-
Representation matters.
-
Authentic representations of women matter.
-
I think that too often,
our public representations of women
-
are enveloped in the language
of the extraordinary.
-
The first American woman
to become a self-made millionaire:
-
Madam C. J. Walker ...
-
The dresses of the first ladies
of the United States ...
-
Shirley Chisholm, the first woman to seek
-
the US Democratic party's
presidential nomination --
-
(Applause)
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As a museum curator,
-
I understand why these stories
are so seductive.
-
Exceptional women
are inspiring and aspirational.
-
But those stories are limiting.
-
By definition, being extraordinary
is nonrepresentative.
-
It's atypical.
-
Those stories do not create a broad base
for incorporating women's history
-
and they don't reflect
our daily realities.
-
If we can collectively apply
that radical notion
-
that women are people,
-
it becomes easier to show
women as people are:
-
familiar, diverse, present.
-
In everyone's everyday throughout history,
-
women exist positively --
-
not as a matter of interpretation,
but as a matter of fact.
-
And beyond a more accurate
representation of human life,
-
including women considers
the quotidian experiences
-
of the almost 3.8 billion people
identified as female on this planet.
-
In this now notorious museum scene
from the "Black Panther" movie,
-
a white curator erroneously
explains an artifact
-
to Michael B. Jordan's
character seen here,
-
an artifact from his own culture.
-
This fictional scene caused
real debates in our museum communities
-
about who is shaping the narratives
and the bias that those narratives hold.
-
Museums are actually rated
-
one of the most trustworthy sources
of information in the United States,
-
and with hundreds of millions of visitors
from all over the world,
-
we should tell accurate histories,
-
but we don't.
-
There is a movement,
from within museums themselves,
-
to help combat this bias.
-
The simple acknowledgment
that museums are not neutral.
-
Museums are didactic.
-
Through the display of art and artifacts,
-
we can incite creativity
and foster inclusion,
-
but we are guilty
of historical misrepresentation.
-
Our male-centered histories
have left our herstories hidden.
-
And there are hard truths
about being a woman,
-
especially a woman of color
in this industry,
-
that prevents us from centering
inclusive examples of women's lives.
-
Museum leadership:
-
predominantly white and male,
-
despite women comprising
some 60 percent of museum staffs.
-
Pipelines to leadership
for women are bleak --
-
bleakest for women of color.
-
And the presence of women
does not in and of itself guarantee
-
an increase in women's
public representation.
-
Not all women are gender equity allies.
-
In the words of feminist
theorist bell hooks,
-
"Patriarchy has no gender."
-
Women can support the system of patriarchy
-
just as men can support
the fight for gender equity.
-
And we often downplay
the importance of intersectionality.
-
Marian Anderson was one of the most
celebrated voices of the 20th century,
-
and the Smithsonian
collected her 1939 outfit.
-
After the white Daughters of
the American Revolution denied her access
-
to sing in Constitution Hall,
because she was black,
-
she famously sang instead
on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial,
-
to a crowd of over 75,000 people.
-
And in libraries all over,
including museums,
-
you can still find the groundbreaking
1982 anthology, entitled
-
"All the Women Are White,
-
All the Blacks Are Men,
-
But Some of Us Are Brave."
-
Demands for the increase
of women's representation
-
does not automatically include
Afro-Latinas like me ...
-
or immigrant women,
or Asian women, or Native women,
-
or trans women, or undocumented women,
-
or women over 65, or girls --
-
the list can go on and on and on.
-
So what do we do?
-
Targeted initiatives
have helped incorporate perspectives
-
that should have always been included.
-
I arrived at the Smithsonian
through a Latino curatorial initiative
-
whose hiring of Latinx curators,
-
mostly women, by the way,
-
has raised the profile for Latinx
narratives across our institution.
-
And it served as a model
-
for our much larger Smithsonian
American Women's History Initiative,
-
which seeks to amplify diverse
representations of women
-
in every possible way,
-
so that women show up,
-
not only in the imagery
of our contemporary realities,
-
but in our historical representations,
-
because we've always been here.
-
Right now though, in 2018,
I can still walk into professional spaces
-
and be the only --
-
the only person under 40,
the only black person,
-
the only black woman, the only Latina,
-
sometimes, the only woman.
-
My mother is African-American
and my father is Afro-Panamanian.
-
I am so proudly and inextricably both.
-
As an Afro-Latina, I'm one of millions.
-
As an Afro-Latina curator,
I'm one of very few.
-
And bringing my whole self
into the professional realm
-
can feel like an act of bravery,
-
and I'll admit to you that I was
not always up for that challenge,
-
whether from fear of rejection
or self-preservation.
-
In meetings, I would only speak up
-
when I had a fully developed
comment to share.
-
No audible brainstorming
or riffing off of colleagues.
-
For a long time,
-
I denied myself the joy of wearing
my beloved hoop earrings
-
or nameplate necklace to work,
-
thinking that they were too loud
or unscholarly or unprofessional.
-
(Laughter)
-
I wondered how people
would react to my natural hair,
-
or if they viewed me as more acceptable
or less authentic when I straightened it.
-
And anyone who has felt outside
of mainstream representations
-
understands that there are basic elements
just of our everyday being
-
that can make other people uncomfortable.
-
But because I am passionate
-
about the everyday representation
of women as we are,
-
I stopped presenting an inauthentic
representation of myself or my work.
-
And I have been tested.
-
This is me pointing
at my hoop earring in my office --
-
(Laughter)
-
Just last month, I was invited to keynote
a Latino Heritage Month event.
-
The week of the presentation,
the organization expressed concerns.
-
They called my slides "activist,"
-
and they meant that negatively.
-
(Laughter)
-
(Applause)
-
Two days before the presentation,
-
they requested that I not show
a two-minute video affirming natural hair,
-
because "it may create a barrier
to the learning process
-
for some of the participants."
-
(Laughter)
-
That poem, "Hair," was written
and performed by Elizabeth Acevedo,
-
a Dominican-American
2018 National Book Award winner,
-
and it appeared in an award-winning
Smithsonian exhibit that I curated.
-
I canceled the talk,
-
explaining to them that their censorship
of me and my work made me uncomfortable.
-
(Applause and cheers)
-
Respectability politics
and idealized femininity
-
influence how we display women
-
and which women we choose to display.
-
And that display has skewed
toward successful and extraordinary
-
and reputable and desirable,
-
which maintains the systemic exclusion
-
and marginalization of the everyday,
the regular, the underrepresented
-
and usually, the nonwhite.
-
As a museum curator, I am empowered
to change that narrative.
-
I research, collect and interpret
objects and images of significance.
-
Celia Cruz, the queen of Salsa --
-
(Cheers)
-
yes -- is significant.
-
And an Afro-Latina.
-
The Smithsonian has collected
her costumes, her shoes,
-
her portrait, her postage stamp
-
and this reimagining ...
-
by artist Tony Peralta.
-
When I collected and displayed this work,
-
it was a victory
for symbolic contradictions.
-
Pride in displaying a dark-skinned Latina,
-
a black woman,
-
whose hair is in large rollers
which straighten your hair,
-
perhaps a nod to white beauty standards.
-
A refined, glamorous woman
in oversized, chunky gold jewelry.
-
When this work was on view,
-
it was one of our most
Instagrammed pieces,
-
and visitors told me they connected
with the everyday elements
-
of her brown skin or her rollers
or her jewelry.
-
Our collections include Celia Cruz
-
and a rare portrait
of a young Harriet Tubman ...
-
iconic clothing from
the incomparable Oprah Winfrey.
-
But museums can literally change
-
how hundreds of millions
of people see women,
-
and which women they see.
-
So rather than always
the first or the famous,
-
it's also our responsibility to show
a regular Saturday at the beauty salon,
-
the art of door-knocker earrings ...
-
(Laughter)
-
fashionable sisterhood ...
-
(Laughter)
-
and cultural pride at all ages.
-
Stories of everyday women
-
whose stories have been knowingly omitted
from our national and global histories.
-
And oftentimes in museums,
you see women represented by clothing
-
or portraits or photography ...
-
but impactful, life-changing stories
from everyday women
-
can also look like
this Esmeraldan boat seat.
-
Esmeraldas, Ecuador
was a maroon community.
-
Its dense rainforest protected
indigenous and African populations
-
from Spanish colonizers.
-
There are roads now,
-
but there are some parts inland
that are still only accessible by canoe.
-
Débora Nazareno frequently traveled
those Ecuadorian waterways by canoe,
-
so she had her own boat seat.
-
Hers personalized
with a spiderweb and a spider,
-
representing Anansi,
a character in West African folklore.
-
Débora also sat on this seat at home,
telling stories to her grandson, Juan.
-
And this intangible ritual of love
-
in the form of
intergenerational storytelling
-
is common in communities
across the African diaspora.
-
And this everyday act sparked in Juan
the desire to collect and preserve
-
over 50,000 documents related
to Afro-Indian culture.
-
In 2005, Juan García Salazar,
Débora's grandson,
-
and by now a world-renowned
Afro-Ecuadorian scholar,
-
traveled to Washington, D.C.
-
He met with Lonnie Bunch,
the director of the museum where I work,
-
and toward the end of their conversation,
-
Juan reached into his bag and said,
"I'd like to give you a present."
-
On that day, Débora Nazareno's
humble wooden boat seat
-
became the very first object donated
-
to the Smithsonian National Museum
of African-American History and Culture.
-
It is encased, displayed and has been seen
by almost five million visitors
-
from all over the world.
-
I will continue to collect
from extraordinary historymakers.
-
Their stories are important.
-
But what drives me to show up
today and every day
-
is the simple passion to write
our names in history,
-
display them publicly for millions to see
-
and walk in the ever-present
light that is woman.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause and cheers)