Museums¹ can Save Lives: A Call to Action

Dear Colleagues Mankind are not held together by lies. Trust is the foundation of society. Where there is not truth, there can be no trust, and where there is no trust, there can be no society. Frederick Douglass (1869) As each day goes by, thousands of people are losing their lives, and many more are either hospitalized or homebound with COVID-19. We know that the pandemic disproportionately afflicts communities of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color [BIPOC] in the US. Around the world, it similarly has disproportionate impact on low-income groups, including historically marginalized or immigrant communities. Early in the pandemic, data from large urban centers in the US showed that Blacks and Latinx individuals were four to nine times more likely to be infected by COVID-19 than whites (Betancourt, 2020).2 These BIPOC communities not only were more likely to become infected with the virus, but also to experience more severe COVID-19-associated illness, including that requiring hospitalization, and have higher risk of death from COVID-19. So, minorities entered the pandemic with a long history of health disparities that put them at a disadvantage. Structural racism, discrimination, and the negative impact of the social determinants of health (Thakur et al., 2020) — including lower socioeconomic status, less access to education, hazardous environments — continuously undermine the health and well-being of these communities. This is compounded by minorities having less access to health care, and, when they are able to see a health care provider, often engaging with significant mistrust, or language barriers, that make it difficult to obtain high-quality care [emphasis added]. We also know that health disparities are further accentuated by persistent racism and ongoing implicit bias in healthcare delivery. Among foreign-born noncitizens, there are reports of people avoiding care (including testing and advice regarding COVID-19-like symptoms) out of fear of being deported or risking their future legal-resident status based on new federal “public charge” regulations (Figueroa et al., 2020). One facet of vaccine resistance in the USA is the product of a long history of racist experimentation (Cobb, 2020); other countries have similarly shameful stories. Delivery of authorized vaccines to protect against COVID-19 has started and will accelerate over the next months. Sadly, many members of BIPOC and migrant communities that are at high risk understandably distrust medical institutions and are least likely to accept vaccination when it becomes available to them. A Pew Research Center study (Funk & Tyson, 2020) demonstrates this in stark terms. Results from the January 2021 Kaiser Family Foundation COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor confirm vaccine hesitancy (Hamel et al., 2021). Even before the pandemic, in 2018, Ipsos asked people in nine European countries if they trust the healthcare system in their country to provide the best quality treatment. Trust in healthcare ranged from 64% in Spain to 13% in Hungary and Russia (Elflein, 2019). The American public considers museums the most trustworthy source of information in America, rated higher than local papers, nonprofit researchers, the U.S. government, and academic researchers. Museums and libraries are in a strong position to do so [restore confidence] because they remain among the most trusted public institutions in the United States and around the world. Similar findings have been found in other countries. A UK survey of museum users, including those who rarely visit, revealed a high level of trust and a widespread perception that museums have a broader role to play in society above appealing to individual visitors (Adams, 2013). Similar results were found in a Canadian study (Conrad et al., 2009). Nearly nine out of ten Canadians say they trust science museums as a source of science-related information (89%), slightly exceeding their trust in scientists (88%) and educational institutions (87%) (Ontario Science Centre, 2017; Figure 1). During the pandemic, Slover Linett Audience Research and LaPlaca Cohen collaborated on a national research and strategy initiative to support the cultural sector and help communities around the country in the context of COVID-19. The initial report, released in July 2020, is based on data from 124,000 respondents nationwide, including both a national sample and audiences of cultural organizations of varying sizes and disciplines (Benoit-Bryan et al., 2020a).4 A second report, issued in December 2020, extended the analyses through the lens of BIPOC respondents (Benoit-Bryan et al., 2020b). In addition to desiring long-term changes, the data show that Americans, especially BIPOC respondents, want cultural and arts organizations to help them now. Note the following (p. 15): A majority of Americans (55% overall) wants arts and culture organizations to become more inclusive and community- and people centered in one or more ways — and the desire for this type of change is even higher among BIPOC Americans (between 63% and 76%) and lower among White/Caucasian Americans (49%). Most Americans believe arts and culture organizations can help their communities during crises like the coronavirus by helping people laugh, relax, and stay connected; these top items don’t vary significantly by race/ethnicity. Compared to the overall population, BIPOC respondents want cultural and arts organizations to bring people of different backgrounds together, and to help them grieve and process emotions. Blacks/African Americans are more likely than other groups to say that arts and culture organizations can help their communities stay informed with trusted information. The national vaccination effort offers a unique opportunity for museums and related cultural institutions to help save lives threatened by the current pandemic. I propose a coordinated, national campaign, tentatively called Educate to Vaccinate, to leverage the public trust placed in our institutions by making them active community partners in vaccine education, sources of health information and, where possible, as vaccination sites, in addition to promoting public engagement through related programming and exhibitions. To this end, the leadership of museums and related cultural institutions should consider forging immediate partnerships with social and civic sectors such as libraries and food banks (e. g., Feeding America) to develop and coordinate vaccine messaging, media, and logistics. To reinforce the effort to engage minority groups, these campaigns must involve strategic collaborations with appropriate networks and service organizations. In the US, for example, these could include Black, Latinx, Asian American, Native American, and other BIPOC-serving or “culturally specific” museums and their cultural partners. Larger institutions can also productively use open and creative collaborations with smaller, community-embedded institutions (Semmel, 2019). With dedicated leadership by museums and related cultural organizations, such a public health initiative may go far beyond vaccine education: It can be a coordinated, multi-dimensional campaign that positions cultural institutions as engaged, public-spirited sites of both physical and emotional healing. Just as many cultural institutions have promoted voter registration and some have become voting sites, today museums and related cultural institutions are well-placed to lead public learning programs about vaccination and facilitate them across all populations. We should not delay discussions of scope and implementation by debates about whether institutional “missions” encompass this type of initiative. Museums have the tools, skills, and experience to play a unique and pivotal role in this pandemic by launching a creative campaign for vaccination education and assistance. Lives are at stake and we should pool our talents and resources to move quickly forward! I am grateful to Tamara L. Brent, Avi Decter, Peter Linett and Geoff Ward for encouraging this effort and to colleagues at the National Association Museum Exhibition (NAME) Western Region Coffee Hour for valuable discussions. Zahava D. Doering ( [email protected] ), Editor Emerita, Curator: The Museum Journal, is Senior Social Scientist, Thinc Design, Inc., New York, New York, formerly Senior Social Scientist, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., USA.

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