Revisiting Roundtable Reports After 50 Years

ABSTRACT

2023 marks the 50th anniversary that the Museum Education Roundtable (MER) has been publishing reflections and research from the museum education field, first as Roundtable Reports, and since 1985 as the Journal of Museum Education (JME). Though it is best known through these publications, even before MER began writing, its members were gathering. This article presents an interview between Michelle Dezember, former MER President and 2018–2023 board member, and three of the founding members of MER: Diane North, Jane Farmer, and Mary Alexander. The discussion focuses on the founders’ experiences laying the foundation for the Museum Educators’ Roundtable and Roundtable Reports from 1969 to 1973. Their memories provide context revealing how the Civil Rights era shaped the sense of purpose and collective power of museum educators in Washington D.C., as well as their organizing work to create a larger community of practice through gathering, sharing practice, and publishing.

KEYWORDS:

• Museum educators
• civil rights movement
• Smithsonian
• oral history
• schools
• gathering

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Office of Policy and Analysis, A Study of Education at the Smithsonian: Lessons for Tomorrow (2009).

2 Brown-Nagin, Tomiko. “Want to See What Protests Can Be? Look at What They Have Been,” New America, March 2, 2017. https://www.newamerica.org/weekly/want-see-what-protests-can-be-look-what-they-have-been-1/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michelle Dezember

Michelle Dezember is Director of Learning and Engagement at the Contemporary Art, Museum St. Louis. Since 2005, she has worked in museums in California, New York, Barcelona, Qatar, and Colorado. She is the recipient of a Fulbright grant and holds a BA in Art History/BS in Sociology from Santa Clara University, a postgraduate certificate in Visual Cultural Studies from the University of Barcelona, and an MA in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester. Her writings appear in Esse Arts + Opinions, Fwd: Museums Journal, Art Museum Teaching, Museums, Etc. publications, Stories of Resistance, and Museum Visions. She served on the board of the Museum Education Roundtable from 2018 to 2023, including as president of the board from 2022 to 2023.

Diane M.T. North

Diane M.T. North (formerly Diane T. Rose) earned a B.A., Trinity College; M.A., Cooperstown Graduate Programs (SUNY/Oneonta); Ph.D., University of California, Davis. In addition to working for art and history museums and historic preservation agencies on the local, state, and national levels, North is a retired History professor, University of Maryland Global Campus, from whom she received the 2018 Stanley J. Drazek Teaching Excellence Award. Most recently, she is the author of California at War: The State and the People during World War I (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2018). North, a member of journal California History’s Editorial Board, received the Western Association of Women Historians’ Ridge Prize for the best scholarly article published in 2020: “California and the 1918–1920 Influenza Pandemic,” California History, Vol. 97, no. 3 (Fall 2020): 3–36. She is one of the founders of what is now known as the Museum Education Roundtable.

Jane M. Farmer

Jane M. Farmer first worked at the now Smithsonian American Art Museum under Joshua Taylor, then as an independent curator/exhibition producer who organized traveling exhibitions and artist exchanges for various organizations including the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service and the Office of Education & Culture at the State Department for over thirty-five years. Farmer was on the board of the Museum Education Roundtable, founded and chaired the Crossing Over Consortium, was a co-founder of the Paper Road/Tibet project, on the Board of Pyramid Atlantic from 1982–2004, on the Board of The Mountain Institute from 2005 to 2011, and an international advisor to the Board of Hand Papermaking, Inc. since 1996. She has published numerous exhibition catalogues, reviews, and articles. She has edited and published posthumous books by two Japanese artist friends whom she worked with for many years.

Mary Alexander

Mary Alexander has worked in and for Washington area history museums for the past five decades. She has been a museum educator, assistant director, leader of the Common Agenda for History Museums for the American Association for State and Local History, and administrator of the Museum Assistance Program of the Maryland Historical Trust (Maryland’s State Historic Preservation Office). She was affiliated with the University of Maryland’s Museum Scholarship and Material Culture Program starting in 2016 and assumed co-directorship with Dr. Ricardo Punzalan in 2017; she retired in 2019. She is co-author with George Hein, Museums: Places of Learning (1998) and in 2008 revised her father’s Museum Studies textbook, Museums in Motion: The History and Functions of Museums. She holds a BA in History from Beloit College and an MA in Education from University of Connecticut. She was the first editor of Roundtable Reports, the predecessor of Journal of Museum Education.