Initiatives at the Tucson Museum of Art

As a forward-thinking community-engaged institution, the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block (TMA) is dedicated to advancing best practices in museums, collaborating with constituents, and expanding knowledge about artworks in its care.

Through a series of initiatives, TMA is taking action to become a vital resource in Southern Arizona and beyond. This includes a commitment to local cultures, histories, and heritage that are explored and amplified through the museum’s collections, exhibitions, and programs.

These initiatives are interdepartmental, overarching, structural, and ongoing.

Learn more about these various efforts below.

INCLUSION, DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND ACCESS

TMA’s Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access Plan aims to position the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block (TMA) as a responsive, community-centered institution that represents, activates, and advocates for its communities. This plan is guided by four principles—relevancy, community, respect, and multivocality—which are integrated and reflected within all of the museum’s daily operations including collections, exhibitions, programs, and its people.

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Community-Based Curation

Community-based curation is a collaborative approach to interpretation and exhibition development that explores the overlap (or intersections) of communities, histories and culture, and the museum’s collection. This process relies on activating a network of community curators, exhibition-specific consultants, who work with TMA staff to determine themes and objectives as well as select artwork, identify curatorial strategies, author interpretative materials, and develop programs.

TMA understands community-based curation to be a living process rooted in mutual respect. This curatorial approach constantly evolves as ideas, understandings, and references are taken into consideration, thus broadening approaches to interpretation, collections, display, and research; offering insights that might have been overlooked or contexts previously unknown; and bringing up more questions than answers.

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COLLECTIONS RESEARCH

TMA staff engages in a variety of research activities to better understand works of art in the museum’s collection. These efforts broaden research through different types of knowledge and expertise such as art historical and community engaged. This may include working with communities to glean insights into artworks, collaborating with other museums and organizations to develop new understandings, or incorporating interviews and archival research.

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Initiatives at the Tucson Museum of Art

INCLUSION, DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND ACCESS

Community-Based Curation

COLLECTIONS RESEARCH

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