Art Exhibitions and Social Justice: Curating Empathy

Museums are influential platforms due to the high degree of trust the public places in their information. This platform becomes especially useful for curators and activists seeking to increase awareness around social justice issues. A way curators can connect with audiences and further the potential impact of their art exhibitions is by cultivating empathy within their audiences, especially social empathy. There are two forms of empathy, interpersonal and social, both of which help an individual gain knowledge and understanding about the world around them. Museums are institutions that teach empathy by providing opportunities for visitors to interact with different people and learn new perspectives. Curators can encourage empathy by using three methods of audience engagement: reflection, discourse, and building relationships with outside community organizations and individuals. Through the analysis of three social justice contemporary art exhibitions, Beyond Borders: Stories im/Migration (2018) at Santa Clara University, Reproductive: Health, Fertility, Agency (2021) at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and Undoing Time: Art and the History of Incarceration (2021 - 2022) at the Arizona State University Art Museum, I identify examples of how these methods can be utilized to grow empathy and suggest changes museums, curators and audiences can implement to build empathy and increase the plausibility for positive change within communities.