Hi Amanda,

I’ll weigh in on the gender question first. My biggest issue with Getty ULAN on gender is they use the term “gender” which is good, but then the recommended terms under gender are “male” or “female” which are not genders, they apply to biological sex so ULAN really should change those dated labels and museums should not use them. Even if only internal staff see your TMS database we all have a role to play in reinforcing that gender is not a binary and not tied to biology. I think it is great you are thinking about non-binary labels, more museums should do that! The easiest change to do is to add “non-binary” as a term as I think it is a useful catch all and is fairly widely accepted in communities that don’t do gender binary.

Gender tracking can get weird at times, but I absolutely understand the intention and use of it in museums. Many artists make their gender a core part of their practice and being able to get a sense of how diverse your collection is and has grown is a useful metric. With gender it is important to keep in mind that how an individual identifies should surpass any other assertion of their gender.

One thing I’d love to see more for all constituents is tracking pronouns as attributes, not so much as a querying tool, but for reference, especially as they/them and other alternative pronouns grow in greater prominence. For example, someone can identify as a man, but prefer they/them pronouns.

As far as ethnicity that always felt super dicey to me and I am always concerned with how the data is used. My deepest fear is staff using it to tokenize marginalized groups rather than using it as a vehicle to increase diversity and address structural barriers in the wider world of art and museums. Cultural affiliation as Sue said is great, at African Art we enter where a constituent is born and where they are/were active in lieu of nationality/citizenship. I think it helps avoid issues of borders being mostly arbitrary, what is citizenship, states within states, and colonial legacy.

Best,

Jeremy Munro
Database Administrator
National Museum of African Art
Smithsonian Institution
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From: The Museum System (TMS) Users <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Dearolph, Amanda
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2018 2:14 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Constituent Gender & Ethnicity

Hello,

Lately I have been receiving requests, both internal and external, for information about the artists in our permanent collection and their demographic information. The majority of the requests have to do with gender, and more recently ethnicity. If you are tracking this information, how have you been entering it into TMS? And have you incorporated ULAN into your records? Currently we use attributes to enter artist gender, which gives us the flexibility to include non-binary labels, but ethnicity is not something we've ever tracked in TMS before.


-A



AMANDA DEAROLPH

DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR
COLLECTION INFORMATION & DIGITAL ASSETS
WWW.LACMA.ORG<http://WWW.LACMA.ORG>

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