Paper short abstract:

How do two museums in Leipzig and Bristol open up to minority groups? Bristol was once an important side of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and now holds one of the biggest Jamaican communities outside Jamaica. Negotiations on decolonization are dialogic and conflicted, sometimes painful.

Paper long abstract:

In my dissertation, I examine how the concept of diversity is interpreted and implemented in two museums and how those processes affect programmes, audiences and organizational structures of the museums. The increasing political and societal discourse about the diversification of public institutions raises a number of questions, e.g. what are conditions under which urban cultural institutions open up to underrepresented groups and what are obstacles? How are underrepresented groups included in institutional negotiations? In my thesis, I use ethnomethodology in order to reconstruct diversification processes in two museums, one in Leipzig and one in Bristol (England). Whereas in Bristol public funding of cultural institutions requires diversity management strategies and monitoring of for example the diversity of staff, this is not required in Leipzig, which makes the comparison interesting.

From my close work with different teams in both museums, I have produced thick descriptions of their work, relations and mind sets, from which I theorize about diversification processes in the two museums. I give an overview over structures, resources and concepts of diversity strategies and show as a result how the process of diversifying challenges institutional structures, self-concepts and output. I also concentrate on postcolonial migration and how postcolonial actors are or are not integrated in the process of museum making. This is particularly salient in Bristol, as the city was once an important side of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and now holds one of the biggest Jamaican communities outside Jamaica. Negotiations on decolonization are dialogic and conflicted, sometimes painful.