Towards Social Change

ROM Trustee Rita Shelton Deverell on the leading role museums can play in an informed future

What excited you most about the ROM when you joined the Board?

RITA SHELTON DEVERELL: Like many Canadians, I have been visiting the ROM since forever. However, five years ago, a lecture at the Museum proved an exciting game changer. That afternoon, three outstanding women of colour associated with the ROM convinced me to metaphorically raise my hand and step forward to become a Trustee.

The ROM was hosting the event “Exploring Black Feminine Identity” on October 13, 2015 and the Honourable Jean Augustine (the first Black woman to be a federal cabinet minister) was the keynote speaker. I had also gotten invitations to the lecture from Sadia Zaman and Sylvia D. Hamilton. Sadia, my colleague of 30 years, was then the Managing Director, ROM Canada (now CEO of the Inspirit Foundation). Sylvia, a brilliant Afro-Nova Scotian poet, documentary maker, and professor, was unveiling her visual arts installation.

As part of her speech, Jean Augustine said, “Some of you may remember the bad old days of Into the Heart of Africa. The ROM intends to do better and you have to help.” What excited me was the expressed intention of the ROM to do better in the present and future on matters of inclusion and diversity. And I thought, the best way for me to help at my age and stage would be as a member of the Board of Trustees.

What role do you think museums play in our lives today and and how can they help inform our future?

Museums offer significant windows into the past. If they can look with clear eyes at those pasts and their subsequent effects on the present, then museums are uniquely placed to lead us into the future.

There are important conversations taking place at the ROM that highlight the critical role of museums in our society. To take a handful of examples: there is the process of repatriation of sacred Indigenous ceremonial objects and remains. First, the ROM recognizes that these objects and remains are not in the hands of their rightful owners. Then, having acknowledged this wrongdoing and theft, regardless of the original motivation, the ROM moves forward with repatriation and supporting reconciliation. The Museum is open to discussions on difficult contemporary issues, such as acknowledging the voices of the #MeToo movement alongside the Modernism on the Ganges: Raghubir Singh Photographs exhibition. There is also the forthcoming appointment for the Curator of Climate Change. Such an initiative certainly goes beyond debates on whether climate change is a reality, a crisis, or a fabrication. The ROM is uniquely positioned to allow us to move into informed futures.

You have said that your mother had a special appreciation for museums and that she never let her memberships lapse. Has that influenced your relationship with museums?

My late mother, a lifetime resident of Houston, Texas, experienced an improvement in wellness when she visited museums and galleries. People have a rise in endorphins, unless the museum subjects them to images that insult, exclude, or misrepresent their cultures. I am so grateful that my mother lived long enough not to have her museum enjoyment challenged for 35 happy post-civil rights years. I am glad that the ROM launched its social prescription program, a therapeutic offer to improve visitors’ wellbeing.

One trait inherited from my mother that is probably important here is a tenacity gene for dealing with large, legacy institutions. Recently, I was a panelist in a “Women as Public Intellectuals” forum, where one of my fellow speakers, an effective white social activist, quipped, “Rita has always been better at working for change inside institutions than I have!” If that is true, it is another attribute passed on from my mother.

There is a distant connection between you and George Floyd—you went to the same high school in the US, albeit at different times. Given the current support for, and awareness of, the Black Lives Matter movement, do you think we will see a wider embrace of anti-racist values?

Yes. My connection with George Floyd is not distant measured in time (I was in high school 35 years earlier when Houston schools were still segregated), or distant in space (our homes were seven blocks from each other). Our connection is distant measured in life chances: I was an only child with two parents, employed always at decently-paying jobs, and able to finance my education through an MA from Columbia. George Floyd had four siblings, a single mother, and was not able to complete his college education.

Did my much better life chances protect me from the fate of George Floyd? The answer is an obvious “yes,” since I have been able to thrive for 75 years. The terrible reality, though, is that my Black son who is Floyd’s age lives in a fragile world. In the wrong place at the wrong time, my son does not inherit and benefit from his much more advantaged life.

Yes, there are hopeful signs in the present advancement of anti-racism awareness. I heard a Black male executive of a large legacy institution, bigger than the ROM, say, “We’ve got the diversity now, but little inclusion. I’m working on that and I’ve got management support.” The family of the Indigenous woman, Joyce Echaquan, who died while recording racist treatment in a Canadian hospital is filing a lawsuit. The family speaks at a moment when they know they cannot be silenced.

The challenge now is to insist that the just-woke, the once-woke, and the wannabe-wokes stay awake to anti- racist values.