Editor's note

It is no overreach to state that 2017 has, so far, proven to be a year of tumult and change. Fundamental assumptions about political, economic, and social institutions are being challenged daily here in the U.S. and around the world. Cultural bodies – most certainly museums included – seem to bounce between feelings of despair, opportunity, bewilderment, and giddy hope on an almost hourly schedule.

It is in this spirit that this issue of Museums & Social Issues opens with a mini-forum around the topic of “Museums in the Age of Trump.” Keri Watson opens the discussion with an examination of museum advocacy around issues of race, hunger, and poverty. Using the recent exhibit In the Eyes of the Hungry: Florida’s Changing Landscape, she examines ways that museums can raise audience awareness of crucial social issues in an era when that very act can be seen as controversial and even polarizing.

Barbara Choen-Staytner’s article dovetails neatly into these questions. She examines the history and future of how and why museums formally collect and preserve the ephemera (both tangible and virtual) of protest, and offers a set of practical guidelines for museums considering their own practices around the topic. Similarly, Adam M. Ware’s article on collecting memorial material after the Pulse nightclub massacre – an event painfully resonant in Las Vegas the week of this writing – recounts his personal and professional journey in preserving materials honoring the victims of what was then the worst single-shooter massacre in U.S. history.

The offerings of research articles and essays in this issue continue the wide ranging exploration of social issues from the migrant experience to the role of social media and inclusion for museum disability access, and the moral value of working with communities. Chiara O’Reilly and Nina Parish look at ways that objects and material culture work to humanize the experience of history, especially for migrants and their stories. More importantly, the analysis presented provides insight into the display of ordinary objects and how they present important stories of migration and how curators can better work to engage migrat populations. Rebecca Mc Millen and Frances Alter examine the role of social media and its overall impact on how social inclusion and disability access affects museums. Her work focuses on the role of art museums specifically in better connecting to people with disabilities. Anne J. Cole and Eva Brooks round out this selection of articles with a look at the ways that indigenous voices give important perspective to curatorial practice and can position museum staff as change agents in the exhibition development process.

Finally, we offer two reviews. Steven C. Hertler poses a range of provocative questions on the challenge of reconciling science and relgion within the Hall of Human Origins exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History. His arguments on the role of religion and science and their intersections in presenting the stories of evolution. The closing book review of Robert Janes’ Museums in a Troubled World provides an apt end point to this issue in examining a well-respect book in the field, now in its third edition. Janda Gooding puts it quite aptly in suggesting that Museums and the Paradox of Change (2013) offers responses to how museums have looked inward to reshape themselves to respond to the external environment—something we need now more than ever more.

In closing, I must mention one final change: I myself have taken on new professional responsibilities, and this will be my last issue of Museums & Social Issues as editor. It has been my honor and pleasure to guide this vital journal for the past 4 years, and I offer my profound thanks to Kris Morrissey, the founding editor, the members of the editorial board, both Maney and Taylor & Francis publishers, and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and my colleagues in the Museum Studies program for financial and logistical support. But I must, of course, give my deepest and most sincere thanks to you, our readers: you are the reason this journal was started, the reason it now exists, and the reason museum professionals must continue to actively pursue reflective discourse on social issues.