This post was first published on Museum Human. I have had the pleasure of a few conversations with Rob about the state of museums, and as a result, we are sharing some of each other’s ideas on our blogs. Stay tuned for a post by Rob on alignment and impact, which will appear here next week.
Recently, I attended a workshop about trauma and communities which positioned communities as needed spaces for healing from trauma. Our workplaces are communities; in our fractured modern age, for some individuals the workplace may be one of their few communal group resources, as individual friends or far-flung families often do not act as communities.
COVID caused widespread trauma, and we are still addressing the impact of this. When people are traumatized they are frightened; they reenact moments of trauma and struggle to connect with others. We don’t want this for our museum communities, internal or external, as individuals or as employees. So how can museums better meet the needs of employees still recovering from the trauma of a pandemic?
COVID and Trauma
My research on trauma is taken from Judith Herman’s book Trauma and Recovery, originally published in 1992 and considered a seminal resource on this topic. (You can find a PDF of this resource here, and the page numbers below refer to the pages of this PDF). Herman writes, “Traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary adaptations to life…. The common denominator of psychological trauma is a feeling of ‘intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat of annihilation.’” (p 24) Trauma is the result of feeling powerless in a moment of fear.
Individuals deal with trauma in different ways. People initially respond to danger with either a flight or fight response. “When neither resistance nor escape is possible, the human system of self-defense becomes overwhelmed and disorganized…. Traumatic symptoms have a tendency to become disconnected from their source and to take on a life of their own.” (pp 24–25)
The COVID pandemic caused wide-scale mass trauma. In 2021, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization Director-General, said, “Each and every individual on the surface of the world actually has been affected…. And that means mass trauma, which is beyond proportion, even bigger than what the world experienced after the Second World War. And when there is mass trauma, it affects communities for many years to come.”
Psychologists and health researchers agree. According to a team of psychologists writing in the Journal of Affective Disorders, “Current research suggests that in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated measures, one in five people could develop clinically relevant psychological distress.” The article also cites research that refers to COVID as a collective trauma, “defined as the psychological response of an entire group to a traumatic event.” The pandemic has impacted not just individuals, but communities. Even though this is a shared experience that “emotionally connects people around the world through helplessness, uncertainty, loss, and grief… [it] can unsettle community connections, and fundamentally alter aspects of community functioning.”
Herman wrote about terrible occurrences that many of us can only imagine: war, rape, domestic violence. We understand these as events that lead to fear, helplessness, and loss of control. But it turns out that recent events impacted many of us in the same way: provoking a fear of death for ourselves and for our loved ones; fear caused by sudden unemployment or the loss of one’s livelihood; and the profound losses of control and community.
COVID, trauma, and museums
Herman tells a story shared by a veteran of the Navy. His ship went down, and when rescuers arrived, the officers were rescued first. Although this sailor recognized this as normal military procedure, he was still horrified to realize that his life was expendable. Herman notes, “The rescuers’ disregard for this man’s life was more traumatic to him than were the enemy attack, the physical pain of submersion in the cold water, the terror of death, and the loss of the other men who shared his ordeal.” (p 40)
During COVID many museum staff members, especially front-line and junior staff members, were abruptly laid off by their employers. Suddenly, people who chose museum work because of a passion for the field were deserted by their institution. They had no idea when the pandemic would end, whether they would ever get their once-valued jobs back, or how they would support themselves once government funding ran out. For many museum workers, the workplace community is a precious, supportive environment; with layoffs, the loss of work emails and contacts, and the general isolation caused by COVID, many people lost these communities, as well.
The impact of layoffs on individuals was beautifully illustrated in a March 2024 recorded conversation between Mike Murawski and Joe Imholte entitled “Life After Layoff.” Mike spoke about his own experience losing his job at the start of the COVID pandemic. “It was an intense moment. At the same time you’re being laid off from your job, you’re looking around and thinking, you know, I’m in the largest global pandemic and economic shutdown in my lifetime, so it isn’t like I can turn around and look for employment elsewhere. It was a really challenging and difficult moment.” And later he says, “Our identities get so tied to the work and these positions, to an unhealthy level, to a moment where then when that tie is severed and that identity is cut off you’re kind of like, ‘What am I going to do? Who am I?'”
Both Mike and Joe talk about the loss of community they felt after losing their jobs. Joe said, “You lose a community. I was a part of a community for 25 years, for 5 or more days a week, and then suddenly they’re gone.” And Mike added, “There are people that you actually see more frequently during the week than your family, and all of a sudden you’re just, gone, and almost like you can’t even… you don’t feel like you can communicate with them, they are now on the other side of some invisible line.”
In June of 2020, a group of individuals in the art world launched the Instagram account @ChangeTheMuseum. This was in direct response to the murder of George Floyd, another moment of collective trauma, and was part of a wave of anti-racist protests against police brutality and the institutional racism that Floyd’s murder rendered unignorable. Within a month @Change the Museum had 63 posts and nearly 4,000 followers. The themes this group found in the stories being shared included that “museum’s human resources departments ‘don’t protect individuals, they protect the institutions they serve,’ and predominantly white boards ‘are the true rulers of our public institutions.’”
@ChangeTheMuseum represents a complicated movement in museums. Some of the stories shared on this platform may evidence not only inequity, but also a known psychological reaction to trauma—the unconscious reenactment of traumatic events in disguised form. Through this dual lens, many of the posts on @ChangeTheMuseum can be read as a reenactment of the trauma of sudden, field-wide and inequitable layoffs—an experience which, like the sailor’s experience shared earlier, demonstrated with brutal clarity that existing structures and authority held so many individuals were expendable. @ChangeTheMuseum is just one, very public, space in which these reenactments take place; they are also happening regularly at museums, impacting the way people engage with each other and understand the actions of others.
Healing from trauma happens within communities. Herman writes, “Trauma isolates; the group re-creates a sense of belonging…. Trauma dehumanizes the victim; the group restores her humanity.” (p 154) Traumatized museum employees, abandoned by their former work communities, are creating new ones. These include communities of protest engaged in lobbying for fair treatment, ethical practices, and often for staff unionization. (Although some museum workers unionized prior to 2020, this work has increased, impacting many more museums since the pandemic.) The response of museum leaders to these actions is mixed, with a few supporting union efforts but most struggling with groups protesting against the practices of some donors and board members, and for higher pay and fair treatment.
Herman notes that, historically, society has dealt with trauma responses by discrediting the victim. For example, “When the existence of a combat neurosis [shell shock] could no longer be denied, medical controversy, as in the earlier debate on hysteria, centered upon the moral character of the patient.” (p 14) While employees are sharing perceived threats to their value and sense of autonomy as well as to the integrity of museums, museum leaders often dismiss these complaints, either assigning them to youth or a lack of understanding of the pressure museums are currently under, as decreases in post-COVID audience numbers and contributed income threaten budgets and programs.
Museums as spaces of healing
Many museums have programs for visitors and communities that explicitly address healing. Claire Bown of The Thinking Museum has covered much of this work. She dedicated an episode of her podcast “The Art Engager” to prescription programs in museums and MoMA “Artful Practices for Well-being” in her blog.
Museums rarely address employee healing with the same energy and intentionality as they address visitor programs. It seems evident that in order for staff to represent the museum in helping visitor communities with healing, they must feel the same care and attention from their employer. But here museums run into a conflict of roles. Workplaces need to maintain a level of professional distance in order to function. The School of Social Work at the University of Iowa has a web page on which they talk about professional behavior, which includes appropriate attire, punctuality, respectful and deferential interactions, professional language, maintaining boundaries, and “avoiding the expression of raw emotions.” Thus, while a two-hour program can function as a therapeutic space, a staff meeting cannot.
But a workplace is a community, and arguably, right now it’s a community full of people (from entry-level staff to leadership) that is recovering from trauma. A March 2024 article about Pixar in Harvard Business Review notes the relationship between authenticity and mental health: “The research suggests that feeling more authentic at work is associated with greater well-being and a sense of belonging. In contrast, covering up your authenticity can feel stifling and lead you to search for safer work environments. Furthermore, research reveals health impacts of silencing yourself. If you’re constantly calculating and on high alert, the cognitive load can feel exhausting.”
How can a workplace give employees what they need right now—a space of connection and healing—while still functioning? How can a museum be a space of healing for staff and still create and mount exhibits, run programs, conserve objects, welcome visitors, offer tours, generate revenue, solicit donations, cultivate new members, and keep those white-cube spaces clean? How can museums offer every individual what they need, including those leaders who are not adept at dealing with the emotional needs of their staff?
I am a proponent of using program design tools to think about and improve employee experience. With this in mind, I reached out to Windy Cooler, the leader of the workshop referenced in the first paragraph of this post and a doctoral candidate in Divinity who leads conversations in Quaker spaces about trauma and conflicts, to discuss how museums might address trauma and healing. (Read another conversation with Windy here.) Windy noted that if the current workplace culture is not working the way it needs to in 2024, then we need to develop new structures for the workplace and be very clear and transparent about these structures. What spaces for healing can the workplace offer? Where do people need to leave their emotions at the door?
Here are a few ideas from Windy and others for how museums (and other workplaces) might address trauma and foster a community in which people can heal:
- Build understanding of this topic: of the challenges employees may be facing, and the human, community work that needs to be done. For example, a group of staff members that includes leadership and human resources representatives might form a study group to read and discuss Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery and how these ideas resonate in 21st century museums. Windy has also found family systems theory and polyvagal theory worth learning about and discussing.1
- Offer discrete spaces and times to share and connect in a personal way. For example, hold an annual retreat, or even monthly or quarterly meetings, where people are allowed and encouraged to bring their whole selves, not just their professional selves. These are moments when supervisors can hone their listening and empathy skills as well as moments where problems are identified and compassion is shared, with problem-solving saved for a separate time. Clarify that this is different from other meeting times—while everyone needs to leave some of their own personal life at the door for a workplace to function well, these are opportunities to focus on the full person, rather than the individual as an employee.
- Create new policies that allow and encourage individuals to identify and manage their own needs. This requires trust and generosity. For example, encourage employees to take note of when they are having a difficult time and take a mental health day instead of coming into work, or, if this is not possible, reschedule any difficult meetings and work from home or in a space where they can practice self-care.
- Ensure that people who need it are getting help from trained professionals, so that managers are not put in the position of dealing with mental health struggles they are unqualified to deal with. For example, offer staff (all staff, not just full-time staff) access to quality therapy services (including the option of in-person, ongoing therapy) as a benefit of employment.
- Put safety and connection first, because these are essential to healing. Encourage communities within the workplace—such as reading groups, lunch groups, and other social opportunities—where connection-making can happen. And prioritize expressing concern and understanding. If someone is visibly having a hard time, say something about what you’re noticing, and ask if they need to take some time to themselves or skip or reschedule a meeting—help them process and deal with the emotional turbulence they are dealing with, which ultimately helps maintain boundaries around work meetings as spaces for focusing on work.
- One aspect of trauma is the lack of autonomy felt in the moment of crisis. Help employees recover their own autonomy by allowing them as much control over their area of work and their work style as possible. For example, identify up front what ideas need to be vetted, and where employees can run with an idea. Their ideas may not be the same as the ideas of their managers; find the spaces where this is ok and the spaces where it is not. For the spaces in which consensus is needed, help create processes upfront so that individuals do not feel like they have done work and expressed ideas and then are undercut.
People heal from trauma through connections with others, individually and in their communities. Herman writes:
“Commonality with other people carries with it all the meanings of the word common. It means belonging to a society, having a public role, being part of that which is universal. It means having a feeling of familiarity, of being known, of communion. It means taking part in the customary, the commonplace, the ordinary, and the everyday. It also carries with it a feeling of smallness, of insignificance, a sense that one’s own troubles are “as a drop of rain in the sea.” The survivor who has achieved commonality with others can rest from her labors. Her recovery is accomplished; all that remains before her is her life.” (p 170)
- Windy warns that polyvagal theory is not entirely accurate regarding human anatomy. However, she says, this theory notes that we behave in predictable ways given our own history of trauma and stressors; these behaviors escalate and deescalate in a predictable order; and that what we most need in order to stay connected and curious is for connection and security to be offered to us. We need to be offered a hand to guide us through the stages of collapse, fight or flight, and back to a place where we can offer the same guidance to others. ↩︎
Museum Questions 