Readying the Museum
A New Framework for Museum Accountability
Developed by a cohort of museum directors, artists and arts workers.
Administered by Arizona State University with funding from the Ford Foundation and Mellon Foundation.
About Readying the Museum
Readying the Museum (RTM) is a solutions based methodology developed by a cohort of museum directors, artists and arts workers for existential issues that impact and inhibit museum missions and practices. The model, which starts with the call for a commitment to personal transformation, provides a solutions based methodology to help effect systemic change.
ASU Art Museum Director Miki Garcia and and artist Xaviera Simmons conceived of RTM in October 2020, and it now comprises a cohort of artists and museum professionals. The cohort includes museum directors Lori Fogarty (Oakland Museum of California) and Miki Garcia (Arizona State University Art Museum), artists Cannupa Hanska Luger, Cruz Ortiz and Xaviera Simmons, and arts workers Frederick Janka (Board President, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara), George Scheer (Executive Director, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts) and Olga Viso (Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, Phoenix Art Museum).
The cohort’s work has culminated in readyingthemuseum.com and the Readying the Museum podcast, free, solutions-based resources for museums and community members. The website details the cohort’s process of confronting their own biases, building relationships with communities, and navigating internal and external dissent, among other key actions relevant to the process. In the podcast, the cohort shares learnings and processes from their years of work, providing a more accessible entry point into the model. By exploring these resources, museums and museum workers can expect to gain insight into how to build their own meaningful community relationships, reshape their modes of providing hospitality, work toward creating healthy, open work groups to address whiteness, patriarchy and other topics, and lessen the siloing of artists, arts workers, activists, directors and board members. The website also houses The Readying the Museum Journal, which commissioned a series of writers to contribute new essays.
“We are thrilled to support the ASU Art Museum — an institution vital to the arts and culture ecosystem of Arizona — as part of Readying The Museum and the urgent effort to ensure arts organizations are both representative of their local communities and engaged with them in resolving inequities. As illustrated by Mellon’s museum demographic surveys conducted in 2015 and 2018, institutional transformation remains overdue at too many of our country’s arts institutions. We are proud to join with the Ford Foundation in supporting Readying The Museum to help guide this critical work.”
— Elizabeth Alexander, President of the Andrew W. Mellon FoundationElizabeth Alexander, President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
“We are proud to support Readying the Museum and its work to ensure museums are more equitable, just and transformative spaces for all. Museums are often our first forays into understanding the arts and they provide an important lens through which we interpret the world we inhabit. It’s essential that museums adequately reflect and support the communities they serve and the workers that power them.”
— Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation
We center art and artists in the service of social good and community wellbeing.