Laura Vodanovich: Look at past to understand present

Laura Vodanovich

LIKE many around the world this week, I've been caught up in the story of a young woman sexually assaulted at Stanford University in the US.

A focus of the story, which has been going viral on social media, is that her attacker, a privileged white male, received only a six-month sentence and that his father appears to be excusing and minimising the crime.

The other angle that is getting a lot of social media attention is the disparity between sentences for similar crimes perpetrated by non-privileged African Americans.

At the same time, and for the first time in history, a woman is a serious candidate for the United States presidency.

Now you may well be wondering what this has to do with the museum and what on earth qualifies me to comment on such topics. Let me first say that I am making no comment on either Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign or indeed on the outcome of a trial. In both cases, I do not have enough information to have a valid opinion, I have not followed Clinton's politics and, I would have had to sit through the sexual assault trial to have a full picture of that situation.

Fundamentally I do not support trial (or election) by media as it's too easy to take a few small pieces of information and make sweeping assumptions and ill-informed conclusions.

What these situations have, however, brought to mind is the issue of fairness, justice and inclusiveness.

And that certainly is something museums have a role in, both in supporting, endorsing and acting on, and also educating and challenging our visitors around these subjects. Museums have a social responsibility in the community and this includes ensuring that we challenge currently accepted norms.

For me, it's hard to imagine that people could be imprisoned for homosexuality, and women were forced to stop working if they got married or became pregnant.

I literally find this hard to comprehend and these are only a few examples.

It's extraordinary that in our recent history this was perfectly normal behaviour.

That's why we have a role to challenge and shine a light on current inequity and unfairness.

We still live in a society where it's not the norm for women to receive equal pay, where the idea of signage being bilingual is a big deal, and rape victims are challenged on what they did to cause their own abuse.

Many may perceive museums as only speaking about the past, and, while that's often the case, it's not our only role.

Understanding the past, however, is a very important part of understanding the present. I've no doubt that museums in the future will present exhibitions showing lesser pay for women as an incredibly archaic and extraordinary practice, in the same way that current generations look upon the criminalisation of homosexuality.

I sometimes think that, if we try and put our mindset 100 years in the future and wonder what we'd think looking back on the moment we're in now, decisions and issues might become a lot clearer.

I for one believe that, for example, racial inequality in the justice system will in the future be looked at in the same light that we view the concept of slavery today - unbelievably barbaric, unjust and uncivilised.

Museums must be a place where these issues can be discussed: "a safe place for unsafe ideas".

Laura Vodanovich is the director of the Museum Theatre Gallery (MTG) Hawke's Bay.