The African-American Museums Association (AAMA) originated in the late 1960s and was formally established in 1978. The AAMA is the voice of black museums in the United States. It serves African American museums, cultural institutions, universities, museum professionals, board members, scholars, and volunteers. The AAMA provides consultant services in marketing, conservation, personnel and collection management, exhibit design, visitor studies, program and audience enhancement, and trustee development. For this purpose the AAMA publishes a quarterly newsletter, Scrip, and an annual directory of black museums and their staffs. The AAMA is a frequent presenter of programs sponsored by the American Association of Museums, the American Association for State and Local History, and other scholarly and cultural organizations. The association has received support for its work from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Museums Act, and various private foundations, civic groups, and professional organizations.
In the late 1960s, Margaret Burroughs, founder of Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African American History, and Charles Wright, founder of the Afro-American Museum of Detroit, called a series of conferences for black museums and their staffs, establishing an informal network in the process. In 1969, Wright invited representatives of six African American museums to Detroit to discuss the formation of a national association. Early in the 1970s, Tom Lloyd, director of the Storefront Museum in New York City, launched the first black museum organization when he established the National Association of Museums and Cultural Organizations. Lloyd’s group did not survive, perhaps because most black museums had limited funds and were not able to support a national organization. Burroughs of Chicago’s DuSable museum, however, persisted. In 1975 she sponsored a meeting of black museum professionals and scholars who gathered regularly and soon became known as the Black Seminar Group. While these informal meetings played an important role in the development of the fledgling black museum movement, participants believed that a formal organization was the best way to support black museums.
Thus, in 1978, a consortium of six black museums, with funding from the National Museum Act and the Smithsonian Institution, organized a series of conferences at participating African American museums. These meetings crystallized the need for a formal organization. Edmund Barry Gaither of the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Boston chaired the group that prepared the AAMA’s bylaws, which were ratified in Detroit in February 1978.
In the two years following its founding the AAMA was headquartered at the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists. Jamiese Martin, the AAMA’s first director, worked part-time and was the organization’s sole staff member. In 1980, with the help of Betty Thomas, director of the Mary McLeod Bethune Museum and Archives, the AAMA relocated its office to Washington, D.C. In the same year the association hired its first fulltime executive director, Joy Ford Austin, who managed the AAMA until Ronald L. Sharp replaced her in 1987. During the 1980s the AAMA was a vigorous force in the museum movement. It helped curators plan exhibits, aided administrators in the recruitment of staff, and assisted scholars in their research. Moreover, the AAMA advised collectors about making donations, aided museum trustees in meeting responsibilities, and counseled artists on planning exhibits. It also served as a valuable model as other people of color began to develop museums and cultural organizations.
By the end of the 1980s, however, the AAMA faced financial difficulties. White museums with far greater resources than their black counterparts experienced increasing public pressure to reflect in their exhibits America’s racial diversity, and they began to compete with black museums for funds to support programs about African Americans. The lack of funding that resulted combined with organizational and financial problems of the under-funded AAMA created a crisis. Rowena Stewart, director of the African American Historical and Cultural Museum of Philadelphia, and AAMA president from 1981 to 1984, was named acting executive director in 1991. In the fall of that year the AAMA’s Washington office closed and an Interim Governing Committee was formed to guide the organization through these difficult times. The AAMA reopened its office in February 1992 at the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio, with Jocelyn Robinson-Hubbuch as half-time executive director. Despite the financial hardships, the AAMA has resumed its central role in the African American museum movement, reorganizing in 1998 as the Association of African American Museums.
FURTHER READING
African-American Museums Association. A Decade of Devotion: African-American Museums Association, 1978 to 1988. Washington, D.C.: African-American Museums Association, 1988.
Rhett S.Jones
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