ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the perceived barriers that museum professionals face in enacting practices concerned with the betterment of society and, more specifically, the lives of their visitors. It describes the nuances of what is required to teach and learn activist museum professional practices, and relates the findings from two different studies that demonstrate the overlapping traits and approaches that museum professionals need to take as activists in their museums and communities. The chapter examines in practice and perceived barriers, the results from the second study demonstrate strategies that can be used in graduate programs to counteract the activist malaise in current museum practice. It provides to better understand the different approaches that museum professionals take toward activist work, and what it would take to develop those strategies within museum studies training programs. Ethos is an underdeveloped and virtually non-existent consideration in most museum training programs, or in many of the fields that constitute various museum practices.
