Comparing The Walters Art Museum And The Baltimore Museum Of Art

In the podcast “Museums as White Spaces,” Arun Venugopal discusses how racial minorities can perceive museums and galleries as unwelcoming to them. Even the residents of a city like Baltimore feel unwelcome in museums in their neighborhoods like the Walters Art Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA). Many of the world’s greatest museums have existed for many years; they hold long standing traditions and have striven to maintain their status as keepers of collections and public educators, yet they have done little to spur public interaction, reach out to their local communities or make themselves truly welcoming to all. One way museums can become more focused on community-centered engagement and inclusive practice is by initiating active
This features and the museums’ distance from their local communities in culture and atmosphere can make many potential visitor feel that the space is not one for them. Museums in some communities virtual empty of locales because they have no hand or investment of any kind in it. However, by giving the public the opportunity to be actively involved the museum’s activities, a museum becomes relevant and meaningful to their communities. A good example of this can be seen in the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA), mentioned in McLean’s “Whose Questions, Whose Conversations?”. This museum has reworked itself into a places important to its community by welcoming local teenagers to co-curate an exhibit in its Gallery of California Art in 2009, called Cool Remixed. By getting these local teens involved in the creation of the exhibit, they not only made the exhibit, and hence the museum, mean something to them, their families and their friends, but also communicated to all the public that the museum is a welcoming
It gives museums chances to be a part of something bigger than themselves, to be a functioning part of the community and influencing the lives of the people in it. The Baltimore Museum of Art’s exhibit titled Imagining Home is an example of this. The Imagining Home exhibit uses paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, textiles, and works on paper from all over the world to typify the themes of facades and thresholds, domestic interiors, and arrivals and departures. The museum even went further, however, and established the Center for Home Movies, a virtual archive for the home movies of local residents that can be viewed by all online. This center allows community residents to bring the BMA to their homes and give them a glimpse into that world. By building an exhibit around the idea of home and creating the Center for Home Movies, the BMA is able to not only bring in locals attracted by a relatable and open-ended concept, but also to be brought to the homes of their resident through home movies. It allows the museum to be immerse in the community and gives locals the opportunity to reflect on themselves and the lives of their