How do we actually make museums more diverse? (with Peggy Levitt)

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Good museums are centers of art, culture, and education. But the richest and most famous museums are clustered in North America and Europe, and that matters more than you might realize.

Sociologist and Wellesley College professor Peggy Levitt describes herself as a decenterer for just that reason. In her books "Artifacts and Allegiances" and "Move Over Mona Lisa," she has explored how art has been shaped by colonialism, globalization and inequality.

In "Move Over Mona Lisa," Peggy asks what it might take to decenter this world. Historically, she explains, many well-intentioned museums have diversified their collection by invited artists from the Global South to relocate to Paris, London, or New York. But the center has not moved.

"There are people that are looking for a harder reform," Peggy says. "So they are happy to take less critical acclaim, less financial acclaim, if they can create their own institutions, their own networks of circulation, their own nodes of activity that don't rely on North America or Europe for permission or facilitation."

Today on Call 'Em Like Museum, we talk about how museums can represent the whole world more fairly; whether artists in the Global South should entirely opt out of the existing systems; and the importance of "having a spine" when your museum comes under scrutiny from donors & politicians.

Full transcript of this episode

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This episode was hosted, produced, and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

Chapters

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (04:11) - Museums and Nation Building
• (13:53) - Culture Wars at the Smithsonian
• (15:32) - How to Read Power in Museum Spaces
• (21:11) - Globalization, Colonialism, and Immigration
• (25:53) - Who Drives Change in Museums?
• (30:37) - Move Over, Mona Lisa: Decentering Art
• (36:49) - Opting Out of Traditional Centers of Power
• (40:41) - Standing Up to Museum Donors
• (42:38) - Gift Shops and Favorite Museums

Music: www.purple-planet.com

Peggy's Books:
Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display
Move Over, Mona Lisa: Reimagining What We Read, Look At, and Learn

Images:
Met Christmas Tree
Danish Vikings
Museum of Islamic Art
National Museum of Singapore
Smithsonian National Museum of American History
Musée nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration

Creators and Guests

Host

Eric Johnson

Podcast editor, producer, and consultant at LightningPod.fm | Working with entrepreneurs, journalists, businesses, and more to achieve their podcasting goals

Guest

Peggy Levitt

Peggy Levitt is the Mildred Lane Kemper chair of sociology at Wellesley College, and the author of "Move Over, Mona Lisa"

What is Call 'Em Like Museum with Eric Johnson?

Call 'Em Like Museum is a weekly podcast exploring how museums really work, and why we love them. Host Eric Johnson talks with museum directors, curators, experts, and passionate fans about what drives them, from homegrown passion projects to world-famous institutions. Each episode digs into museum curation, exhibit design, and the visitor experience — plus the essential question: What's actually worth buying in the gift shop? Season One spotlights museums in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Walt Disney Family Museum, the de Young Museum, and the Winchester Mystery House.

As you walk into this grand
hall, you feel humble.

You feel reverential.

You feel like, "I better believe
everything they're telling me."

That's Wellesley College professor
Peggy Levitt, the author of the 2015

book, Artifacts and Allegiances.

In the book, she talks about how
museums intersect with globalization,

inequality, and nation building.

She compares former and current
colonial powers to emerging nations

like Singapore and Qatar and finds
that the meaning of museums is

very different in young countries.

They were also really strategically
positioning themselves to tell a story

to citizens, but also to tell a story
to the rest of the world that this is

a place you need to pay attention to.

Peggy also describes
herself as a decenterer.

In her new book, Move Over Mona
Lisa, she talks to artists from the

Global South who are tired of always
feeling like they're second class.

This book was about writers and
artists and thinkers in Argentina

and South Korea and Lebanon.

They are happy to take less critical
acclaim, less financial acclaim,

if they can create their own
institutions, their own networks of

circulation that don't rely on North
America or Europe for permission.

This is Call 'Em Like Museum,
a podcast about how museums

work and why we love them.

I'm Eric Johnson.

Today on the podcast, how can museums
represent the whole world more fairly?

Should artists in the Global
South opt out of working with

these old centers of power?

And how should we respond when
wealthy donors and politicians say

that they don't want more diversity?

Have a spine.

Have a moral compass, have an
ethical position and stick to it.

Professor Peggy Levitt will talk about
all of that and more right after this.

This episode is sponsored
by Transistor.fm.

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then you should use Transistor.

Upload your audio or video, and
they'll publish your episodes to

Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube,
Pocket Casts, Overcast, and

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a 14-day free trial.

Have you ever left a museum
without hitting the gift shop?

Yeah, me neither.

Tote bags, hats, desk toys, all these
specific magnets, I love it all, and

now I'm giving some of it away in the
Call 'Em Like Museum gift shop giveaway.

To enter, all you have to do is sign up
for our free newsletter at likemuseum.com.

That's likemuseum.com.

I want to start off with the
same question I ask everyone,

which is what is a museum to you?

A museum should be many things, but at its
most basic, it is a place where cultural

objects and art and material culture is
preserved and displayed and explained

and made available so publics can engage.

And that's at the most basic, and
there are many ways to do that.

And what's your first
memory of going to a museum?

That's a great question.

I grew up in New York City, so my museum
was the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I think everybody who's a museum goer has
their own museum that got them started.

So I have wonderful memories
of going to the museum over the

holiday season and the big Christmas
tree that is in the great hall.

And also my mother calling me from
the other side of the gallery saying,

"Look this, I want you to see this,"
which as I got to be a teenager was

a little bit kind of embarrassing,
but nevertheless, I appreciate

how she was trying to educate me.

Well, as you mentioned, museums
can be a lot of things to a lot

of different types of people.

Your book, "Artifacts and Allegiances,"
frames museums around what they mean

to three different types of countries.

Could you talk about how you
as a researcher, as a scholar,

came to see museums through
this sort of nationalist lens?

How did you arrive at the realization
that they could be interpreted this way?

That's not an original idea of mine.

I am a scholar of migration
and I studied migration from

a transnational perspective.

So that means that many of the
people that were studying migration

at the time that I was first doing
my dissertation work were mostly

interested in what happens to people
when they first get to a new country.

When I was looking for a dissertation
topic, I realized if you really want to

understand migration and its impact on
communities, whether it's social mobility

in the country that you move to or social
mobility or community development in

the country that you're from, they're
really two sides of the same coin.

That was my focus of study
in my first two books.

And then I started thinking, well,
do immigrant artists, do they

express the transnational experience?

How are they contributing
to our understanding of the

nation and how it changes?

So I was in Sweden on a
sabbatical, southern Sweden, so

it was right next to Copenhagen.

And I had this wonderful natural
experiment of looking at museums

in Sweden and Denmark who basically
were using the same materials to

make totally different arguments.

Right.

In Copenhagen, it was about we are the
Vikings and Denmark was Viking back in

the Ice Age and that's who we are today.

And in Sweden, the same materials
were being used to say there was no

such thing as Sweden 10,000 years ago.

We're really part of a global process.

And so one was insular,
particularistic, looking inward,

and the other was really saying we
are a country that's in the world.

So how do you explain that?

And then the book morphed into these
three sets of countries, so Sweden and

Denmark who are basically over empire,
but each of them using their museums to

reposition themselves in a different way.

And then I looked at museums in New
York and Boston, and this is the kind

of clinging to empire country case, and
then Doha and Singapore, which are using

cultural institutions to assert themselves
more prominently on the world stage.

But this is not new because if
you think about the world's great

museums like the Louvre and the
Metropolitan and the British Museum

were all tools of nation building.

And so they were all about having people
come into a space and see customs and

objects and values that they recognized
and then they would feel fresh.

And so museums and nation
building always went hand to hand.

So my question in the book was, are
museums … They're not necessarily

tools of nation building, but
they're tools of nation reinvention.

Well, in the case of Doha and Singapore,
which is the third section of this book, I

think there's something really interesting
about museums, which is that they are

very much a classic tourist destination.

People come from outside of these
places to go to these museums.

So would you say that the intended
audience of this nation building, is

it to demonstrate to outsiders that
these places have a strong national

identity or is it rather to reaffirm
or to encourage locals to have a

stronger affinity for their nations?

It's both.

And that was the tricky part.

Let's take the example of Doha.

So it's basically this 60-year-old — or
now 70-year-old, almost — independent

entity that was really trying to create
itself as a nation and distinguish itself

from its neighbors because basically
they were all nomadic cultures and they

didn't have a lot of stuff and they had
oral traditions and so they didn't have

a lot of written historical records.

And so you're creating a national
museum to tell the citizens of Doha,

of Qatar, you belong to an important
place that is going to take its place in

the world at the same time that you're
doing that to the rest of the world.

And this was part of a multi-pronged plan.

So when I was writing the book, they
were opening 16 new museums, but

they were also doing Qatar Airways.

They were also hosting the World Cup.

They were also just really strategically
positioning themselves to tell a story

to citizens, but also to tell a story
to the rest of the world that this is

a place you need to pay attention to.

And then what's the story you tell and how
is it different than the story in Bahrain?

And what does it mean to have a museum
that is from that part of the world,

but the architecture still signals
the certain power of knowledge?

And you walk in and it's a kind of temple
of knowledge where it's being communicated

to you that this is a sacred place.

They're doing the same thing, but
they're doing it with different

architectural styles and different
kinds of display exhibition styles

that also signaled they're jewels,
but they're different kinds of jewels.

And those styles, are they
generally emulating a European-style

museum like the British Museum?

When you think about the Met or the
Museum of Fine Arts here in Boston,

you usually walk up the steps,
you're in this temple of knowledge,

you walk into this grand hall, you
feel humble, you feel reverential.

Yes.

You feel like I better believe
everything they're telling me.

So they didn't do that in Doha, but they
hired architects who made magnificent

buildings for that part of the world.

There was a different kind of style
of exhibition that left a lot of space

between objects so that you would still
feel their jewel-like quality, but

there wasn't a lot of written material,
the text was treated differently.

So still doing the same communication
and education, but in a different way.

Do you think that there are limits to
the power of museums in this regard?

A lot of the museums that I'm most
interested in are niche, small,

boutique museums, not necessarily
the national history or the national

art museum, things like that.

But do you think that those smaller
museums still have an important part to

play in this sort of nation building?

I wouldn't say nation
building in the same way.

I mean, I think the most interesting
things that are happening in

museums are in those small museums.

You know as well as I do that
there's so much discussion about

diversity and inclusion, and even
if we're not allowed to talk about

it anymore, it's still there.

But it's much harder for old, traditional
museums to do that than it is for museums

that are off the beaten track or smaller
because they have to be more experimental

and more innovative, but also they can be.

I wrote a lot about the Brooklyn
Museum and the Queens Museum,

which I found incredibly innovative
and incredibly connected to their

communities in really meaningful ways.

And just as the museum that is
there to express the power and the

potency of the nation gets their
message across, these museums, no

one's expecting them to do that.

They have incredible collections but maybe
not the premier collection in the city.

In New York, there's so much competition.

And people have to want
to come to Brooklyn.

They have to want to come to Queens.

I think they were doing incredible
things to bring the community in,

to make the space much more inviting
and like a community center.

The Queens Museum even had a community
organizer who actually went out to the

… It's the most diverse borough in the city.

There are people from all different
countries, so he would go out to

these street fairs or food markets or
whatever and say to people, "There's

a museum down the street, you can
come in." And the museum is located

in Flushing Meadow Park, so there are
all kinds of people playing sports

and using that space over the weekend.

And you could come in the
museum and go to the bathroom.

You could have your Taiwanese dance
performance, you could come and have

English as a second language classes,
and that is the way that you make

the museum part of the community.

So Peggy, we're recording this in early
July 2026, and just yesterday, the

universe delivered us some serendipity.

The White House issued a report
attacking the Smithsonian Institution,

and in particular, the National
Museum of American History.

They said that it no longer treats the
American story as a shared national

inheritance to be taught or celebrated,
but as a political instrument to divide,

dispirit, and discourage our citizens.

We should remind listeners that your
book "Artifacts and Allegiances" was

published in 2015, which feels about
100 years ago in political time.

Can I get your reaction to this story
and how it either confirms or complicates

what you found in your research back then?

Well, it confirms that museums are
powerful instruments of nation building,

and now we're in an era of the powers
that be want to build a different kind

of nation that includes particular
people and particular stories.

And so history is always contested.

There are many ways that you can tell it.

And for me, the Smithsonian has been
an incredibly important institution

of telling stories that hadn't
been told and telling about people

who were left out of history.

And now what we're seeing in a
heartbreaking way is that all of that

progress is being walked back, be it
in museums, be it in national parks.

It's a re-rewriting of history that, in my
opinion, is a terrible disservice to our

national story and also to visitors that
are going to have incomplete information.

Here's what we can do, though.

There's a tendency, as we were talking
about before, that you walk into a museum

and it's meant to make you feel humble.

It's meant to make you feel
like you need to agree with

everything that's on the wall.

And so what we need to do is
teach museum goers to be critical

engagers with that material.

And you see museums doing that now by
putting a curatorial statement that

sometimes has a picture of the curator.

That's to tell you that it's not God
talking, it's a person with ideas and they

have opinions and it's an opinion, right?

The way they're interpreting
the material, the way they're

telling the story is an opinion.

And so we as museum goers have
to really be aware of that.

I have a whole class where one of
the learning goals, if you want

to put it that way, is to teach
students to read power in space.

And that means when you walk into a
gallery or a museum space, you say,

"What's in the center of the room at eye
level with lots of light on it and what's

in the back? And what does that make me
value? And what does that make me not

look at because I think that it's less
important?" And so somebody's directing

your attention and creating a hierarchy
of value, and we as critical users have

to be aware of that and exercise that.

But it's also museums'
responsibilities to help us to do that.

I think it's easy for someone
to read a book and understand,

right, this is an author who maybe
has a specific point of view.

They can understand on an individual
level, this person may have a

different point of view from my own.

And there's been growing awareness
online, people who are skeptical of

the algorithm, this idea of a machine
that is optimizing for engagement,

that's pushing certain behaviors.

But there is sort of a middle there
where these generally anonymous

institutions like museums, generally,
I don't think people know the name

of their local curator, right?

No, no.

And so it's getting over that hump
of understanding, no, there's design

choices happening here, as you're saying.

There are specific decisions being made
throughout the process to control where

we look and how we look at things.

And if you're not comfortable because
you know you're walking into a space

that hasn't been for you or you haven't
been taken there on your school trip

in fifth grade, even if your parents
don't take you there, that the

school takes you there and that it
feels comfortable, not intimidating,

then you're not going to question.

First of all, you're probably
not going to come and you're not

going to bring your kids and then
you're not going to question.

So that's why you have so many, in this
country, immigrant communities really

fighting to get real estate in the museum.

I have one more question about this recent
news story related to the Smithsonian.

In its article about the report, the New
York Times quoted a senior fellow at the

Heritage Foundation, Mike Gonzalez, and he
said this about the Smithsonian: "It's not

the only museum that erases our history
and our heritage. All the other museums

do. We have to go back to celebrating
our country and its great achievements."

Obviously the Heritage Foundation is not
a governmental organization, but do you

think that this is going to have a ripple
effect on American museums generally?

I think that we're living through this
era where it's having a ripple effect on

universities, cultural institutions, and
depending upon how close you are to power,

how much you depend upon federal funding,
how much the government is looking at you,

which is more at a Harvard than at another
university that's more off the radar,

then it does have a chilling effect.

But leadership, we see a lot of
cowardice and we see a lot of

spinelessness, I think, among
lawmakers and among decision makers.

I'm not saying that they're not under
pressure, I'm not saying that this is

not real, but this is the time when
we have to really stick to our values.

And you could make the same argument
that the story was told inaccurately

for 245 years of our history.

I mean, we've just in the last 60 years
started to tell a different story.

And I, for one, applaud that and feel
like there's still a lot of work to go.

I hope that decision makers can stick
to their guns and all of us have to

help them by supporting them and saying,
we applaud you and we're going to come

and we're going to go to those exhibits
and we're not afraid to show up.

Do you have a museum story?

Maybe there was a time you got
lost, a time that you were moved

to tears, or a time you saw
something that blew your mind.

No matter what your story
is, I want to hear it.

Head to likemuseum.com and click
"submit a museum story." It

might end up on a future episode.

That's likemuseum.com and click
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hit subscribe there too.

Thank you so much.

I want to talk about history
of museums and globalization.

In your book, you talk about how
some of these famous museums like

the British Museum started off as
collections of a couple wealthy

individuals who were not necessarily
the most academic collectors of items.

Could you speak to how the purpose of a
museum has changed from then to now, kind

of in the pre- and post-globalization era?

What do they do for us now?

Or actually a better question
may be, what did they do in

the past that is now obsolete?

I don't know whether I want to say
"obsolete." I have to think about that.

Okay, you choose your own word there.

Yeah.

Okay.

But what's different?

Well, we've talked a lot about
the formation of the nation,

the role in creating a nation,
creating a sense of nationalism

and reinforcing that internally.

We haven't talked a lot
about positioning the nation

vis-a-vis the rest of the world.

So what went along with those collections
was to also show the material culture of

other, less "civilized," people, including
the people that we might have colonized.

You can show … In those museums in
Sweden and Denmark, you see spoons

from whatever place that people brought
them back from, and then you see our

spoons in Denmark and ours are better.

And Denmark's not the only country
that's done that, by any means.

It's the other role that museums
play that they are also positioning

the nation vis-a-vis the world.

And you want it to say that we're
better, we're more sophisticated, we're

more "civilized" than all of these
people, and that helps us justify our

colonialism, our imperialism, direct or
indirect, because they need "civilizing."

And then some of the art that was
brought back from the colonies

was also on display to do that.

So what I find interesting is how museums
are being used now to cope with their

changing face, their changing demography.

Take Europe, for example.

There were many countries that
were homogenous for generations.

There were countries like Great Britain,
like England, that had former colonists

come and live, but a country like Germany
or France really didn't think about

themselves as a country of immigrants.

Or Sweden.

And now all these countries depend
upon immigrant labor, but they've

been awfully slow to letting them
become part of the national fabric

and admitting that Germanness has
changed or Frenchness has changed.

And so now what you see is
museums wrestling with that.

I don't know if you've ever been to
the Museum of Immigration in Paris.

No, I want to.

It's a fascinating place because
the building that it's in, it's

in one of the … Almost you're at
the gate of Paris, and it's a place

where a World's Fair took place.

So the building was from the World's Fair.

And the outside of the building is
carved with images of colonial France.

So you have the "savages"
in French Africa.

How can you have a museum that's trying
to say to the rest of France, we're a

diverse country now, we have white people,
we have brown people, we have Black

people, we have people from all over the
world, and you put it in that building.

So there's a lot of tension here about
how committed countries are to changing

the story, what resources they have
to tell a change story, how much the

country believes in that change story.

Do they have the museological
vision and tool to tell it in

a way that people can hear?

Because you always have to think
about how do you tell a difficult

message to people so they can hear it?

If I go into a museum like
that, I'm like, hooray.

They're trying to change the idea
of what Frenchness means or what

Swedishness means, but other people don't.

And that's what we're
seeing in this country.

People are threatened that their idea
of the United States is disappearing.

So how can we tell it in a
way that they can hear it?

I think there's an interesting
tension where you have a newer

museum versus an older one.

Absolutely.

Where if you have an institution
like the Louvre, which is world

famous, has been around for many,
many generations, who can drive

change for an organization like that?

Is that happening from within
the museum, from the curators?

Is there public pressure?

I'm sure the answer is a combination
of all of the above, but could you

speak to where the pressure comes from?

Yeah.

So most museums in Europe
are state museums, so they

are arms of the government.

In this country, they're mostly private
museums, and so they're donor driven.

So a big answer to your
question is partially museums

need donors and donors want
to see themselves on the wall,

and so that's driving change.

And also governments want to showcase
the culture made in their country.

So the Metropolitan Museum has a
Korean gallery, that's because the

Korean government helped support that,
and it's been there for a long time.

Up in Boston where I live, there are
Indian Americans who have done well

in the high-tech industry and are very
interested in showcasing their culture.

And so you see more and more attention
paid to South Asian art or art from the

subcontinent, and that's driving change.

Because at the end of the day, those
Boston brahmin donors who were the patrons

of these museums are dying off, and the
people who are going to replace them

have different priorities and different
interests, and that drives change.

Now, as these conversations are going on
— we touched on this before about visitors

to museums being critical consumers of
how their attention is being guided — do

you think the average museum goer is
aware of or engaging with these questions?

I don't know what the
average museum goer is.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I think that you're launching this
podcast because you care about museums.

If the tables were turned and I asked
you, how did you get here, you would have

your own special story about museums.

So for those of us who feel uplifted, who
when there was the pandemic or now, when

one might be feeling really discouraged
by what's going on in our country and

around the world, when you go to see art,
it reminds you what's good about life.

It moves you.

It connects you to other people.

You're looking at the things
separately, but it's something

of a collective experience when
you're standing next to somebody.

So I want to say something about the
role of the curator too, or the role of

museum professional, because what I also
learned while writing the book was how

differently trained people who were kind
of … There was a big generational change

in how people are taught art history
and also what's the role of the curator.

So older people, they were
trained in the minutiae of the

collections in their charge.

They were responsible
for those collections.

They were supposed to know everything
about those collections, and it was a very

narrow but deep, deep, deep knowledge.

And they wanted the person who wrote
to them from Costa Rica about a certain

shard of pottery to be able to tell them.

And then there's a younger generation
that's being taught global art history.

That means that we see artistic production
and cultural production as connected.

And so they know more about a
broader set of things and they, I

think, see their role as curators
in a different way as well.

And that's a way that might be more
conducive to bringing to light power

and the power in space and questioning,
critical looking and critical reflection

on what you've seen and what it
means and why did the person explain

it the way they explained it, and
is that the only way to explain it?

Well, this is a perfect opportunity
to transition and talk a little bit

about your new book, which is called
"Move Over, Mona Lisa: Reimagining

What We Read, Look At, and Learn."
As we alluded to in the intro, you

describe yourself as a decenterer,
and this is a big theme of the book.

Could you explain for people
what it means to decenter an

institution of art and culture?

I think the United States until recently
was doing … It wasn't perfect, but we

were doing a good job of grappling with
our history and trying to understand

that universities and museum goers
and our cultural and intellectual

life needs to include a more diverse
set of creators and creations.

My project … What I worry about is that
we don't pay enough attention to what it

means to diversify vis-a-vis the world.

It's one thing to have more art by
African Americans and Asian Americans

and ethnic Americans in our institutions.

But what makes us so insular and
parochial as a country is that we don't

pay enough attention to all the art
that's produced outside the country.

And when we do, it's a usual cast of
characters who come to our attention

because when you become a famous
contemporary, global contemporary artist

or a global contemporary writer or a
global contemporary intellectual, a

lot of times you've been trained, you
might be born in the Global South, but

you've been trained in the Global North.

Right.

So we master the same canon, we
diversify with the same five people,

and it's still a really limited sample.

I am part of a group of, it's an
international network of academics of

all kinds, people who are culture makers,
people who are culture managers — by that

I mean translators and curators — and then
people who use culture in their activism,

who care about producing and disseminating
and teaching about and acting upon

knowledge in more inclusive ways.

There are a lot of people who have taken
on that agenda and we're not the first by

any means, we build on what they've done.

But we feel that the discussion
falls short because it often stays

theoretical and it's not about
what you can do about things.

An international network often means
people in the United States and Europe

or North America and Europe, even though
they might've been born in the Global

South, that we say interdisciplinary,
but it's really never interdisciplinary.

And people often critique, they're
really good at critiquing, but they

don't chart a positive way forward and
they do it with ego and competition

and kind of individualism and not
collaboration and humility and generosity.

And so this is a group of people that
are trying to not only bring more

people in and ideas in and material
culture in, but also to do it with a

different ethos, a professional ethos
that really addresses the inequality

pipeline and how much people and ideas
and institutions from the Global South,

and I hope your listeners will understand
that as a very imperfect term to capture

poorer parts of Latin America and Asia
and Africa that are still left out.

Usually decentering means that you're
diversifying, that people, when

they would talk about what they're
trying to do, they would diversify.

So bring in a more diverse set of
people making more diverse stuff.

And then a lot of those people
are very happy to get to

London or New York or Paris.

But as I was writing the book, I realized
that … Let's call that soft reform.

And that's very important and all
power to them, but it doesn't really

break down the hierarchy of power
and it doesn't really fundamentally

challenge institutions as they are.

The center is still the same, in a way.

The center is still the same and the
institutions operate basically the same

with a more diverse content and ideas.

But what I realized as I was mucking
around for this book, and this book was

about writers and artists and thinkers in
Argentina and South Korea and Lebanon, was

that there are people that are actually,
they're looking for a harder reform.

So they are happy to take less critical
acclaim, less financial acclaim, if

they can create their own institutions,
their own networks of circulation,

their own nodes of activity that
don't rely on North America or Europe

for permission or facilitation.

And so they are really decentering
cultural globalization because there are

new nodes in the Persian Gulf, new nodes
in the southern colon of Latin America.

And so the book has these examples
of people that are fighting back.

So that's one way that the global
cultural world is changing.

And another is that some
people are opting out.

They're opting out and saying, "We
have a viable and interesting enough

intellectual and cultural scene of
our own that we don't depend upon the

globe." So they're kind of turning
their back on cultural globalization,

which is a type of decentering in
itself because you kind of puncture

the balloon and the air comes out.

I think there's something really
interesting there about people

who are opting out of these
previous centers of power.

My partner told me a joke that she saw
online, it was something to the effect

of museums will have an entire room
dedicated to one European guy's life

and then the next room will be Africa.

And I think there's a lot of folks
out there who, even if they're not

engaged with this on a scholarly
level, I think especially among younger

generations, there are people who
are aware of the limitations of these

historic institutions and may feel
like the only way forward is to opt

out, to look for the truth elsewhere.

If you were working at one of these
important museums, if you were working

at an institution of cultural heritage,

what can someone there do?

What can someone there do if
they are still attached to one of

these previous centers of culture?

What can they do to be
part of the solution?

Well, first of all, there's
a lot of new museums.

When you go to visit all those new museums
in the Persian Gulf, they're kind of

doing a lot of the same old, same old.

I mean, they look different but the
museology and the ethos behind it, the

values behind it, are very similar.

It just comes in a different
box, a different kind of box.

We didn't touch at all about the
issues of provenance and where

these objects should be displayed.

And there was a statement put out, and
I'm not going to remember the details

of this, but there were 25 of the
world's most important museums that

said, "We are museums of patrimony.

We're museums of humanity.

The British Museum is
not a British museum.

It's a world museum.

You can't take this stuff away
from us because we are the ones

that can protect it for humanity."
There is some truth to that.

Many more people go to London than
they do to Taiwan or to Thailand, but

there have to be more creative ways
of sharing provenance that go beyond

we're going to train you to … We're
going to do another training.

You come from Africa and Asia
to be trained in Europe, and

then maybe we'll send back the
object every once in a while.

But also, to be perfectly honest
about it, should all these other

poorer countries where people don't
have jobs and don't have health care

be spending their money on museums?

Like Walid Raad, who's a very successful
artist from Lebanon, he's kind of

like, "Is that the best we could do?

Just keep on making more museums?" So
I think there's a lot of discussions

to have about what's the best way to
share culture, to preserve culture,

to think about culture, to be amazed
by culture, and then to think of

creative arrangements about how
we shepherd it, how we steward it.

The old arrangements don't work.

I think there are real constraints
and real trade-offs that we

have to honestly look at.

I just want to ask your listeners to
think about what it would be like if

you couldn't go to Philadelphia and
see the Liberty Bell or you couldn't

see a copy of the Constitution.

There's so many countries around the
world where the heritage is somewhere

else and school kids can't go and see it.

And that's profound.

That's a profound loss for them.

How should a museum respond if
they're trying to move Mona Lisa

over and the wealthy donors who they
are dependent on for a lot of their

operating budget are like, "No, we
don't want to make any changes."

Well, I'd turn the question around
and say, why did all of those

tech bros from Silicon Valley
show up and make these amazing

contributions to Trump's inauguration?

I mean, have a spine, have a
moral compass, have an ethical

position and stick to it.

So who's ever the leader, that's
why they're the leader, they lead

and they say, "We have a certain
amount of square feet here.

There are people who this is their museum.

How can we redistribute it?

How can we use special exhibitions to
flesh out things that we don't have in

our permanent collection?" I mean, the
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston wants

to tell more Native American stories.

At this point, it's impossible
to buy Native American materials.

It's immoral to buy
Native American materials.

So what can they do?

Well, they're making a good faith effort.

Sometimes, in my humble
opinion, it falls flat.

And I say I wish they would be
more innovative, more creative in

their approach, but I admire them
and I give them credit for trying.

And that's the case with all of this.

You have to manage your financial
imperatives and then you have to

manage your educational imperatives,
your responsibility to the community

that you're serving, all that stuff.

Peggy, this has been fantastic.

I am so, so grateful that you made time to
talk about museums with me for this long.

I have two more questions
for you before we wrap up.

The first is the most important
question, easily the most important

question I ask anyone in this podcast,
which is, if you're in a museum gift

shop, what are you going to buy?

[laugh] Not the Frida Kahlo magnet.

I mean, that's the other thing that
we didn't talk about that because

there's this transnational class of
curators that go around from museum

to museum, you see the same kind of
programming and restaurant and bookstore,

and that's what we've all — museum
goers — have been socialized to expect.

And so there's a problem.

That is something we should also
think critically about because

should all museums look the same?

First of all, does every
country need a museum?

And then do they need to look the same?

Because who's that serving?

People like you and me who are
interested in this stuff, but not

necessarily the local folks who should
be also feeling comfortable too.

So what do I look for in the bookstore?

Usually I look for a postcard of
something beautiful that I saw that

I want to remember that moved me.

And my whole office at home is
filled with, I'm running out of space

actually because this is what I do.

It's my occupational health hazard
that anywhere I go, we always

go to museums and look at art.

And so just a postcard, that's it.

What's your favorite museum
you've ever been to and why?

I guess I have to err on the side of
immigrant museums or history museums that

bring those histories back into focus.

There's

the Copenhagen City Museum, which
does that for Copenhagen, which was

a big thing and is still a big thing.

And I don't know, I haven't been
there in a long time, so I don't

know if they're going backwards the
same way that we're going backwards,

but it was an amazing, simple, it
didn't cost a gazillion dollars.

The exhibits were made very creatively,
but it told the story that Copenhagen

has always been a city of immigrants.

Another museum I really liked was
in Sweden, which was the Museum

of World Cultures in Gothenburg.

So it's not in Stockholm.

They really displayed the materials
in a much more enlightened way and

also tried to really make connections
with the immigrant communities

that were around in that city.

And they contributed to
making the exhibition.

So for example, there was a
room that was about immigration

and people brought objects and
told the stories of the objects.

So I remember there was a woman who
brought a dress that she had taken

when she went to adopt her daughter
from someplace in Latin America.

So it was very powerful human
stories that just made the case

[of] this is who we are now.

These are people just like us.

Let's celebrate that.

Let's be open to that.

Let's embrace that.

They weren't a fancy-schmancy museum.

They just did it with a
lot of heart and ingenuity.

So those are some that
I think about often.

I just want to say thank you so
much for having me and it's so much

fun to be able to talk with you
and also for doing this podcast

because it's such an important thing.

Oh, the pleasure is all mine.

These conversations are fun,
but they're also important.

And so really that's what motivates
me is talking to folks like yourself,

really understanding this on a much
deeper level than just as an average

museum goer, if I might call myself that.

You won't be after this is over.

Thanks again to Peggy Levitt
for coming on the podcast.

You can find links to her
books in the show notes.

And as part of our gift shop giveaway,
I'm giving away a copy of her latest work,

"Move Over, Mona Lisa: Reimagining What
We Read, Look At, and Learn." To enter,

all you have to do is sign up for our
free email newsletter at likemuseum.com.

Call 'Em Like Museum is hosted
and edited by me, Eric Johnson.

It's produced out of my podcast
agency in San Francisco, LightningPod.

Our social media specialist is Julia
Wilde, artwork by Rhe Civitello.

Special thanks this week to Ethan
LaFrance, and thank you for listening.

I'll see you at the museum.