is the responsibility of museums in the wake of the Capitol Insurrection? Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell, a DC-based cultural equity strategist, joins us to talk about how critical museums are in the struggle to dismantle white supremacy. We originally spoke with Kayleigh about her practice in late 2020 and planned to release that conversation on January 6, 2021. Instead, she graciously joined us for a new recording to process the violent images of that day, the care museum workers deserve from their institutions, and reflect on the power of collective action in this moment. 
Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell is a cultural equity and audience engagement strategist with over 10 years of museum and nonprofit experience at the intersections of social justice and racial equity. As Head of Public Programs with the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery she is responsible for leading new outreach and inclusion initiatives towards developing new audiences and cultivating public engagement. In the wake of Covid-19 she leads an internal task force towards reopening planning and strategies. She received her Bachelor of Art in Art History from the University of Maryland, College Park and Master of Art in Museum Studies from George Washington University. She is an alum of the Claremont University Museum Leadership Institute, formerly the Getty.
Follow Kayleigh on Twitter and Instagram @KayleighBinDC. Learn more about Kayleigh’s work at curatorally.com.
Show Notes Museum Workers Speak https://www.instagram.com/museumworkersspeak/?hl=en
Museums and Race https://museumsandrace.org/2021/01/08/questions-in-the-face-of-sedition/
Museums as Sites for Social Action (MASS Action) https://www.museumaction.org/

In community organizing work, there are no shortcuts or gimmicks, only relationships built on trust and continued investment. The Lawndale Pop-Up Spot is a community-led museum located in a shipping container at the Spaulding Memorial Garden, a community garden in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood. Chelsea Ridley and Jonathan Kelley, the museum’s founders, trace the evolution of this project from an idea seeded in the classroom to a living space rooted in a collective vision. Along the way, they highlight moments of uncertainty, talk about forging authentic partnerships, and offer thoughts on museums of the future.
Learn more at lawndalepopupspot.org or reach out to them at lawndalepopupspot@gmail.com. Follow Lawndale Pop-Up Spot on Twitter @lawndalepopup, Instagram @lawndalepopupspot, and on Facebook.
Follow Chelsea on Twitter @ckridley and Jonathan @jk_museums
Show Notes
The Museum As Soup Kitchen: a paper about Museums, Responsiveness to Community Need and Social Service by Elaine Heumann Gurian http://www.egurian.com/omnium-gatherum/museum-issues/community/the-museum-as-soup-kitchen-a-paper-about-museums-responsiven
Museu de Favela https://www.museudefavela.org/
Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project https://p-nap.org/
Gardeneers https://gardeneers.org/
Men Making a Difference https://www.austinweeklynews.com/News/Articles/2-6-2018/N.-Lawndale-group-reclaims-lots-and-lives-/
National Alliance for the Empowerment of the Formerly Incarcerated https://naefimentor.wixsite.com/naefi
 

In this mini-episode, Paula talks with Gwendolyn Fernandez, a recovering museum educator and fellow Museum Workers Speak organizer, about embracing collaboration and breaking up with your career. Gwen will be joining the Cultura Conscious team to produce a series of new episodes featuring inspiring museum and culture workers. Look for fresh conversations on the first Wednesday of every month. 
Gwen has a long fascination with what goes on behind the scenes to transform ideas into experiences that enrich our lives. As a museum educator, she focuses on developing programs, designing interpretive strategies, and fostering diverse teams to serve audiences of all ages and abilities. In 2020, she began organizing with Museum Workers Speak and collaborating with Paula. Gwen holds a B.A. in Art History and French from Hollins University and an M.A. in Museum Studies from The George Washington University. She has held positions at the Supreme Court of the United States, the National Gallery of Art, and Phoenix Art Museum. Gwen fuels her podcast obsession with distance running, gardening, and walks with her three dogs around Phoenix, Arizona.

Loss has been a constant over the past few weeks. Writer, educator and theatermaker Diane Exavier joins me to talk about personal and collective grief during a pandemic. We talk about how coping in our current moment requires some of the resiliency we’ve built through other experiences of loss, and yet those well-trodden maps still fall short of helping us navigate the present. Diane discusses how she’s processing being a writer right now, especially since she defines poetry as being about the encounter and being obsessed with the truth. Plus we finally get to talk about 90 Day Fiance, the best show on television. 
Diane Exavier creates performances, public programs, and games that challenge and invite audiences to participate in an active theater that rejects passive reception. Her work has been presented at The Lark, No Longer Empty, Bushwick Starr, Haiti Cultural Exchange, Westmont College, The Flea Theater, Bowery Poetry Club, West Chicago City Museum, New Urban Arts, and more. Her writing appears in The Atlas Review and The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind, amongst other publications online and in print. Diane lives and works in Brooklyn. You can find her on Twitter where she tweets about basketball, poetics, and grief.
Twitter: @peacheslechat
Literature and Television for the Covid-19 Age
Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
Poetry is Not a Luxury by Audre Lorde 
The Leftovers 
90 Day Fiance
Dispatches from Elsewhere 
Supernova Era by Cixin Liu
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Mayra Cecilia Palafox shares with me why connecting with people and meeting their needs is so important to her. We discuss why humility is a useful practice for the present moment. When dealing with the uncertainty of a worldwide pandemic, what strengths do we have as cultural workers that prepare us to weather challenges as they present themselves? We also welcome a special guest, José Alfredo Guerrero, a musician and educator who reminds us of the strength and joy we gain from music. 
 
Show Notes: 
Instagram: @mayraceciliapalafox 
Instagram: @josealfredochicago
Facebook: Madera Once
Met Museum Prepares for $100 Million Loss and Closure Till July
No Tengo Dinero - Juan Gabriel 

Jackie Peterson, a Seattle-based exhibit developer and independent curator, is passionate about the ways exhibits can tell important stories in ways that are compelling to the public. Jackie grounds her practice on the trust she develops with communities whose stories she’s working to tell. Her research and development process adds another layer to the necessity of community engagement in cultural work. In particular, Jackie is invested in telling stories that benefit the black community and add nuance to the public’s understanding of African-American history. Like many of us invested in cultural organizations and museums, this work is deeply personal to her. 
After spending much of her early career in nonprofit fundraising and working with the NYC Department of Education and teacher certification, Jackie realized that she truly belonged in a creative industry. She landed in the museum field mostly by luck, but ultimately discovered that it combined all of the things about which she was truly passionate: lifelong learning and education, social history and storytelling, and creativity. Jackie holds undergraduate degrees in English and History from Georgetown University (Washington, DC), and has pursued graduate-level coursework in Museum Studies from New York University. 
 
Conversations Notes
Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West, performance by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco (1992) 
Northwest African American Museum's Voices of the Manhattan Project 
Follow Jackie on twitter @jp_exhibitsvcs