Noah Weeth Feinstein

INTRODUCTION Most museums serve audiences that are disproportionately wealthier, have more formal schooling, and (in the United States and Europe) are Whiter than the communities around them (Dawson, 2014). Museums are also increasingly under scrutiny for their internal equity problems and discriminatory practices (e.g., Jacobs, 2022; McDonald, 2021).

Imagine a surfer carving a trail down the face of a wave. When we focus on her performance in that brief moment, we judge her decisions as good and her skill as adequate. We surmise that her content knowledge, skills, attitude, and experience in surfing are sufficient to the task. But if we do not look forward and backward from that moment, we miss the factors that led her to drop in—to choose that wave—just as we miss how her choices could take her safely into the shallows or up onto a reef.