Confronting Difficult Histories in Museums, Archives, and Historic Spaces

Event Details

Recently, conversations reignited around appropriate presentations of
so-called “difficult” histories like white supremacy, colonization, and other
racial injustices, and how those histories challenge long-standing, narrow,
or often inaccurate interpretations. This session dives into how museums
and other memory spaces can and must acknowledge and host those
difficult conversations and the important histories they can teach. It
challenges the idea of them as “difficult” and asks guests to explore why
we value some interpretations over others.

George Garner (he/him) earned his M.A. in Museum Studies from the
Cooperstown Graduate Program where he gained experience in museum
administration, exhibitions, and collections care at such well-known
institutions as the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and the
Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. He has dedicated his career to
exploring how museums and memory spaces can help people make
meaning from traumatic histories and use history to work actively toward
change today. Since 2012, he has served the Indiana University South
Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center, a space that, for thirty years, operated
as a segregated city-owned swimming pool.