What is our purpose?

The purpose of the MIC was adopted when they bylaws were approved:

"To encourage and promote multiculturalism and diversity in museums’ audiences, staff, volunteers, collaborators, boards, and other persons with an interest in museums. The MIC will provide a forum for the education, information exchange and development, and training of member museums, their staff, trustees, and volunteers, and it will serve as a liaison with the Texas Association of Museums."

I believe that this statement says it all. We are here to promote diversity in ALL aspects of the museum world. And I believe it is all related. Once our boards and staff are more diverse, exhibits and interpretation will reflect this, which will lead to more diverse audiences which will in turn develop into future staff members!


Ivette Ray
MIC Chair

Welcome to the Texas Association of Museums Multicultural Initiatives Blog!

Hello everyone! This space has been created as a place where we can share our thoughts and ideas on the state of diversity in Texas museums. During the last three years that the MIC has been an official affinity group of the Texas Association of Museums, we have made great strides!

This last year we set out to accomplish the following:

1)Review the Action Plan - This has been done by the Action Plan Subcommittee (special thanks to those who worked on it). Now comes the hard part, which is to put the Plan to Action. For those of you who have not seen it, here is a link. http://www.io.com/~tam/multicultural/actionplan.html. If any of you have additional comments, please share them with us!

2)Propose sessions for the Texas Association of Museums annual meeting - There will be some great sessions this year on everything from board diversity to multilingual signage! If you have not registered, it is not too late. Here is a link to the annual meeting program http://www.io.com/~tam/ContEd/annual_program.html

3)Get a website and improve communications - We hope that this blog serves that purpose. Please share it with others, and don't be afraid to leave your comments!

4)Create and conduct a survey of Texas museums - While we have not done this yet, it is a project that is certainly in the front burner and will hopefully happen this year.

Some of our other goals include bringing in speakers and sponsoring workshops. We are one step closer to accomplishing this! Of course, our ultimate goal is to bring more diversity to Texas museums.

Please feel free to add your own comments and ideas on how we can make this space better. If you would like to become a blog author on this page, let me know.

And don't forget to subsrcibe to this blog so that you know when there is a new entry!

Hope to hear from many of you soon.


Sincerely,
Ivette Ray
MIC Chair