Bold, activist, non-neutral: leading the national LGBTQ+ museum

Thanks so much for having me, Carol.

It's great to be here.

Now, look, when we look at museum leadership today, one of the emerging models is a more, if I could call it a horizontal structure.

We've heard from two previous speakers on the subject of museum leadership, and they've both questioned both hierarchical structures and the model of the single heroic leader, if I can put it that way.

At the LGBTQ Plus Museum, you are promoting what you call flattened hierarchies.

So how does this work in practice?

You know, so much of the work of the LGBTQ plus movement for lived and legal equality was done using consensus and collaborative decision making.

And so as a museum that's born of that movement, we're really trying to retain that ethos in our work and in the culture that we're building.

There's no question that roles are important in a system, and most decisions are not going to be made collectively, especially if you're going to meet ambitious deadlines or goals.

But many decisions can be influenced by a broader set of stakeholders if you build in the space for consultation.

And so as we're growing from a tiny organization where four to five staff could sit together in most meetings, work collectively to... solve any problem across the organization and into a mid-sized organization where that's no longer practical.

We're just trying to build in space and processes where multiple cross-divisional participants can have a voice and influence outcomes in any given situation.

So, for example, we follow the work of Polly McKenna-Kress and Janet Kamen, who wrote the book Creating Exhibitions and modeled a collective exhibition development process.

where everyone around the table in an exhibition development moment is an advocate for either an idea, an audience sector, or a part of the organization.

And decision-making is clearly made by the exhibition developer or the designer, depending on what the decision pertains to.

But in regular generative conversations over time, everyone around the table has a chance to contribute to shape the content and the design.

So we've brought that into our exhibition development process.

And we've also brought that same model into other aspects of the work.

So, for example, we have a weekly 90 minute all staff meeting.

And we use that meaning in different ways.

Either we learn together, watch a video, read an article and discuss it just as a way to build the team.

We imagine together, we vision together.

And we use that space very intentionally to build the culture we want to have.

And so we'll have conversations where people talk about past workplace situations that left them feeling sidelined or diminished in their role.

And we talk about how we can counter that or make sure that we're not doing that as we grow our organization.