Unsettling Collections: Bias in the Visual Canon
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•10 views
VRA 2023 Adventures in Critical Cataloging session. Presenters: Sara Schumacher and Millicent Fullmer This paper will cover the results of a research study looking at visual resources professionals' perceptions of the visual canon at their institutions and their actions confronting biases in their visual collections. This research is innovative because the "visual canon" as a concept is often evoked but rarely defined, and there has not been research into perceptions and practices that span different types of cultural heritage institutions. The researchers seek to focus on the role of the visual resources professional as a potential change-maker in confronting bias and transforming the “visual canon.” In our presentation, we will discuss the analysis of our survey and interviews around three key research questions: What barriers do visual resources professionals perceive in remedying the biases in the visual canon? What authorities, past and present, do they identify in shaping the visual canon? How do they approach teaching users to identify and critically confront these issues? We will highlight trends as well as unique concerns and solutions from our research participants and engage our audience with how these issues impact their own collections, policies, and instruction.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
Similar to Unsettling Collections: Bias in the Visual Canon
Similar to Unsettling Collections: Bias in the Visual Canon (20)
More from Visual Resources Association
More from Visual Resources Association (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Unsettling Collections: Bias in the Visual Canon
- 1. Unsettling Collections: Bias in the Visual Canon Sara Schumacher (she/her) Texas Tech University Millie Fullmer (she/her) University of San Diego VRA San Antonio, TX September, 2023 Photo credit: Deutsche Fotothek, Diapositivsammlung by Döring, Gerhard (Herstellung) (Fotograf) - Deutsche Fotothek, Germany - CC BY-SA. https://www.europeana.eu/item/437/item_IS4BJ6SEGQEMDJ2L4MEK6HVOL3SV3SCZ
- 2. Research Study: Visual Canon & Biases in Collections •Examine visual resources professionals perceptions of the visual canon at their institutions. •Examine their actions confronting biases in their visual collections for insights into professional social justice pursuits. Photo credit: Junge Frau, sich im Spiegel betrachtend by Richter, Regine (Herstellung) (Fotograf) - Deutsche Fotothek, Germany - In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted. https://www.europeana.eu/item/437/item_H4ATSIHO6EEPLGPAN2WEMKS76WT3UCE4
- 4. LET’S ASK OURSELVES What barriers do you perceive in remedying the biases in the visual canon?
- 5. Findings: Administration • “pressure to put materials online but without better records” • “require a degree of understanding from those in power to implement any form of viable change. Open dialogue and open minds are what is needed” • “Visual information is not supported in a comprehensive way by the cataloging system” Margolies, John, photographer. Haunted house, Castle Park Golf, Polk Street, Riverside, California. United States Riverside California, 1985. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017705303/.
- 6. LET’S ASK OURSELVES How do you approach teaching users to identify and critically confront these issues?
- 7. Findings: Outreach and Transparency • “culturally sensitive materials require additional best practices” • “up front about the limitations of our collections and some strategies for overcoming them” • “try to acknowledge the gaps up front openly” Margolies, John, photographer. Jet Star roller coaster, Seaside Heights, New Jersey. United States New Jersey Seaside Heights, 1978. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017711777/.
- 8. ● Disclaimer or Statement on Harmful Language ● Critical/Ethical Description Statement/Policy ● Diversity/DEI Statement ● Acknowledgement of Bias ● Open Metadata Policy ● Accessible Metadata Policy ● Metadata/Cataloging Mission Statement ● Metadata/Cataloging Policy and Procedures ● Other Cataloging and Metadata Policies
- 9. WHAT ARE OTHERS DOING? Alston, Meaghan, Nicole Basile, Sarah W. Carrier, Michelle Cronquist, Patrick Cullom, Jacqueline Dean, Monica Figueroa et al. "A Guide to Conscious Editing at Wilson Special Collections Library." (2022). “List of Statements on Bias in Library and Archives Description.” Cataloging Lab. last updated May 2023.
- 10. Common Solutions: Outreach and Transparency ● Feedback forms ● Updates of Ongoing Projects ● Indication and/or Contextualization of Metadata Source Madge Lessing, full length, on bicycle, facing left; holding musical horn to lips. , ca. 1898. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2005684803/.
- 11. “Striving for transparency and evidence-based description by including citations and notes to document our decisions, and notes addressing changes that have been made to description.” “TARC Statement on Potentially Harmful Language in Archival Description.”Tufts Archival Research Center, June 2020. “To distinguish content created by Morgan staff from harmful content in collection items, we use quotation marks to denote language present in the item or originating from collector or dealer descriptions. We also seek to add contextual information about the creator, collector, period, and culture of such items to address their harmful, insensitive, or inaccurate content.” “Statement on Critical Cataloging at the Morgan Library & Museum,” The Morgan Library & Museum, Accessed August 23, 2023. “Increasing the transparency of archival labor by including finding aid revision statements and in-depth processing information notes.” “Statement on More Inclusive Archival Collections,” PennState University Libraries, Accessed August 23, 2023. “In order to facilitate searching, we have published our crosswalk between offensive/outdated terminology and a) the terms we use as replacements in cataloger- provided titles and descriptions, and b) the subject headings we use to index these materials” “Digital Collection Offensive Language Policy,” Presbyterian Historical Society, Accessed August 23, 2023.
- 12. Assess potential barriers and solutions to confronting bias in the visual canon • Demographics of those in power at an institution are not mirrored in the patron population • Holistic versus systematic approach • Address diversity issues not just by a collection’s subject matter, but through authorship and own voices/lived experience • Question what is missing from the collection through external assessment • Availability of more diverse content has challenges e.g. culturally sensitive material Photo credit: www.semissourian.com
- 13. Solutions from Research Study “We have stressed diversity of voices and presences in our exhibits and instruction; we have made huge efforts in collection building so patrons and students see diversity in our collections and can reflect/explore them; we have trained staff on speaking up when overhearing bias in conversations.” “Explaining how collections were created in the past, by focusing on "founding" families and governmental institutional collections.” “We seek out descriptions of the objects from our users (which are far more diverse than our small staff, in education and demographically) rather than depend only on the art historical perspective.”
- 14. #OWNVOICES ● Viral hashtag created by Corinne Duyvis a white, disabled, bisexual author on Twitter in 2015. A label to be applied to individuals who belong to marginalized groups. ● Aim: to improve authenticity and avoid stereotypes when discussing diverse subject matter. ● Problem: Privacy issues and pressure to be “out” and public with your personal identity when you might not want to. Photo credit: by James Garman on Unsplash
- 16. “Old Masters” ● In HBOs 2021 documentary Black Art: In the Absence of Light, artist Kerry James Marshall discusses his interest in representational art at a time when abstraction was being celebrated. Since the black figure was rarely included in the art historical canon, and media portrayals were often negative, Marshall and other black artists sought to provide a counter narrative. Photo credit: "Untitled (Studio)," by Kerry James Marshall, 2014, one of the pieces featured in Black Art: In the Absence of Light.
- 17. “IS IT TIME GAUGUIN GOT CANCELLED?” (Nayeri, Farah. Is It Time Gauguin Got Canceled? ProQuest, New York Times, Nov 18, 2019, https://www.proquest.com/blogs-podcasts- websites/is-time-gauguin-got-canceled/docview/2315126645/se-2.) ● Museums are reassessing the legacy of an artist who had sex with teenage girls and called the Polynesian people he painted “savages.” ● LONDON — “Is it time to stop looking at Gauguin altogether?” ● That’s the startling question visitors hear on the audio guide as they walk through the “Gauguin Portraits” exhibition at the National Gallery in London. Image credit: Tyla Vaeau, Dee and Dallas Do Gauguin, 2009.
- 18. TAKEAWAYS • Visual resources professionals are engaging in this as a field! • As we grapple with these issues, let’s bring them to the forefront for our users as well • We want to hear more. Photo credit: Photo by Sam Moghadam Khamseh on Unsplash
- 19. THANK YOU! Contact Information: Sara Schumacher Architecture Image Librarian Texas Tech University sara.schumacher@ttu.edu Millie Fullmer Acquisitions and Cataloging Librarian University of San Diego mfullmer@sandiego.edu Image credit: James Luna’s “The Artifact Piece” (1987). Courtesy the Estate of James Luna and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/t-magazine/most-influential- protest-art.html
Editor's Notes
- Our purpose is to look at visual resources professionals perceptions of the visual canon at their institutions and their actions confronting biases in their visual collections in order to provide insights into professional social justice pursuits that include decentering whiteness and hegemonic practices in academic and cultural heritage institutions. The "visual canon" as a concept is often evoked but rarely defined. Research into how bias impacts access to digital collections has been touched upon through algorithms (Noble, 2018), and library systems (Reidsma, 2019). Bias in visual collections has been researched through applying feminist theory (Dimitrakaki et al, 2013), through analysis of digitized works (Kizhner et al., 2021). However, there has not been research into perceptions and practices that span types of cultural heritage institutions, and focus on the role of the visual resources professional as a potential change-maker. [While our survey did not gather enough participants to be statistically significant, we were able to use the responses to identify themes to further our own research interests- which we will present here today]
- MILLIE the visual canon is a term we settled on, but not one that is universally accepted. We defined it as “a sanctioned or accepted body of visual works within a specific field/discipline, or the accepted rules and principles used to identify such visual works.” The words on the screen….show alternative ways participants described this concept, and some of participants disagreed with the use of this term altogether. I would argue there is not a consensus about this term, but it is still useful to explore our themes.
- Many participants pointed out common struggles I have often discussed with other VRA members- lack of time, not enough trained staff or students.
- However I identified a theme surrounding Administration… These point more largely to trends at different institutions where visual resources professionals have felt administration has not prioritized cataloging and metadata particularly for visual or multimedia materials, where many of us either have to adapt to systems that were not created with our materials in mind or utilize systems separate from other institutional collections often leading to our collections receiving less support or attention. And also more largely common complaints about the lack of communication and resistance to changing the power structures at our institutions.
- So when we can’t remedy the biases we are seeing, how do we teach our visitors, faculty, students, and patrons to identify and critically confront them
- One theme I identified in the survey was about outreach and transparency….so looking to best practices and being honest and frank about our collections
- How do we do that. Many institutions have various policies that incorporate best practices and mandate different types of transparency in information. What types of cataloging and metadata policies does your institution make publicly available (navigable via the website menus, pop-ups, or on main webpages) either as individual policies or segments of larger policies?
- Here are some places to visit to look at how institutions are using these policies
- The most commonly seen outreach and transparency solutions were feedback forms (allowing users the ability to dispute materials or metadata or ask for metadata remediation); updates on ongoing projects (providing accountability for mission and statements), and indication and/or contextualization of metadata source- which can look different ways.
- Additionally, and somewhat uniquely, Southeast still operates under the century's old faculty-driven collection development model. Meaning academic department faculty select materials for the library's collection rather than librarians. The Acquisitions Unit allocates library materials funds each year to individual academic departments. These departments, with autonomy, create lists of materials they feel build the collection for their department’s needs. The Acquisitions Unit collects these lists of monographs, eBooks, films, and kits and orders them. All one-time purchases for the library were handled through this system. With the endowment and a faculty-driven collection development system the librarians at Southeast are virtually uninvolved in collection development. The librarians only maintain collection responsibilities over resources that require an ongoing commitment such as journal and databases subscriptions as well as some special collections like the Reference Collection. This means a great deal of academic faculty involvement in the library, but also creates problems when topics of deselection or budgetary reductions are discussed. In an attempt to thread three needles at once: student engagement, unit visibility, and librarian involvement in collection development, I turned to how we could create new opportunities. From this was born two initiatives that strove to answer these needs: the “What Would You Like to Read About?” program that allowed the student body to choose a subject area for collection enhancement and the Johnson Endowment Grants for Student Groups that allowed student organizations to request materials that would support their groups' work. We’ll look at each of these in a little more detail.
- https://bookriot.com/what-happened-to-the-own-voices-label/
- Online exhibition substitutes…
- https://www.npr.org/2021/02/24/970546036/black-art-chronicles-a-pivotal-exhibition-and-its-lasting-impact-on-black-artist https://www.famsf.org/exhibitions/kehinde-wiley-an-archaeology-of-silence Invisible Man is Ralph Ellison's first novel, published by Random House in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues faced by African Americans in the early 20th century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity.
- Nayeri, Farah. Is It Time Gauguin Got Canceled? ProQuest, Nov 18, 2019, https://www.proquest.com/blogs-podcasts-websites/is-time-gauguin-got-canceled/docview/2315126645/se-2. “Gauguin, you piss me off,” begins “Two Nudes On a Tahitian Beach, 1894,” a poem by the New Zealand poet and academic Selina Tusitala Marsh. You strip me bare assed, turn me on my side shove a fan in my hand smearing fingers on thigh pout my lips below an almond eye and silhouette me in smouldering ochre. The anonymity of his Tahitian portraits is another cause of frustration. In the 2009 photographic series “Dee and Dallas Do Gauguin,” the New Zealand-born Samoan artist Tyla Vaeau has cut out the faces in Gauguin reproductions and inserted photos of her own sister and friend. Gauguin’s art is a problem “if it continues to be used to frame the Pacific in this timeless, semi-damaged past, when actually there’s so much going on,” said Caroline Vercoe, a senior lecturer in art history at the University of Auckland who is part Samoan and is participating in the National Gallery in London’s talk and film program. “It’s such a lively and dynamic culture within the indigenous context as well.”