What do we mean when we say “our museum is diverse”? What is diversity and how many levels of diversity exist in a museum? Diversity is not only concerning people (visitors or staff), but also includes the collections, materiality, programs, advertisement etc. Diversity is also a challenge. That is why we chose to work multilingually, even though we were not able to understand our partners mother tongue without a tool. Diversity is not about finding differences, but how to work with multiple perspectives and accomplish something together. Although we know, that diversity is not always seen as an opportunity, but rather as an obstacle or a matter of conflict, we want to focus on the positive side of the term and how to incorporate diversity in a museum context.
We chose the term “Diversity” and agreed to write in our respective first language (Arabic and German) investigating how different aspects in our own languages determine how we attribute the term.
Conversing the concept of diversity in our mother tongues with each other highlights the complexity that context and connotation brings to the words we use. For the application of the word diversity we looked at the different fields within the museum. The basis of this article is based on our own opinion, experience, and research on this topic, which has been expanded and influenced by the trilingual exchange. We used Google Translate to understand what the other partner was writing.
Im Deutschen können verschiedene Worte für die Übersetzung von diversity gebraucht werden, darunter Diversität, Vielfalt, Mannigfaltigkeit sowie Heterogenität, Unterschiedlichkeit, Verschiedenheit und Differenz.
تكمن أهمية المتاحف في خلق تجارب ذات معنى ومغزى للشعوب من جميع الأصول والخلفيات لتعزيز قيمتها الاجتماعية.
...achieving diversity in museums in its various aspects from employees, collections, events, exhibitions, and advertisement methods, is pivotal. Showcasing and living diversity in museums is a great tool to implement knowledge, awareness, tolerance, and understanding.