Meet your museum colleagues from sites around New England! It’s often too easy for colleagues to feel isolated in their own institutions—we hope this feature will help close the gap. We also hope that it reinforces your own joy in your work and encourages you to recognize your own positive impacts.
Eliza Brown is the Shop Manager at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Like the museum, the bookstore and shop have been taking a critical look at their collections and offerings they highlight in the space. Get to learn more about Eliza with the below interview.
What is one of your early memories of a museum? Did you always want to work in the museum field?
My parents were always taking me to museums and, in particular, historical homes and sites, all throughout my childhood and I grew up with a real respect and love for history, but it was actually children’s books that drew me into a career at a museum. I studied children’s literature in undergraduate and graduate school and so The Carle, a museum that collects, preserves, and exhibits original illustration, provided the perfect opportunity and environment for me to connect, expand, and share my knowledge and love of children’s books.
The pandemic has shown the importance for the front of house staff in museums and related organizations. What kinds of support do museum store staff get from the museum?
The past two years have been incredibly hard on frontline workers everywhere. At The Carle we were extremely fortunate to have the support and reassurance from the Museum to keep the pre-pandemic paid work hours for front of house staff, throughout temporary closures and reduced public hours. The store staff pivoted so smoothly to expanding virtual and distanced offerings, like curbside pickup for our online shop, virtual book events, social media outreach and videos like our bookstore’s BookTalk series. Upon reopening to the public, the front of house workers really learned to advocate for ourselves, asking the administration for what we need, whether it was a lower capacity for guests inside our small bookstore, hiring more staff to help relieve overworked and exhausted staff, or de-escalation training to help navigate the constant tension and stress of working with the public during a major health pandemic. The museum’s dedication to prioritizing DEIA work has really helped ease and open the communication between departments and the administration has been supportive trying to find ways to relieve front of the house stress.
In what ways are the Eric Carle shop staff integrated into the museum’s mission, programming, and exhibitions?
The museum’s mission for encouraging guests of all ages to read and create art, and foster an ever-growing audience passionate about children’s literature, is integral to all work we do in the store. The selection of books and products in the store supports the exhibitions, events and art projects happening throughout the museum. The bookshop staff promotes and helps facilitate author events and book signings, both in-person and virtually through social media and our website. Perhaps most importantly, the bookshop staff are frontline liaisons with the museum community. Through our own enthusiasm, constantly growing knowledge and love of books, and through the relationships we build and nurture with visiting authors and illustrators, our Museum Members and guests, we are constantly reinforcing and spreading the museum’s mission worldwide.
The Museum Store has a range of items, books, gifts, fabric, and much more. There are also a number of Recommended Reading Lists, including: Black Voices: Picture Books as Antiracist Resources, Asian American Pacific Islander Voices, Latinx Voices, and Native American Indigenous Voices. How does the museum create the Recommended Reading lists?
The Carle is so fortunate to have so many educated and knowledgeable booksellers and educators on its staff to create our reading lists. We are constantly learning, listening, critiquing and editing the selection in our bookstore to make sure we are offering the very best in diverse representation of authors, illustrators and experiences in the books we carry. It’s an ongoing process, but we want to make sure we are highlighting and celebrating underrepresented voices in children’s book publishing and making it easy for shoppers to find these books. To make the lists, we do a great deal of research, identifying gaps in our current collections and seek out books to fill those gaps, through reading book reviews, communicating with publishers, talking to our community, and consulting experts, especially those in the underrepresented communities themselves.
In a blog post, Black Voices: Pictures Books as Antiracist Resources, you and David Feinstein wrote, “In the Bookstore, we’re committed to the ongoing work of constantly reevaluating the books we offer for sale. We are working to identify books and voices that are absent, and to fill those gaps. As staff of The Carle, we are often asked for recommendations and resources, and so we are working on educating ourselves, and using our roles as book buyers and booksellers to elevate the visibility of BIPOC creators.” Can you comment on how these goals are implemented? Any suggestions for other museums doing this internal self-work and wanting to evaluate their external museum stores?
This is important, ongoing work that is integrated into every task we do each day. I’d suggest starting with antiracist reading (children’s books make an excellent and accessible starting point for all ages!) and exploring educational opportunities, workshops and consultants to further your education. The museum brought in a Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion consultant, Cecille Shellman, to work with the entire staff, taking critical looks at our personal biases as well as areas of inequity in the museum, which helped launch the museum into further DEIA initiatives. As a buyer, it is especially important for me to be constantly assessing the selection in my store and be conscious of the diversity (or lack thereof) represented in every display, from the books on the shelves to the greeting cards in the rack. I seek out books and products to fill gaps and make an effort to reach out and be receptive to the input of my staff, our guests and our community about what representation they want to see on our shelves. I pore over catalogs, attend industry events (both in the museum and the book publishing industry) and seek out reliable sources to help inform my search.
Do you have a favorite museum book or blog which you would recommend to colleagues?
I would recommend Effective Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, Inclusion and Anti-Racism Practices for Museums from the Inside Out by Cecille Shellman
I would also recommend following @changethemuseum on Instagram