Bring on the pie and potato salad. Break out the lawn games. We’re having a reunion and I don’t mind saying it’s about time.
It’s been three long years since the last in-person NEMA Conference. Incredible. Newborns are now toddlers. Freshmen are juniors. We are all a little older and hopefully wiser. Without doubt we have all changed.
I don’t know about you, but I’m anticipating the 2022 NEMA Conference with a mix of excitement, anxiety, and maybe a little sadness. I’m excited to reconnect with everyone, of course, to savor the energy that comes only with physical proximity. I’m just a wee bit anxious, sort of like the first day of school, wondering what everyone’s going to wear and whether it will be awkward to reconnect. And I’m sad to think of the consequences of the last three years: the lives that have been lost, the careers upended, the deep wounds sustained in our society.
The only other time NEMA took a hiatus from in-person conferences was during World War Two. Notes from the NEMA archive reflect the reasons: museum people were either in uniform or trying to contend with the challenges of war on the home front. In the context, a museum conference just didn’t seem that important.
This time around, I think the NEMA Conference is very important. Museums have shown themselves to be more vital than ever. Coming together to share what we’ve learned over the last three years therefore has urgency. So many of our institutions have served their communities and their missions with distinction, providing services, programs, and points of connection for folks who have needed the truths that only museums can convey. I’m looking forward to hearing your stories, sharing your challenges, and celebrating your life-improving contributions.
For our part, NEMA has changed as well since we last saw each other, and I’m eager to tell you about it. For the past 18 months NEMA board and staff have been engaged in an intensive DEAIJ journey to discover how we can be more authentic and effective change agents supporting the field. We continue to investigate our individual and collective biases, as well as the organizational structures through which we have unwittingly sustained white supremacy. The process has been both exhilarating and humbling. We realize the work is just beginning.
Thanks to your input through membership surveys, which informed multiple workshops and wordsmithing sessions of the NEMA board and staff, we now have an entirely new, more relevant mission statement, a series of values statements that encapsulate our commitment to creating a better museum world, and the start of an equity plan that will underpin NEMA’s strategy and programs for many years. We will unveil these with more ceremony at the NEMA Conference.
I think we’ve all come to realize that doing business as usual just won’t hack it any longer. There is no going back to pre-pandemic ways of operating a museum. Like it or not, our missions need retooling to take into account all that’s been disrupted over the past few years and what that means for our museums moving forward. This issue of Museums Now explores that topic well and I’m sure it will be a big part of our conversations in November.
So I encourage you to consider joining us in Springfield. We are presenting more than 60 sessions and events, including a number of behind-the-scenes tours, plus informal meet-ups for you to reconnect with friends and make new ones at the same time. Two things I’d particularly like to call out. First, be sure to drop by the Career Center, a new space at the NEMA Conference featuring career conversations, resume reviews, and resources. Second, I’m really looking forward to hearing our keynote speaker, historian and equity consultant Richard Josey, as he provokes our thoughts on “What Kind of Ancestor Will You Be?”
See you at the reunion. We have a lot of catching up to do.
Dan Yaeger