Beyond 'diversity' initiatives: Interrogating whiteness towards a decolonisation of the museum space.

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To what extent can shifting the gaze onto whiteness and race contribute to decolonisation in museums, and to what extent can this create more racially inclusive spaces?The recent drive to decolonise the museum space has largely been interpreted by museums as diversifying the colonial museum white space. However, as Sumaya Kassim states: Too often people of colour are rolled in to provide natural resources - our bodies and our decolonial thoughts - which are exploited, and then discarded. [...] Rather than place the onus on people of colour - either as facilitators or as an audience for the museum - we need to flip the narrative and ask how the museum can facilitate the decolonial process for its white majority audience in a way that does not continue to exploit people of colour. (Kassim, 2017). This research seeks to move beyond 'diversity' initiatives to focus on dismantling the image of whiteness as the norm, and exposing 'race' and its legacy in the museum space as central to decolonisation. This is not to say that 'diversity' is not important. Yet I ague 'diversity' projects within the museum space that sit within unchallenged white structures result in perpetuating the racist colonial legacy the museum is attempting to address. In light of a rapidly changing ethical landscape, where institutions are struggling with racial legacies and calls to action, this research aims to extend our understanding of what decolonial and race-conscious museum practice and visitor engagement looks like. Using action-based, original insights into whiteness as a racialised status elicited through the development of an exhibition on 'race', this research seeks to create a mirror onto whiteness as a highly significant contribution to museum 'race' literacy work. This PhD will take a multi-method approach; collecting data through observational and reflective methods studying exhibition case studies; and generating data through an exhibition on 'race'. As a research project that is a social intervention, it intends to be an explorative investigation into the impact of an exhibition on 'race' as a construct on visitors and museum staff, in order to help answer my over-arching research question stated above, in addition to two sub-questions as follows: What happens when white 'sees' white? In shifting the white gaze onto itself, and by changing the subject-object dynamic, can new ways of seeing be created? To what extent can exposing the social construction of 'race' in a museum exhibition create positive change in how 'race' and racism are addressed by white and racially-minoritised people at audience, staff, and institutional levels? This research intends to offer an original contribution to knowledge in order to impact the museum sector by offering a step-change in how racial equity work is approached. Identifying and analysing 'whiteness' as a fundamental part of the process is increasingly called for by scholars and practitioners (Jenson, 2011; Monserrat, Wee and Gamaker, 2020; Kassim, 2017), yet there is very little, if any, significant and robust research in this area.