Critical Theories of Children's Museums: Unforgetting Institutional Harms and Imagining Equitable Futures

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Children’s museums are valued places of informal learning. However, this distinct institutional type has received limited critical examination, leaving the field liable to perpetuate harms against children and families (Carpenter, 2024). This symposium aims to problematize the children’s museum by convening critical theoretical perspectives which might help us reflect on the past, present, and future of children’s museums’ practices and purposes. Interdisciplinary presentations will highlight conceptual and empirical work examining children’s museums as racialized spaces, their institutional logics and racial framing, and how children’s museums engage with difficult knowledge. Through presentations and discussion, we will bring theoretical tools to this context of playful learning to imagine different futures and “struggle against the present state of things” (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, 2013).

Sub Unit

• SIG-Informal Learning Environment Research

Chair

• Alecia Dawn Young, University of Pittsburgh

Papers

• Conceived, Imagined, Lived: Bringing a Theory of Racialized Spaces to the Children’s Museum - Tarah Connolly, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• The Racialized Organization: Children’s Museums and the (Re)Production of Racial Inequity through Organizational Practices - Ashlyn Salvage, University of Pittsburgh

• Beyond Museum Neutrality and Innocence: Toward a “not-so-perfect” Pedagogy of Implication - Lisa Farley, York University; Debbie Sonu, Hunter College - CUNY; Sandra Chang-Kredl, Concordia University; Gillian Parekh, York University

Session Organizer

• Tarah Connolly, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Discussant

• Alecia Dawn Young, University of Pittsburgh