In October 2020, five months after my college Zoom graduation, I had an informational interview with the director of a small museum downtown. Despite my excitement, I must have nodded off on the train, because I jolted awake on the floor. Strangely-dressed people were asking if I was okay. After a little back-and-forth, I realized they were pretending it was the year 2070. Cosplayers? I rushed to my meeting, noticing that my mask was gone, but few others were wearing them.

“Hello, you must be Mr. Belleamie? I’m Jules West.”

“Please, call me Ed. Come on in.” He spoke with a tinge of an accent, maybe Haitian. As he ushered me into the brick building, I peeked at my phone camera to make sure I wasn’t too disheveled. I looked okay, blazer, pronoun pin, nothing weird except the missing mask, but my phone confirmed it was 2070. Panicking, I decided to swallow my horror for an hour, do the meeting which was somehow still happening, and figure this out later.

We walked through an exhibit titled “Same Ocean, Different Boats: Climate Change and Disparities.” From what I could glean, people had slowed down climate change significantly but not enough. Just as it had been in 2020, it was hitting the poor, disabled, and elderly the hardest.

Ed noticed me trying not to peer over a visitor’s shoulder at a video where someone was speaking sign language. “Visitors can borrow the booklet or the tablet, or use their own phone, to get the exhibit text in their language, or audio text,” he explained.

“That must be an expensive project!” I said, half-asking.

Ed shrugged. “It is, but it’s integrated into the cost of the exhibit. I guess we could do more exhibits if we made them inaccessible, but they’re better this way.”

“The exhibit really takes a side,” I said as we passed a panel on the impact of regulations on mega-corporations’ polluting. “Can I ask if you’ve had any pushback?”

“A little, but some of our visitors have lost loved ones in storms related to climate change. We’d lose their trust if we glossed over established facts about why it’s happening.”

“It sounds like you have a diverse set of visitors. Do you have a library pass program?” I said, trying to show off what I knew of the field.

“What’s that?” said Ed. Of course, I knew about the field in 2020.

“A museum I visited once had it. People could check out a ticket from their public library the day of or the day before their visit.”

“That... sounds like it’s a lot more work for poor people to visit than for others,” said Ed carefully. “Here, members get in for free and membership is on a sliding scale, starting at a dollar a year. Being affordable is a prerequisite for a diverse visitor base, but it’s not the only factor. As you’ll learn if you work in museums, in everything we do, we want visitors from a broad range of backgrounds to feel like the stakeholders they are.”

“That makes sense. Um, what’s that?” I pointed to a door labeled “Quiet Room: Come in and unwind, and please respect other visitors’ needs to do the same.”

“Oh, we made our quiet room out of our former wheelchair-accessible bathroom, now that all our bathrooms are accessible. It’s small, but usable, and we try to make it homey.”

Ed didn’t explain what a quiet room was, so I assumed they were now standard.

“We can continue talking in my office, and then you can explore the galleries more. Elevator, or stairs?”

I said the stairs were fine, and he took me around to the side.

“Isn’t this a 19th century building, and a historic landmark? How did you get approval for the elevator?” I asked.

“We just built this new section of the building to look like the add-on the third owner built in 1887. The add-on was later torn down, but it’s still part of the building’s history.”

“Forgive my ignorance, but… when did all this happen? I’ve read some about museum history, and the field has been talking about these principles for decades. You’ve put them into tangible practice. I thought that used to be the exception, not the rule.”

Ed laughed. “You’re right. It happened after the coronavirus pandemic. Disparities in class, education, health, and even in access to public spaces had dramatically widened. People across the sector realized we had to ramp up our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. If we kept changing at the rate we had been, we’d actually be regressing.”

“Wow.”

“Society at large is getting there, too, but museums are a few steps ahead.”

“Okay, now I know I’m dreaming.”

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay