Towards a National Museum of Disability History and Culture
Why is a National Museum of Disability History and Culture needed?
The American story is told in museums. If you visit the National Mall in Washington, D.C., you can visit the National Museum of American History, the National Air and Space Museum, the National Museum of Natural History, and other locations that teach and celebrate different aspects of American life. These museums exist outside of Washington, D.C., too.
Many national museums focus on the American story through the lens of identity: The National Museum of African American History, The National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of the American Latino (in development), and the National Women’s History Museum (in development) are some examples. Outside of DC, museums and historical sites like the Stonewall Inn Monument and Visitors Center (New York, NY) and the Legacy Museum/National Memorial of Peace and Justice (Montgomery, Alabama) memorialize the stories of both oppression and triumph over oppression of diverse identities.
But the disability community has no national museum.
If you search “disability and museums”, you find information about making museums accessible to the disability community. I’m not downplaying the importance of making museums and other public spaces as accessible as possible for persons of all bodies and minds. While the disability community is allowed to enter places of national learning and memory, our learning, our memory, and our stories continue to be a national afterthought.
Too often, disability is not given the status of identity. Non-disabled society regards disability as a problem, a problem managed by professionals, instead of a lived experience of its own. Yet disability impacts the experience of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, and ethnic origin in ways that do not impact non-disabled members of these groups. The disabled community is so diverse that a national museum is needed to encompass its complexity.
The disability community has its own history and its own heroic figures. The last few years have seen the loss of powerful activists like Patty Berne, Judy Heumann, Bob Kafka, Stacey Park Milburn, and Alice Wong. They deserve to be honored and remembered at the same level as non-disabled heroes and heroines.
Too often, disability history is regarded as tragic and depressing. There are stories of horrifying treatment, such as incarceration in institutions, abuse, eugenics, and euthanasia. But the story of disability goes far beyond these topics. The disability community navigates the structural ableism that limits community participation in society and takes enormous pride in its creativity, innovation, and problem-solving ability. Within the museum world, structural ableism looks like:
A preference for stories about non-disabled history makers (and if the history makers were disabled, the details of their disability are downplayed or presented as an overcoming narrative).
Preferences for the achievements of non-disabled artists, designers, scientists, politicians, soldiers, and activists (also, see above)
Preferences for white male stories and achievements. Structural ableism is intimately entwined with the oppressions of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other socially oppressed groups (immigrants, incarcerated people, unhoused, and poor).
Museums across the country are under threat, with warnings from the federal level to strip away stories that challenge American ideals. There is no disability history without DEIA and an honest reckoning with past and ongoing oppressions on the community.
We need to stop asking for permission to come in and build institutions and structures of our own. There is exciting work happening among grassroots groups to preserve disability history, celebrate disability culture, and share it widely. We are building the infrastructure for the national celebration of the disability community - past, present, and future.
Would you like to join us?
For more information, contact Diana (“Dee”) Katovitch, Secretary of the Friends of the National Museum of Disability History and Culture
historyworthmentioning@gmail.com
Please read “Together is the Way” by Nieta Greene, Publisher of Nothing About Us Without Us. Nieta is looking for feedback to make the publication feel more like a community.
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Are you aware of the museum of the blind people's movement, spearheaded by the National Federation Of The Blind, to be constructed in Baltimore?http://museum.nfb.org/node/95
Yes, I heard about that work! There are several museums in process or newly opened.