Overview

Older people - whether staff or museum visitors - continue to be viewed as "other", even while organizations support creative aging programs and the value of inter-generational connection. Those initiatives may, in fact, paper over the underlying issues around ageism even as they appear to address it. I see evidence in my museum and institutions that internally, professionals of age and experience (especially women in the managerial ranks), are not seen and heard. I believe this condition is compounded by two things. One is that age is systematically excluded from the Diversity, Equity, Access, and Inclusion (DEAI) conversation and there is little or no staff training on the subject. On social media, younger professionals/influencers have called for those of experience to "step aside" to make way for another generation that is perceived to more fully understand the conversation around structural biases. Although many museum professionals understand intersectionality, they have little awareness of age in that conversation either, and as Audre Lorde notes, lived experience is not a "single issue." The project of DEAI is flawed and undermined by exclusion of age, and in so doing, ratifies the marginal status of these employees. Thinking about remedies, my questions would be, how can we continue to do the internal work to educate and raise consciousness, inclusive of age considerations, that will give greater integrity to how we show up externally for our visitors? How can we examine aging and older adults through the lens of a variety of indigenous and world cultures? And how can we intentionally connect age and experience with greater creativity and outcomes in internal teamwork in relation to numerous management studies about the benefits of team diversity?