I don't think that anyone calling for confederate statues to be displayed in museums really understands the interpretive burden of having a racist objects on the museum floor. 1/x

What does this mean? This means that a racist statue isn't just a thing that can sit in a museum and do nothing. At the very least, it requires extensive signage of the kind that most visitors don't read. But really, it requires a trained docent at all times. 2/x

Museums are already a lily white, heavily colonialist space. Using the limited display space in any museum for a confederate statue instead of items representing marginalized populations is A STATEMENT about what the museum considers important. 3/x

Even for museums who have the space for (and probably a large donation from a racist board member requiring) a racist statue, that's not the end of the burden on the museum. 4/x

White people have a bad tendency to see statuary as a politically neutral thing. But they're not. No art is politically neutral, but these statues in particular can't make that claim. 5/x

These statues were created to valorize the South. They weren't created as history. They were created as propaganda for white supremacy. They were specifically created by scared, angry white people who were afraid that Black peopl were getting a fraction of their rights. 6/x

That measn the interpretive burden of this object is even higher because the docent has to not only explain who the person was, but the WHOLE context of these reactionary statues that were created in the early 20th century. 7/x

The museum then needs a heavily trained staff member who can stand in that gallery and say "This shit is racist, and here's the context", but do it calmly, carefully, and deal with visitors getting angry about it with them all day (mosly the angry racist visitors). 8/x

If you have a racist statue on your museum floor and you don't have a thoroughly trained, thoroughly talented docent/educator right next to it, you are making a racist statment that's even worse than a statue in a public square. 9/x

A museum, by its very nature, is a statement about what the community that creates and funds the museum thinks is important. By putting, say, a statue of a slave owning confederate general front and center, what are you saying about what's important in your community? 10/x

I managed volunteers for multiple highly contentious exhibits at the museum where I used to work, including exhibits about race in America, the Civil Rights era, etc. History is not my specialty, so I didn't create the educational materials for staff/volunteers 11/x

... but I did have to respond when someone started shouting at a volunteer on the floor, and help them work through those incidents. And occasionally physically get in between a visitor & volunteer It's not easy on either the volunteer, or the manager who gets called. 12/x

But the difference is that these exhibits were things that we believed in. At the end of the day, supporting staff and volunteers through difficult discussions was 100% worth it. because it was important, overlooked history. 13/x

I would not have any interest in doing that for an object that was created in the 50s because white people were afraid of Black people. 14/x

We need to make museums MORE inclusive. We don't need to install any more statues commemorating this disgusting, pastoralist nostalgia boner white people have for plantations, big dresses, and owning other humans. 15/x

My take: if a racist donor is absolutely desperate that these things make it into the permanent collection, let them languish in obscurity of off-display collections, and let its attached giant donation quietly fund the acquisition of objects that show real history 16/x

P.S.: I don't want anyone reading this thread to think that I'm against all display of statues of confederates in museums.

I'm not. If you want to put a confederate statue in the museum's bathroom as, I don't know, a coat rack, or a urinal, I'm all for it. 17/x

I should also note that I'm speaking from the perspective of a science educator who worked in a Natural History/History museum complex. Art museums have their own discourse, which I can't really speak to. (But I can't imagine that many of them want these statues either.)

The responses to this thread have been absolutely fantastic - thoughtful, careful, interesting... so many things that often twitter responses aren't. Thank you! I really wish I could keep up with all of them.

I'm going to respond to a few of the repeated comments as I can:

1. Many people have been making a great point about single purpose or more narrowly focused museums (ie The Holocaust Museum, Freedom Center, Budapest Sculpture Park: These can be a great place for artifacts that need more context than a general museum can give. 1/x

These museums are different than the kind of more general/local museum I was talking about - they have the social context that people are coming to them for a history of painful but important historical moments. They also tend to have a more specialized interpretive staff 2/x

The staff of a specialist museum, particularly one focused around a particularly painful topic, like slavery or holocaust, is going to have more training in how to interpret racist artifacts in context. A general/local history museum is going to focus on different training 3/x

So yes: If there were a specialist museum with a budget surplus (Hah! In this pandemic???) that wanted to dedicate space to this topic, I would be in favor of contextualized display of a Confederate statue. But that is the exception, rather than the rule. 4/x

To be brutally honest: I would not be in favor of creating a dedicated space specifically to display a bunch of Confederate monuments at a time when so many existing museums have laid off/furloughed most of their staff and are struggling to survive 5/5