Research
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From 2020-2022, driven by recent calls for gender and racial equity in cultural institutions, MMF initially researched three key areas of inquiry: 1) internal culture and structure; 2) legal issues; 3) program and audience. The Bibliography consolidates materials from independent publications, popular press, academic journals, institutional reports, and additional media sources that have guided conversations in the field. Developed alongside the Bibliography, the Timeline offers a chronology of events that have impacted museum culture in the past 10 years. MMF recognizes both the Bibliography and Timeline as contingent and growing. As such, we continually update and offer both not as finished projects, but as ongoing contextualizing tools.
MMF’s current research includes a Data Study on workplace equity and organizational culture in US art museums and an Art Museum Unions Index, which tracks historical and contemporary union-organizing efforts within private nonprofit art museums in the United States.