Tag Archives: healing

“It’s Been Two Years Since…” – Reflecting on being laid off & where I am now after two years

IMPORTANT NOTE: I want to let the Art Museum Teaching community know that I am moving my writing over to my new Substack publication called “Agents of Change.” I started this publication around the end of last year, and I’ve been posting there each month on topics that emerge from my book, Museums as Agents of Change, and issues related to change and how we can all become changemakers. The Art Museum Teaching site has been around for 10 years now, and I am grateful for the community that has formed here (and or everyone who has contributed to this site over these years). I invite you to Subscribe to my Substack, and join this growing community of changemakers. I’ll be expanding this publication throughout this year, adding different types of content and programs to offer strategies, support, and guidance. I hope to see you there. And, again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a part of Art Museum Teaching.


A week after the COVID pandemic shut down most museums across the country, I joined the ranks of thousands of museum workers who were laid off from their jobs. Of all the things that happened in the chaotic month that was March 2020, this is the event I remember most. 

I distinctly recall the acidy taste in the back of my mouth after the brief, life-altering Zoom call. I remember feeling dizzy. It was quite literally a moment that threw me off balance more than almost any other single moment in my life thus far.

What I remember most was the seething anger I felt. Anger at the museum, of course—at those who made this decision—but also anger at myself. A part of me at the time couldn’t help but feel that it was somehow my fault. I felt ashamed, embarrassed, and experienced a lot of self doubt. The anger hung on for a while even as the initial shock and panic of losing my “job security” wore off. 

But here’s the thing… over time, I was able to work through this anger in ways that have helped me to move on. And now, on this two year anniversary, I’m ready to share some of that process.

A lot of you have been going through your own “it’s been two years since…” moments this month. If you had an experience that was anything like mine, the memories have likely also brought a lot of complex and difficult emotions back to the surface.

The feelings are still here for me, too. But I’ve learned, and I’m growing, and I’m moving forward with a sense of optimism. And I’m hoping that by sharing my own process for getting here, it’ll be helpful for others too.

I took this photo of my empty desk and office after I packed up all my things (March 2020). It was the last time I was in that building, until just this past week.

A Journey of Healing and Repair

The sudden and dramatic shift out of museum employment (right at a moment when a global pandemic altered every aspect of our lives) was a bit like an out of body experience. 

I’d been working in a museum for so long (more than 15 years, by that point) that I had forgotten what it was like not to. I had wrapped my identity so tightly around my work for an institution that I felt a blurry sense of loss of identity without my job. And then, of course, there was the anger; deep wells of anger that initially overtook almost everything else.

My first steps involved disentangling my own sense of self as a “museum employee” from all the other ways I can know and understand myself, my whole self.  I found peace and joy in the simple things, like spending time with family and taking daily walks around our neighborhood with my spouse. I sought connections with close friends through outdoor meetups, and I connected with nature through regular hikes in parks and even gardening.

I also began to channel my creative energy into other kinds of work that felt rewarding, such as the illustration and design work that I do as a co-creator at Super Nature Adventures.  I had been lucky enough to have started this small business with my spouse a few years before the pandemic, and helping it thrive gave me a new sense of purpose during those first tough pandemic months. 

I also sought ways to engage my body—mostly through trail running, which has long been a tool for my own healing and care. I found community and a sense of belonging in a different way through outdoor running groups.

My social media post from the day I found out I was leaving my museum job; reflecting on what matters to me, above all else.

The Guidance of Key Teachers Through This Process

At the same time as I was working on disentangling myself from my identity as a “museum employee,” I was also seeking out spiritual teachers and philosophers that I had long admired or heard about in connection to their work on going through periods of upheaval and uncertainty. These included Lama Rod Owens, Kazu Haga, and Pema Chödrön.

I felt like I needed a North Star to guide me down this path of uncertainty and the unknown. And their writings, especially, helped me to get my head out of museums and to focus my attention on what matters most in my life, above all else.

These books truly helped me make it through this life change and the pandemic itself. I return to their pages on a regular basis.

Through the pages of his book Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger, Lama Rod Owens taught me how to gain control over my anger and see it as a teacher pointing me in a new direction. He writes:

“When I don’t have agency over my anger, it actually has agency over me.”

A reread of Pema Chödrön’s classic text When Things Fall Apart taught me (again) that these experiences of ‘falling apart’ are what make us truly human. 

Like Owens, Chödrön invites us to treat these moments as our greatest teacher. Here is my favorite passage from her book:

“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

Through his writings in Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm, Kazu Haga helped me understand the possibility and hope of radically transforming institutions—like museums—to center deeply human values of love, compassion, and healing. In his book, Haga writes:

“In the same way that violence has been institutionalized, we can institutionalize its antidote—nonviolence. We can build institutions, structures, and policies that are constantly reinforcing a new way of relating to each other. When practices are constantly reinforcing justice, healing, accountability, forgiveness, love, and understanding, we can start changing who we are.”

All of these teachings provided me with a reframe of everything that had happened to me, and allowed me to think in more complex and productive ways about how to move forward. Haga’s words even helped me to see my own agency in the work of transforming museums. All of this also became the groundwork that helped me return to museums through a different framework, and compelled me to finish the book project that I had been working on for years. 

Before the end of 2020, I had submitted the final manuscript for Museums as Agents of Change, which took a slight shift toward being a resource for museum professionals (and anyone) interested in being a part of the transformation so desperately needed in museums. I wrote the final chapter of my book as a reflection from this place I now stood, asking from the heart:

“What if love, above everything else, was the core value that steered the radical change needed in museums today?”

Letting Go … Really Letting Go

Perhaps the most important concept for me to move on and through the process was to embrace the concept known as radical forgiveness. 

Radical forgiveness is different from the kind of forgiveness we often see and hear in popular culture or that we learned when we grew up as kids. Often (too often), when we hear of forgiveness, we see it as a kind of tit-for-tat. It relies on receiving an apology from someone that has done harm to us, and then we can make a choice to extend forgiveness. In this traditional sense, forgiveness involves a certain amount of blame and judgment.

Rather, as psychiatrist Gerald Jampolsky has explained, radical forgiveness “really means letting go of our perception that we need to hold a grievance the rest of our lives.” It is essentially a process of letting go.

I first heard Amber Johnson speak about radical forgiveness during a Justice Fleet pop-up exhibition project here in Portland, and the way she frames it continues to resonate with me:

“Radical forgiveness is a fluid and deliberate process that allows us to repair the tears, rips, and gaping wounds that impede us from being better versions of ourselves and bettering our world.”

Radical forgiveness doesn’t mean we absolve the person who caused us harm. This is key. You have to let go of that notion in order to truly move on. Instead, what radical forgiveness focuses on is how we can learn to find growth in ourselves. 

The journey of radical forgiveness is one of the single greatest challenges we face in life, yet moving through this process gives us a profound sense of freedom—freedom from the past, from grudges, from blame. We simply cannot let that act of harm, pain, and trauma continue to control the way we live our lives.

This framework is well expressed in these words from Rev. angel Kyodo Williams, spiritual teacher and founder of the Center for Transformational Change: 

“The forgiveness is actually our way of ritualizing permission to move on, to not have our ability to reconcile pain and difficulty be incumbent on working it out with the other person. So it isn’t about forgiveness—I go and get them and tell them that now I have forgiven you—but it is a self-practice of releasing ourselves from the dynamic in which we’re wanting something from the other person that we can’t necessarily ever get.”

Giving Myself Permission to Move On

Last week, I took what I see as an important final step in this process of letting go and radically forgiveness. 

I visited the museum where I used to work … for the first time since being laid off two years ago.

I stepped into the museum as a different person than I was before.  Grounded in a new identity, I entered the space as a visitor, a guest, a community member, and a parent (who spent a lot of time exploring the galleries with his son). 

After two years, this is the first time I visited my old museum. Lots of complicated feelings, and a lot more to process. I plan to visit again soon.

Was it easy? No. I still held a lot of complicated feelings from the past—that’s why it took me two years to return to this institution, this place. But it was good to experience the museum differently, as a parent and visitor. As someone disentangling myself from an institution.

It was also good to see and feel the experience of going there, and recognizing how my own work there had made a difference and shaped the change that continues to happen.

And throughout the process I was also reminded, as Pema Chödrön reminds us, that healing comes from giving room for all of it—grief, joy, relief, misery, all of it—to happen and happen again. To fall apart, and to come together.

We are in process, we grow, we change. And then it happens again.

It’s Been Two Years Since…

So. We are all in process aren’t we?

How about you? What do you feel comfortable talking about from two years ago? What have you been able to move on from, and what are you still working on?

Have you given yourself permission to move on? What might radical forgiveness look like to you? 


I wanted to express special thanks to my spouse Bryna Campbell for helping me find my wording throughout this essay and personal reflection. It’s never easy putting words to this type of process and experience.

Museums Must Become More Trauma Informed

Written by Jackie Armstrong

When I took my first steps into the world of visitor research and evaluation there was a lot of emphasis on how to make the museum a more engaging place. The word engaging often got thrown around with no outline of what that actually looked in practice, or sometimes even no explanation as to why an engaging experience was what a museum should be trying to achieve. Engaging for whom, in what ways, and under what circumstances? Everyone used the word but the nuances were very different depending on the person and the situation. This was something I was hyperconscious of and always tried to address in my evaluation practices.

I’m noticing a very similar thing happening now with how the word trauma is used, in particular as more institutions and organizations talk about being trauma aware, trauma sensitive and/or trauma informed.  I’m thrilled there is finally more focus on the prevalence and impact of trauma, but I am aware that not everyone is talking about the same thing or on the same page and also recognize how far we have to go in realizing a trauma informed museum. This is something I’ve been wanting to address, professionally as someone who advocates for visitors through evaluation and research and as a person engaged in intensive trauma therapy and working on healing from the impact of traumas in my life. 

It is my firm belief that museums have a responsibility to do the work to become more trauma informed, not later but now. Museums are not standalone containers for housing art, but hubs of human interaction located within communities. If museums wish to be truly relevant to people and be spaces in which people can safely and purposefully come together to experience art in layered and meaningful ways, and be able to show up as their authentic selves, then museums must become trauma informed. This requires a culture change throughout the museum, not just using trauma informed practices in one department within the museum. This is something I’ve felt urgency around for quite awhile but feel that both COVID-19 and the issues underlying the Black Lives Matter movement are bringing all of this into focus even more as collectively our worldviews have collapsed and individually we are all dealing with survival reactions. A growing sense of unease has flooded our consciousness, many of us pushing for changes that require solidarity, intentionality, and unwavering action. 

“Traumatic experiences and oppressive social conditions cause us to move into a series of automatic, holistic, and incredibly creative means of first surviving then adapting to the harm, ruptured connection with ourselves and others, and betrayal.  We are built for safety, belonging, and dignity. We are built to be connected to and make a difference for others, to have meaningful lives. When any of these core needs are disrupted through trauma, we automatically attempt to protect ourselves….Traumatic experiences are always happening within a social context and shaped by social conditions. They are nearly always perpetuating the “rules of engagement” of our social conditions.” (Staci K. Haines, Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice: The Politics of Trauma, Chapter 4)

Let’s think about COVID-19 first. To start, we have this invisible threat that no one fully understands but it’s clear that some people get very sick and even die. It spreads easily and rapidly and we can get it just by going about our lives. We fear getting sick and potentially dying and we fear loved ones getting sick and dying, and in order to keep each other safe we need to stay away from one another, which goes against our instincts as humans. We are asked to isolate in our living environments and practice physical distancing. We develop rituals around cleanliness and hygiene in an effort to thwart the virus and we scan news sources constantly hoping for answers. Levels of hypervigilance are at an all time high for many. And while we do these things, we are given mixed information from those in power that only adds to the emotional dysregulation we’re experiencing. Dysregulation makes it difficult to manage and recover from the intense emotions that might come from upsetting situations. Prolonged emotional reactions take a toll on our physical and mental well-being. There are several results from all of this: feelings of powerlessness, a deep sense of dread for the future, overreactions to “little things”, a near constant state of fear, mood swings, sleeplessness, and more.   

Added to the constant threat to life that COVID-19 leaves many people with is the economic instability that comes with lockdown, the loss of regular coping strategies, and perhaps worse, the inability to have physical contact with people in your life who you would normally turn to for comfort. It’s an extremely disorienting time. Our bodies, to varying degrees, live out the state of emergency we are in and our bodies fight the isolation that we must endure to keep one another safe. For those with existing unresolved trauma, everything surrounding COVID-19 escalates these experiences.  None of us can orient to the threat of COVID-19 because we cannot see it, nor can we adequately flee it or fight it, so a lot of our reactions become internalized or come out in other ways such as the dysregulated emotional responses mentioned above, as well as physical symptoms such as migraines, gastrointestinal issues, inflammation and other physical pain. 

Early into the COVID-19 outbreaks in the United States, the glaring inequality that has existed for so long came into focus for many more people as BIPOC are impacted by COVID-19 more than white people and also face unemployment at higher rates. Along with this there has been a surge in police brutality against Black people, something that has been going on for far too long, and perhaps because of COVID-19 more people, specifically white people, finally are taking notice of the massive injustices and inhumanities taking place. The present moment is asking everyone to not look away or remain silent but to rise together and fight these injustices. All of this against a backdrop of climate change and political instability.

There is a pervasive weight of fear and grief everywhere. The world is literally screaming for us to heal. Something must shift.

Before we talk about what a trauma informed museum is and what that might look like in practice it’s important to start by considering what trauma is.

What is Trauma?

The first thing to know about trauma is that it exists on a spectrum. When people talk about trauma they often refer to a specific event or series of circumstances but trauma is actually more about how the brain and body processes those experiences.  Everyone experiences trauma at some point in their life and everyone to some degree has unintegrated traumatic experiences.  Unintegrated trauma is that which hasn’t been properly acknowledged or contextualized and therefore remains trapped in the body, instead of being processed and moved through. When trauma isn’t integrated into someone’s consciousness and/or when the natural reaction to trauma hasn’t been given space to be felt (e.g. feeling anger, grief, being able to escape), it gets stuck. This is problematic for many reasons but mostly because it impacts the present, causing reactions that are out of place and out of proportion to things happening in the current time or situation. This is why trauma treatment often involves modalities outside of talk therapy, for example EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and/or SE (Somatic Experiencing).  There are many different types of trauma or large categories of experiences that can result in trauma such as early childhood trauma, cumulative trauma, interpersonal trauma, developmental and attachment trauma, trauma in adulthood (often, but not always, re-enactments of early trauma), systemic injustice, intergenerational trauma, racial trauma, immigration trauma and many more. The list of symptoms that can be associated with trauma is lengthy and goes far beyond the flashbacks and nightmares mostly commonly thought of, having repercussions on the brain and body.

Most people cannot begin to process trauma, and therefore heal from it, until they feel safe. Safety and stability are critical. People who have someone who is able to co-regulate and be with them, at the time trauma occurs, can often move through the experience more quickly so that the trauma doesn’t have as long lasting or as severe of an impact as it does for someone who has no one to be with them in their pain. This is one reason why childhood trauma can continue to haunt people into adulthood as most people at the time their childhood trauma occurred did not have adequate support in place, in particular if their caregivers were the abusers. At the heart of trauma is a sense of isolation, disconnection and feeling of not belonging. Trauma asks to be seen, heard and felt and therefore requires connection and community.  Healing from trauma involves the relief of suffering, validation for what has been endured, and words and action which seek to make sense out of something which defies reason. Everyone’s individual nervous systems as well as access to resources (external but also internal) plays a big role in one’s ability to heal.

Trauma is about overwhelm. It’s about something happening that is too much, too fast, or too soon for the body and mind to take in. Trauma is about unmetabolized information that gets stuck in the body and makes it hard for people to heal from. Trauma is about the nervous system, intolerable sensations and emotional dysregulation. Trauma is about dissociation as an unconscious survival mechanism. Trauma is about defense mechanisms and shame responses. Trauma is about activation levels and hypervigilance. Trauma is about not feeling safe in one’s own body and feeling disconnected from the world. Trauma is about the impact on a person’s life, which can be enormous, layered and long lasting, but it is also about hope, resilience and finding your way home, both to yourself and to a community of supporters. 

One of the clearest definitions of trauma comes from Howell (2020) who explains that:

trauma is that which causes dissociation, that is, it causes a blank spot, or fissure in experience, causing a deficit in the ability to regulate affect and to make sense of things. This conceptualization has the advantage of bypassing debates about the meaning of objectively defined trauma (which does not result in post-traumatic stress to all those exposed to it) and subjective trauma (which can run the risk of categorizing anything that is distressing as traumatic)…. An experience is traumatic if it is overwhelming enough to cause a break in the linkage and meaning of experience, in narrative memory, and even in body processing. When an event cannot be assimilated into the rest of the experiencing self, it becomes, as Pierre Janet so well described a fixed idea that is isolated and disconnected from the rest of the self.” (Howell, pp.30-31, 2020)

Why is it important that art museums understand trauma and implement trauma informed guidelines, practices and processes?

The simple answer is because art museums are places where people come together, people with diverse life experiences, perspectives, interests, abilities, learning styles, identities AND traumas. Art museums are spaces where many nervous systems come together, in various levels of activation, navigating a dense landscape of art and sensory inputs. And ideally art museums are much more than a building where art is put on view, but places where people are invited to show up as their authentic selves and enter into dialogue with the art, one another and with themselves internally.  Art has long been an outlet to communicate when words fail or are simply not enough. A great deal of art has been born out of traumatic experiences, seeking to process and give voice to what is not easily put into words.  When art is created and viewed, it breaks through the isolation under which it might have been created and opens up the door to healing. Art connects with people in emotional and visceral ways, sometimes stirring something in us that we have yet to explore or perhaps even triggering past or current trauma. Art can connect to parts of the unconscious, open our eyes to our own truths, speak to our own suffering and offer new perspectives. Art always connects to place and time, echoing something back from the moment it was created. Art is never silent. Viewing art, particularly in the communal space of the museum, can be just as much a part of the healing process as its creation might be for the artist.

Large art institutions often welcome people from around the world and their doorsteps, both onsite and online. These museums have a responsibility to acknowledge the present moment and the life events collectively witnessed and/or experienced.  It’s just as important for staff at museums to have space and time to come together and connect with one another as it is for the museums to connect to their audiences in meaningful and diverse ways.  Museums must be responsive to the times we live in and the ever-changing needs of  audiences (those who come through the doors and those who don’t), listening rather than making assumptions about those needs.  

In many cases, art museums onsite visitorship does not reflect the racial and economic diversity of the locations they are situated in, this is particularly true of those located in densely populated cities, however they are often able to reach a more diverse audience online.  MoMA, for example, has an expansive reach online, that has continued to grow during the coronavirus pandemic, and is reaching new audiences. For many people, engaging with a museum online is more accessible than an in-person visit and/or marks the first step in greater engagement with the institution (perhaps eventually leading to an onsite visit). The trauma-informed art museum does not serve “only” a few people, it considers the well-being of the whole and creates spaces and opportunities for healing, connecting, creating, feeling, learning, sharing and transforming in ways that gently support individual inclinations. A trauma informed art museum does more than acknowledge trauma, it recognizes it, works to connect people to a shared humanity and fosters cultural humbleness, refrains from othering, avoids retraumatization and puts the physical, emotional and mental well-being of people above all else. 

A trauma-informed art museum considers and asks:

  1. By accepting that everyone has trauma and that some people are impacted more severely by it, what can we do to contribute to the conditions of healing and recovery? How can the museum be part of the healing process, thinking creatively, transparently and inclusively about this? 
  2. How can we help to understand the impact of trauma on our visitors and colleagues and how trauma experiences might manifest so that we are better able to be understanding, supportive and nimble enough to meet people where they are?  How might we consider trauma in our planning and programming efforts to ensure we are inclusive and accessible?
  3. People with trauma disorders often face stigma from the lack of information and/or from misinformation, especially when they have additional mental health diagnoses. Growing our own awareness can help break down some of this stigma. What are some steps we can take to break down stigma, individually and collectively? How might we better support people facing stigma and why is it important to do so?
  4. The grounding skills, coping strategies and somatic exercises often used in treating people with trauma disorders are helpful to anyone who experiences trauma in their lifetime.  If we all learn these skills we can better self-regulate and also help co-regulate those who may be struggling, whether a colleague or a visitor. Over time these efforts can increase our emotional capacities which reduces personal suffering and also frees us up to help others.

What does all this look like in practice? 

There are many guidelines to trauma informed principles, some organizations (in healthcare, education, the arts etc.) tailoring the principles to their individual missions but all of them at their core seek to do no harm by establishing a culture that promotes healing. Of all the trauma informed guiding principles I’ve read to date, the ones outlined by Nkem Ndefo, creator of the Resilience Toolkit, resonates with me the most and seems most appropriate for a public institution such as a museum. As Nkem Ndefo explains, these trauma informed guidelines are principles for living a humane life. These 6 principles include: 1) Safety 2) Trust and Transparency 3) Collaboration and Mutuality 4) Peer Support 5)  Voice, Choice, Self Agency 6) Cultural Humility.”  When you think about a museum and all of the people who are impacted by it, visitors and staff, these guidelines make perfect sense. 

It’s worth noting at this point that over a year ago the Education Department at MoMA went through several workshops to update our core values and collectively landed on the following as being key to the work we do: 1) Empowerment – honor people’s experiences. Share power. 2) Empathy – Build relationships. Foster Understanding. 3) Radicality – Challenge norms. 4) Embrace questioning. Think anew. 5) Creativity – Take risks. Value imagination and experimentation 6) Joy – Work with presence, passion and authenticity.  These core values could complement trauma informed practices if considered through that lens.

Trauma informed practices prioritize people, in the case of a museum this includes visitors AND staff. Creating safe spaces, fostering empowerment and actively listening are a big part of this, as well as recognizing the intersectionality that exists in all of our lives.  When thinking about programming, meetings, and other experiences at the museum trauma informed guidelines might look something like this:

  1. Create moments of calm and establish practices that promote groundedness, tolerance (of sensations, differing perspectives), presence (in the moment), intentionality, and radical acceptance, using art as a jumping off point and/or as inspiration
  2. Offer a range of activities and prompts that increase a sense of connectedness to self and others, focusing on themes of community, collaboration and internal peace
  3. Help grow empathy and compassion for self and others using a range of modalities, particularly reflection and visualization 
  4. Share skills/tools/coping mechanisms for dealing with stress, uncertainty, and intense emotions or reactions through practices and activities that encourage self-awareness and attunement
  5. Offer activities, suggestions, and experiences which help people be in the moment and grow their individual resilience and capacity for managing difficult circumstances, emotions, or thoughts 
  6. Facilitate exchange which validates personal and collective experiences, allowing individuals to create meaning using their own life narratives while opening the door to new perspectives and different narratives, strengthening their understanding and compassion for themselves and others as well
  7. Encourage people to respect where they are, and where others are, in any given moment (to check-in with themselves) and to enter into new experience with curiosity

Some of this involves shifts in our language, experimenting with new program formats, the pacing of programs and how we collaborate with one another (including working with new people and fresh ideas), but it’s also about flexibility, being aware of our own nervous systems and how they interact with others, regulating our emotions, modelling and mirroring embodied presence and awareness, and perhaps most importantly creating and holding space for one another.

This is NOT about museum staff being therapists or doing work that they do not have expertise in, this is asking that the museum operate in a more humane and holistic manner so that all staff feel encouraged to contribute to these efforts. Within the context of a program, trauma informed practices can feel therapeutic but they are not a substitute for a therapy program.

Why does it matter?

Trauma informed practices and principles acknowledge humanity and are beneficial to all, including those with acute trauma disorders, people who have experienced trauma in the past but have moved through it and everyone in between. Universal Design principles for multi-modal engagement is something that museum education has championed for years, because  it benefits everyone, not just people with disabilities. Trauma informed practices similarly have universal benefits.

Systemic change cannot happen unless people feel safe, and in order to effect transformative cultural change trauma informed principles must be adopted museum-wide and used as a guide. Using trauma informed practices in one department, while significant, will not have as big an impact as a museum where trauma informed principles are taken up museum-wide. For example, a small group of us in the Education Department at MoMA have started an initiative called Artful Practices for Well-Being and have been meeting since May to discuss experiences with art through the lens of trauma-informed practices. The conversations and efforts have been encouraging but they are not enough.

Museums are spaces where individual and collective narratives make contact, whether that’s the art and the stories attached to works, audiences that visit onsite or online, or the staff who work there. Trauma is present within some of those narratives, which might rise to the surface through the interactions at a museum, and those should not be ignored or silenced. Trauma informed practices acknowledge the traumas that filter into museum spaces, rather than setting them aside or avoiding them. Museums can and should be safe-enough places, as Ross Laird outlines, where emotions can be felt and traumas can be held, where people are invited to reflect, share their thoughts and offered choices in how they move through and engage with the museum, and feel supported in personally meaningful exploration.

In my understanding and imagining of what a trauma informed art museum could be, I always think about it as a nurturing environment, one where the experience of everyone is thoughtfully considered and the people who visit and work there are recognized for all that they bring with them, including the weight of trauma.  A trauma informed art museum experience ensures that we all have space and resources to make meaning, connect and heal, as individuals and in community with one another.  Museums should be places where everyone who wishes to be there feels a sense of belonging and feels called upon and empowered to show up as their best selves, but where the practices and principles in place help to regulate our nervous systems when we are not feeling our best. A trauma informed art museum unites us in our shared humanity but validates and makes space for the individual truths and lived experiences we all carry.

Here’s a quote I keep coming back to that I hope you will find inspiration in as well:

“What would it look like to belong in the world as our whole selves? What kinds of culture, knowledge and community structures would we be able to create if we could nurture one another without our armor on, if we could draw out and develop the gits in one another, if we could care for another in concrete, meaningful ways, and could protect one another from systemic harms and forms of structural violence, even as we’re struggling to dismantle them? What do we already have waiting within us that can guide us in that direction?” (Nora Samaran, p.14, Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture)

About the Author

JACKIE ARMSTRONG is the Associate Educator, Visitor Research and Experience at The Museum of Modern Art where she works cross-departmentally planning, coordinating, conducting and sharing the results of visitor research and evaluation, as well as working on other initiatives and interpretive resources. She leads Audiences Advocates, a cross-departmental group that uses agile evaluation to inform the design process, specifically of digital resources. Most recently, Jackie has been busy co-leading Artful Practices for Well-Being, a new initiative stemming from her passion for considering trauma informed practices in museum work. Previously, she served as the Audience Researcher in the Education Department at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She completed an MA in Museum Studies at the University of Toronto and has completed studies in Classics: Ancient Art and Archaeology, Anthropology, and Tourism Management Systems. Jackie is interested in the ways in which museums can connect with diverse publics, create thoughtfully designed experiences, and empower people to make personal meaning through their encounters with art, one another and their personal life histories. As an advocate for visitors she believes strongly in using evaluation methods to help museums make informed decisions for improving the visitor experience and taking the time to really listen to people. Jackie has presented at MCN, VSA, AAM and NYCMER, as well as written for several museum publications.

Increasingly, Jackie is drawing on her personal experiences with trauma and mental health as she works on healing, using her insights, knowledge and research to advocate for others and inform her work in the museum. Jackie is a regular contributor to The Mighty and is looking forward to doing more advocacy work in the future as she moves along in her own recovery. When not working on visitor research, writing or reading, you can find Jackie engaged in therapy, trying out new ice cream flavors, painting, spending quality time with friends, exploring NYC and watching past episodes of Survivor.

Jackie’s postings on this site are her own and don’t represent the Museum of Modern Art’s positions, strategies, or opinions.

Works Cited:

Haines, Staci K. (2019). Somatucs, Healing, and Social Justice: The Politics of Trauma. Berkeley, California. North Atlantic Books.

Howell, Elizabeth. (2020). Trauma and Dissociation Informed Psychotherapy; Relational Healing and the Therapeutic Connection. New York, New York. W. W. Norton and Company.

Laird, Ross. (2020). Mental Health Considerations for Museums: An Emerging Field of Practice and Discovery. Adapted from Museum Objects, Health and Healing, by Brenda Cowan, Ross Laird,, and Jason McKeown.

Ndefo, Nkem. (2020). Nkem Ndefo on Trauma and Resilience (#113). CHITHEADS from Embodied Philosophy (Podcast). New York, New York.

Samaran, Nora. (2019) Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurtance Culture. Chico, Edinburgh. AK Press.

Other Works that Have Informed Thinking:

Chefetz, Richard A. 2015. Intensive Psychotherapy for Persistent Dissociative Processes: The Fear of Feeling Real. New York, New York. W. W. Norton and Company. 

Dixon, Ejeris, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Editors. (2020). Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement. Edinburgh, Scotland. AK Press. 

Evans, Amanda, and Patricia Coccoma. (2017). Trauma-informed Care: How Neuroscience Influences Practice. New York, New York. Routledge.

Fisher, Janina. (2017). Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation. New York, New York. Routledge.

Foreigner, Christine C. (2017).  Dissociation, Mindfulness, and Creative Meditations: Trauma-informed Practices to Facilitate Growth. New York, New York. Routledge.

Goulding, Regina A. and Richard Schwartz.  1995. The Mosaic Mind: Empowering the Tormented Selves of Child Abuse Survivors. New York. New York. W. W. Norton and Company.

Herman, Judith. 1992. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York, New York. Basic Books.

Levine, Peter A. (2010). In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. Berkeley, California. North Atlantic Books.

Levine, Peter A. (2015). Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past, A Practical Guide for Understanding and Working with Traumatic Memory. North Atlantic Books.

Linklater, Renee. (2014). Decolonizing Trauma Work: Indigenous Stories and Strategies.  Blackpoint, Nova Scotia. Fernwood Publishing.

Mate, Gabor. (2003). When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection. Nashville, Tennessee. Turner Publishing Company.

Menakem, Resmaa. (2017).  My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Las Vegas, Nevada. Central Recovery Press.

Porges, Stephen W. (2017). The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe. New York, New York. W. W. Norton and Company.

Spring, Carolyn. (2019). Unashamed: Healing Trauma-Based Shame through Psychotherapy. 3 Archers Court, Huntingdon, UK: Carolyn Spring Publishing.

Steele, Kathy, Onno van der Hart, and Suzette Boon. (2011). Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists. New York, New York. W. W. Norton and Company.

Treleaven, David A. (2018). Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing. New York, New York. W. W. Norton and Company.

Van Der Kolk, Bessel. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York, New York. Penguin Books.

Van Marter Souers, Kristin, and Pete Hall. (2018) Relationship, Responsibility and Regulation: Trauma-invested Practices for Fostering Resilient Learners.  Alexandria, VA. ASCD.

Walker, Pete. (2013). Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. An Azure Coyote Book.

Wiley, Meredith S., and Robin Karr-Morse. (2012). Scared Sick: The Role of Childhood Trauma in Adult Disease. New York, New York. Basic Books.

Header Photo: Dan Meyers, Unsplash

Art Therapy at the Manchester Museum

Written by Chloe Sykes

This guest post from Chloe Sykes, Art Therapist Trainee, is reposted with persmission from the Manchester Museum’s hello future blog.

As a trainee art psychotherapist, I was very fortunate to be offered my final placement at Manchester Museum in the UK. As it has come to an end, I have been asked to write a blog post reflecting on my time at the museum. But first, I will briefly explain what an art therapist does.

Art therapy (or art psychotherapy – both are protected and interchangeable titles) is a mental health intervention and has the scope to be utilised in many different ways. Some people engage in art therapy with no previous art making experience but want to explore and connect to their thoughts and feelings in a creative way.

Using art materials during the therapy session can allow someone to find meaningful ways to explore any difficulties and/or develop new self care and resilience tools. It is my role to be alongside them during this journey, ensuring the person feels safe, seen and understood.

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Image 1: Reflective image exploring the role of the art therapist in create a safe space for a client.

Image 1 explores how it is the art therapist’s role to ensure the therapy space feels safe, protected and secure (shown by the blue outer circle). This allows a client to feel like they are somewhere that they can express their thoughts and feelings freely (like the centre of image 1, with the free-flowing colours and textures, feelings and thoughts, remaining held by the blue circle).

During my experiences prior to and throughout my training, I have developed a keen passion for working with different communities. I believe that a person’s mental health and well-being can be influenced by how we engage socially and individually. Unfortunately, mental health is sometimes hard to navigate and can often be daunting to experience alone. Therefore, it is exciting to see and be part of a cultural establishment that is actively making space for mental health and well-being. I truly do believe there is a place for health and well-being to be offered alongside the learning that is already available for communities; these cultural organisations have a great opportunity to bring people together through exploring the arts and our history. It is through this sense of coming together and sharing experiences, when paired up with creativity, that culture can have a powerful positive effect on a person’s well-being.

The Manchester Museum is already known for doing amazing work, engaging in various ways, with many local communities and organisations. This is something that clearly aligns well with my own passions. So, at the very start of the placement, time was spent considering where art therapy could lay within the museum and their already existing outreach partnerships. It seemed natural to introduce an art therapy service that would be offered to the organisation as well as their participants.

The planned art therapy sessions were to be held within the museum; regular sessions making artwork and exploring museum objects, in a way that would relate to how a client was potentially thinking and feeling. However, as the ripple effects of COVID-19 took hold, the shape of the placement at the museum had to adapt to the ‘new normal’. As people and organisations took the necessary time to adapt to the new unknown, it seemed appropriate to adjust where art therapy could lie during these times at the museum. A new direction was taken to offer virtual art therapy sessions to the museum staff and volunteers during the lockdown.

Each week I have been facilitating individual art therapy sessions for staff and volunteers through video conferencing. In spite of meetings being held virtually, they have still been very beneficial in many ways. A simple example of this has been how simply having a weekly time scheduled for meetings has given a much-needed sense of routine during a time when everything else seems so unknown. Also, knowing that there is a protected hour each week to reflect on any difficulties can be very powerful for some, it can feel like a beneficial space to breathe and pause.

As a trainee art therapist, facilitating something as personal and intimate as therapy over video calling needed to be carefully thought about. Because video calling can sometimes feel distant and strange, it was important to make some adaptations in light of this shift onto online delivery. Under normal circumstances, sharing the same space in therapy allows for a sense of safety and trust.

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Image 2: Reflective image of connecting in a therapeutic space virtually.

Image 2 (above) explores the ideas of sharing a space and time whilst being in a different place. Moving online, it was important to still have ways to feel like we were sharing the same safe space, despite being at separate locations, finding a way to feel connected. I introduced the use of lighting a candle at the beginning of each session (seen in the centre of the drawing). This allowed for us both to know that we had entered into the same shared space (connecting our separate spaces together through the candles). Blowing out the candles also brought the session to a close in unity; it also was a reminder of returning back to our own homes and metaphorically stepping out of the shared space.

Grounding exercises were useful for some, as it helped to bring the mind back into the virtual therapy space and similarly, back into their homes at the end of the session. Much like a commute, where we have some space to allow our minds to return to where we were before.

Once we had virtually entered into the shared space, art making through various materials was used as a way to explore any thoughts or feelings for the clients. Sometimes, even online museum collections or galleries were used, with reflective chats about what those images meant for the person. The images (made or found) were reflected on, discussing what feelings, thoughts or sometimes memories were brought forward, or sometimes an imaginative narrative would be given to the piece(s).

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The creativity and presence of a therapist allows for expression of sometimes powerful emotions to be discovered, seen, felt and shared. This can be a very healing process which is what the image 3 above explores. Clients often come to therapy feeling overwhelmed or stuck, seen in the left-hand side of the drawing.  During the course of therapy, these overwhelming feelings and areas where they feel stuck can be explored and begin to be understood, so that the client no longer feels overwhelmed or stuck. Instead, hopefully they will be able to recognise their feelings/thoughts/behaviours and understand what they mean (the right hand side of the drawing).

Another way that art making can help with growth is through the use of experimenting with art materials in a space that feels secure. Playing with art making, making mistakes and finding new ways to use the materials can allow self-esteem to foster. As materials are like symbolic tools to learn how to use what we already have, uniquely for each person whilst being thought of and supported by the therapist.

Over the past few months it has been a privilege to see how creativity has been used to gain a sense of understanding and bring people together despite being in lockdown. The art therapy for the museum staff and volunteers allowed for any mental health and well-being struggles to be taken on a journey of discovery and growth.

Writing in a Time of Crisis: Open Call for Submissions

Right now, I realize that we are all affected by the current coronavirus pandemic in wide-ranging yet different ways. From the realities of severe economic downturn and the daily experience of physical distancing to concerns about our own health and the well-being of our families, friends, and loved ones, this is a challenging time for us all — our entire global family.  Moments like this change us. And I believe that it is part of our collective human responsibility to reflect on moments like this, to write about our experiences, and to share our stories with each other.  Stories that allow us to be vulnerable, open, honest, and more human.

At times in my own life when I feel the most challenged, I reach for the writings of Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron.  In her transformative book When Things Fall Apart, Chodron explores the human response to moments of intense despair and loss. I grabbed my copy of this book off the shelf last week, and began flipping through the pages, reading bits from each section.  One sentence stood out to me more than all the others: “This very moment is the perfect teacher.”

Open Call for Writings and Reflections

So here is my invitation and open call.  I would love to gather together a series of posts over the next weeks and months from anyone willing to share their own reflections during this time of crisis, this very moment. There are few if any guidelines here, and I’m open to any type of personal writing as well as creative responses that open up new ways for us to share our stories.

Here are some questions that are interesting me, but more importantly I want to know what interests you about what you are seeing, hearing, and feeling during this time.

How have you been affected by the current crisis?

How are you and others taking care of yourselves and each other through these difficult times?

What does strong, compassionate leadership look like for you right now?

How can museums continue the vital, necessary work of dismantling systems of oppression during and after this crisis?

As we move further into this crisis, how can museum leaders (and those who remain working for these institutions) place human care and relationships above all else?

In what ways can museums and cultural organizations serve as places of healing and connection for our communities?

What is something that has gone unspoken or unsaid since the beginning of this pandemic and its impact on museums and cultural institutions?

How to Submit

If you are interested in submitting or have something to submit for publishing online as part of this series, please just send me an email at murawski27@gmail.com.  I only have one requirement for these posts — each submission must have at least one image or photograph (that we can reproduce here on this blog); and I’m happy to help find an image if you don’t have one.

Share this Open Call to anyone in your community who might be interested.

I am continuously grateful for everyone who has come together to support each other during this pandemic. I hope this series of posts, writings, and stories can be a way for us to be listening to each other and find human connection, loving-kindness, and compassion amidst the darkness of these difficult times.

-Mike Murawski


Header photo: “Writing” by akrabat, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0