On 4 July 2026, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the United States government released the report ‘Saving America’s Story’ as part of its ongoing review of the Smithsonian Institution.1 The report accuses the American History Museum of failing in its mission, by moving from ‘straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism’. The principal tool for such ‘ideological capture’, it proposes, is museum interpretation. The report attacks changes made by museums in the name of inclusion as ‘anti-American’ and ‘anti-White’, and minutely analyses an exhibition’s wall text about the diverse people who founded the country as ‘pro-illegal alien activism’. Yet, its primary concern is that the Smithsonian does not sufficiently celebrate the heroism and patriotism of the Founding Fathers. Against the direction of museum practice around the world, museums in the United States are being pressured to return to narratives of great men and great countries, presented not as interpretation but as presumed consensus.
In the United Kingdom, the civic role of national museums, which are supported by and accountable to the taxpayer, means that interpretation serves a public purpose. For as long as serving a broad public involves sparking curiosity and encouraging independent thinking, interpretation must support rather than close off debate. Yet, when cultural narratives are increasingly politicised, do we need new strategies for the stories we tell about our shared collections?
This issue of Tate Papers explores how interpretation can address the complex expectations placed on museums in an age of heightened political focus. It emerges from a recent research project funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art, led by Tate in partnership with five museums from across the United States. Through a series of workshops, the researchers explored changes to interpretation practice informed by the exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (Tate Modern, 2017).2 Questions included how linguistic and cultural differences between the United States and the United Kingdom inflect inclusive writing practices, and how contemporary approaches to museum interpretation can learn from the case made by artists associated with the Black Power movement for political and artistic self-determination.
The articles in this issue show interpretation in practice, sharing methods and case studies for writing inclusive cultural narratives. By way of introduction, Abram Jackson and Sam McGuire reflect on their work as museum professionals in the US and UK respectively. In his audio essay, Jackson, Director of Interpretation at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, describes the ‘deep purpose’ of his work in the current moment, ‘to support the more accurate storytelling of a [racial] terror that has often been sanitised while witnessing and experiencing it in real time’. He introduces his practice of ‘equity edits’ of exhibition texts and the museum’s ‘affinity viewings’, private openings of exhibitions for groups with shared interests or identities. McGuire reflects on her work at Tate, where she led on inclusive language and built a glossary of terms that was shared across the museum. Both highlight the importance of co-production – working with people from local communities to create interpretation and knowledge.
It is notable that anthropology and archaeology hold such relevance for current debates about interpretation. Galila Khougali, Sarita Mamseri and Catriona Wilson present a detailed case study of co-creation, working with the Sudanese community in London to reimagine displays and programme at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology. Laila Shah’s article undertakes a reinterpretation exercise of a breast implant in the collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, asking how an object that does not sit easily within inherited categories might expand our understanding of objects, bodies and histories.
Other contributions explore the role of museum workers and artists in making meaning through interpretation. Megan Patty examines how museum publishing acts as a form of interpretation, creating a networked legacy for our understanding of art. Jessica Connor brings together principles for inclusive writing into a rubric for museum professionals, in a document that can be printed and shared. Bruno Alves de Almeida, drawing on his recent fellowship at Tate St Ives, considers how artist residencies can function as thresholds between institutions, people and places. Anjalie Dalal-Clayton extends this proposal of the artist as interpreter through her in-depth analysis of Keith Piper’s Viva Voce 2024. The film installation was commissioned by Tate in response to the widespread critical reaction against racist depictions in the Rex Whistler mural on the walls of its former restaurant at Tate Britain. Dalal-Clayton proposes Piper’s intervention as an exemplar of artist-led, dialogic interpretation, in which ‘didactic, authoritative labels are avoided in favour of participatory and collaborative meaning-making’.
Across the issue, a new approach to interpretation emerges, a shift from desk-based curatorial study towards research that engages with people and methodologies outside the art museum. Through these methods, museums are moving away from a single, settled story towards many varied narratives. At a research workshop for this issue, a group of artists, academics and museum workers reflected on the provocation that ‘stories told from the centre will always reinforce the position of the centre’. Offered in relation to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s idea of many centres and his understanding of language as a tool of the coloniser, the phrase speaks to the problem now being staged so starkly in the United States. Through their research, the authors in this issue offer solidarity, providing strategies for colleagues, artists and publics facing oppression.