Museum Education for Disability Justice and Liberatory Access

Abstract

This article engages crip theory and concepts from Critical Disability Studies to frame museum education through critical access and disability justice to center disabled, Mad, and neurodiverse audiences in public practice. The authors introduce and define key concepts and ask questions to cultivate liberatory access for museum education. Theoretical concepts include (1) critical access and “leadership of those most impacted,” (2) crip time and flexibility, and (3) curatorial care and collective responsibility. By engaging the work of crip knower-makers, we elucidate the ways in which these three areas can inform a politics of relation and pedagogical practices. In essence, we propose liberatory access and a pedagogy in solidarity with the disability justice movement, as a reorientation through which disabled people are not invited to participate in an able-bodied, inaccessible space, but where we all venture toward a world of solidarity to inhabit alongside one another.