In his article on cultural inclusion, Kevin Coffee makes some points that are still relevant today. Coffee discusses the role museums take in building public perception of cultures and social distinctions. Something interesting Coffee brings up is the exclusion of social practices that distinguish divisions between cultures, particularly with the example of French paintings showing up in ‘art’ museums and Mangbetu sculptures placed in ‘ethnographic’ museums. The distinction between two objects that share the same traits of artistic expression yet are classified under different contexts of display brings up the nuanced way in which museums can create divisions between cultures.

I think something surprising from the reading was the contention that sometimes arises from authority outside of the museum. Coffee gives examples of exhibitions that faced retaliation from the government when presenting narratives that did not align with the “social and global status quo.” The idea of restriction for the museum director was a surprise to me as I always considered they had full reign of their exhibitions. I hadn’t considered the relationship between the museum and the government — I understand that some are owned by the government and others funded by the government, and some are private institutions. To consider progressions of inclusivity in museums, I wonder which type of museum can more easily change for inclusion. A government-owned museum likely has the funding and resources to alter and establish new exhibitions and perform outreach to the public, but would have to get approval in order to do so. A private museum would have more free reins but would they have less resources to do so?

In terms of change since 2008 — Coffee calls for museums to display “the ingenuities that continually arise in the shadows or as subversions of the established narratives.” I do think that this is still an issue, but is gradually being improved upon since the time the article was released. I visited the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard last spring for an anthropology class, and one of the topics we discussed was the rights of ownership and narrative. One of the changes the museum saw over the years (it might have occurred before 2008, but was a change regardless) was commissioning individuals to write about the objects from their tribes, and replace the placards that were originally written by an outside ethnographer. Having someone who has interacted personally with something like a war bonnet creates a narrative that expresses the background of its origin rather than the narrative constructed by an outside view.

I think that one other thing Coffee mentions as an issue has been improved upon from 2008 to today, which is the inclusivity of visiting museums and their role in the public. Coffee writes that “practitioners should work to better understand the specificity of social diversity by investigating the potential for museum use alongside the broader range of practice patterns and cultural distinctions lived by the individual groups in the encompassing society.” Coffee discusses the way that leisure constraints differ between social groups, and that museums as a leisure activity are exclusive institutions for middle and upper classes. I think that since then, the role of museums has improved with the development of outreach and the rise of museums as more than just a collection of displayed objects. Lots of museums now remove the barrier of admission for younger groups and also hold events for education and engagement.