Comment on When Disaster Strikes: Assistance by Museums Nearby by Douglas Worts

Thank you for this reflection, which opens up an enormous window of opportunity for cultural organizations to rethink their relationships to their local living culture.

Trauma radiated widely as a result of the events of 9/11. The Liberty Science Center’s response shines a clear light on the potential of cultural organizations to step outside their comfort zones (and traditional missions) to embrace and foster meaningful relationships with community, specifically linked to the forces that are shaping the culture.

From your short piece it is clear LSC focused on meeting the needs of a constituency that was perhaps most affected by the attack – family and friends of those directly involved in the World Trade Center buildings. Through mobilizing collaborations with psychologists and community health organizations while engaging this population, the Center undoubtedly stretched beyond its traditional comfort zone. Further, I have to imagine that it was both humbling and creative for staff to adapt exhibits and programs, in order that they reflected on the shocks from the attacks that were rippling across the entire population.

The cultural sector generally remains primarily focused on working within the leisure-time, and tourism niches of the economy. Perhaps the field would benefit from many wide-ranging conversations about how to expand and transform how art, science, heritage, creativity, cohesion and more, become creative and catalytic forces in how the living culture adapts to our dramatically and constantly transforming world.