This semester I’ve been thinking a lot about authority and power dynamics within the museum space. My thinking has been informed by a variety of sources: I took a class about museums at the RISD Museum, I did a practicum at a Chilean University that is working on opening a new museum, and I worked on a class project at a Historic House Museum in Providence. All these experiences had me exploring different ways in which museums—and other cultural institutions—both acquire and transmit cultural authority, which comes with the idea that they are the custodians of a secular truth.
