By Joan H. Baldwin
Decades ago, when I was offered my first job as a county historical society director, I felt like the saint of neglected objects. I worked in the proverbial privileged, white person, helping a wealth of things speak in new ways. Along the way, I’d protect them from light, water, fingerprints and other forms of destruction. All I needed was a horse and a flaming sword. What can I say? I was young and zealous.
What I wasn’t thinking about was that small museums and county historical societies are as much about people as they are about things. Those people, often a board of older, white, retired folk, working with a younger staff, sometimes a lone ranger or a group of underpaid, often female-identifying humans, have to navigate the museum workplace which is also the American workplace. Whether they do that in harmony or not plays a role in their museum’s success. And by success, I don’t mean moneywise, although that is always gratifying, I mean their capacity for organizational growth, their ability to collaborate on bigger projects and engage their entire community; in short, their ability to grow.
If I could magically go back and offer my much younger self some advice, I would say, “Start with some policies.” Start with how you’re going to get along. There are after all a host of pitfalls that could confront a 20-something working for people old enough to be her grandparents. Yet the thought of my 25-year-old self-confronting my board members–average age 60–about HR or human resources as it was known, can make you panicky. Suggesting you need HR might immediately imply something is wrong. And how could anything be wrong? They are the board of a really good small museum.
What I did not have at the Allegany County Historical Society in 1979 was AASLH’s STEPS Program, nor its Technical Leaflet 303, Gender Discrimination and Sexual Harassment Policy Rubric. The world was different then and inappropriate comments about appearance, gender and age were things you put up with. Later in my career, when more serious things happened, I was counseled to avoid disputes because the museum world is small and we don’t want to be earmarked as a confrontational person. But had something happened to me or a younger volunteer, I am not sure how it would have been handled. There wasn’t anything resembling an HR policy or an employee handbook in sight.
But enough about me, let’s skip ahead to small museums in the post-Me Too era. Sadly, sexual harassment hasn’t gone away. The American workplace, which includes museums, is still rife with it, which is one of many reasons, AASLH took a leadership position in issuing last year’s Gender Discrimination and Sexual Harassment Policy Rubric (GDSHPR). From the inappropriate “bro ’comments” around the Keurig to touchy older board members, to visitors who make racist or sexist comments to horrific incidents that out in the world would be classed a felony, sexual harassment is still with us.
And like it or not, this type of gender and sexual harassment isn’t confined to large, urban art museums. It shows up everywhere people work together even in small museums or organizations with budgets of less than $250,000 and staff with multiple responsibilities and task-oriented volunteers. In other words, the vast majority of museums in the United States.
I would hazard a guess that few, if any, small museums have HR departments. And while an HR department is helpful, it’s not critical if you lead or work at a small museum. What is? Knowing your state’s employment laws and using them to create workplace policies that address gender equity including hiring, compensation and workplace harassment. If the thought bubble over your head is reading, “But that wouldn’t happen here. We’re like a family,” press delete, and think of these policies like insurance. We all hope our home doesn’t burn down, but we still buy insurance. It’s there because you don’t need it until you do.
Imagine you’re a staff member at a small museum. You have a single direct report, and you’ve noticed they will no longer work alone with a particular volunteer. There are excuses or sick days, but something feels off. Finally, you confront them and discover the volunteer routinely sits too close, tells the wrong jokes and asks your staff questions that don’t belong in the workplace. From your place in the work food chain, they are both good people. They work hard, they bring a lot to the table, and most of all they care. What do you do? Your bookkeeper helps with hiring, but hiring happens relatively infrequently and their role is to make sure W-9’s and emergency forms are filled out. Without a policy about what constitutes workplace harassment, it would be hard to tell a volunteer they’d violated anything. What’s worse, you discover your organization doesn’t have a reporting procedure for staff and volunteers to report situations where they don’t feel safe, seen, and supported.
A quick read of AASLH’s GDSHP rubric makes you feel better and worse at the same time. Clearly, you’re not alone, but you also realize your organization can be held legally liable if you don’t address an employee’s complaint. Since you had to pry the information out of your staff member, you’re not sure if it is technically a “complaint,” but once it’s out there, it can’t be ignored.
In this situation you have two issues to address: at ground level, the safety and well-being of your employee and at 30,000 feet, policies and procedures so your organization is never caught without a safety net again. Use the GDSHP rubric, talk to your local chamber of commerce, and your regional museum service organization. Make sure your employee feels safe and supported. Separate them from the volunteer. Suggest avenues for mental health help and, if necessary, pro bono legal advice. Suggest other resources like Gender Equity in Museums Movement (GEMM), the Department of Justice, and the resources on the back of AASLH’s Technical Leaflet. Be wary of organizational leadership telling you that because you’re small you’re shielded from Title VII of the Civil Rights Law. You are if your organization has fewer than fifteen employees but remind them that being legally right isn’t a zero sum game especially if it means having your reputation tarnished online and in the local press, which could easily, and perhaps permanently, damage your ability to expand programming or hire new staff.
The need for these policies extends to all-volunteer museums and historical societies. There are many of them across the United States, doing good work, keeping their communities’ stories alive. Their lack of a payroll does not make them immune from these issues. Gender discrimination and sexual harassment can happen anywhere. The results are just as tragic as at a larger institution. One person – a volunteer, board member, donor, anyone – can create an unhealthy and unsafe environment. Left unchecked, those problems cause the organization to lose volunteer staff and be unable to recruit new ones. Reputations are damaged quickly, and the recovery time is considerable. Just because the museum’s exhibit designer is a full-time volunteer doesn’t mean that person is safe from discrimination and abuse. Being a board member doesn’t mean that person can’t create a hostile work environment.
Being a small organization isn’t a handicap; many small museums consider it one of their main assets. When you build a tiny house, it has all the same parts as a mansion, and it’s often more efficient and nimble. Making sure your small organization meets the laws governing anti-discrimination and sexual harassment is a building block to growth. Standardizing steps around hiring and employee safety helps staff feel protected and your organization mature.
Joan H. Baldwin served as director for several house museums, a staffer for the Museum Program at the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Director of Education and Interpretation at Hancock Shaker Village. Baldwin is currently the Curator of Special Collections at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT, and serves on the AASLH Gender Discrimination and Sexual Harassment Task Force. Baldwin is the co-author of Women in the Museum: Lessons from the Workplace (Routledge, 2017), which discussed gender discrimination and sexual harassment in museums. Her work on the book, along with co-author Anne Ackerson, led to co-founding Gender Equity in Museums Movement (GEMM), a coalition of museum professionals who are advancing discussions around gender discrimination and sexual harassment. Reach Joan at [email protected].
