Trauma-Informed Museum Practices: A Comprehensive Guide
Museums play pivotal roles in navigating complex problems. The objects and narratives on display provide visitors with powerful experiences of meaning and context for themes such as climate change, decolonization, political turmoil and systemic racism. But these themes are also freighted with trauma: personal trauma, cultural trauma, intergenerational trauma. Visitors can be traumatized or re-traumatized when visiting exhibits and galleries. Staff can be directly or vicariously traumatized by interactions with objects, narratives, visitors and colleagues. Everyone can be traumatized by organizational turbulence, burnout, and emotional fatigue.
This guide offers a thoughtful and careful approach to work that requires sensitivity, skill, and ongoing commitment. The potential trauma involved in workplace exposure to themes of emotional intensity has a tendency to activate the personal trauma that many people carry. Furthermore, even in situations where an individual is not carrying unresolved personal trauma, exposure to situations, objects, or narratives involving trauma will (and should) provoke strong human reactions that must be managed with compassion and care.
What This Series Covers
This series provides practical guidance for museum professionals working with difficult histories, traumatic content, and emotionally intensive material. Each article addresses a specific dimension of trauma-informed practice while recognizing that all these elements are interconnected—part of a living system where every choice affects what becomes possible.
Understanding Trauma in Museum Contexts explores how trauma operates as a complex, ecological phenomenon affecting visitors, staff, and community partners. It examines the neuroscience of trauma responses, the patterns that emerge from person-environment interactions, and why museums need this foundational knowledge.
Understanding Trauma in Museum ContextsConsiderations for Trauma-Informed Training addresses the personal dimension of this work—why trauma-informed training must be fundamentally different from typical professional development, how to build skills safely, and the importance of self-awareness and empathy as foundations for supporting others.
Considerations for Trauma-Informed TrainingCore Principles of Trauma-Informed Practice outlines five interconnected principles—safety, trust, belonging, empowerment, and empathy—that guide all trauma-informed work. These are not implemented once but practiced continually, shaping how exhibitions are designed, how staff interact, and how partnerships are formed.
Core Principles of Trauma-Informed PracticeSupporting Colleagues examines what it means to care for one another in workplaces where exposure to traumatic content is routine. It explores the skills of presence, the importance of boundaries, and how to create a culture where supporting each other becomes ordinary rather than exceptional.
Supporting ColleaguesTrauma-Informed Exhibition Planning addresses the challenge of creating exhibitions that convey difficult truths with honesty while respecting visitor wellbeing. It offers practical strategies for content advisories, visitor choice, regulation spaces, and creative engagement that honors both truth-telling and care.
Trauma-Informed Exhibition PlanningWorking with Community Partners explores how to build genuine, reciprocal partnerships with communities whose traumatic histories museums represent. It emphasizes the importance of multiple sessions over time, incorporating creative work alongside discussion, and creating conditions where trust can develop.
Working with Community PartnersSustaining the Practice addresses how trauma-informed approaches become embedded in organizational culture rather than remaining isolated initiatives. It explores onboarding, documentation, leadership modeling, policy alignment, and the long-term work of creating environments where care is expected and practiced.
Sustaining the PracticeWho This Is For
These resources are designed for museum professionals at all levels: leadership and executives who shape institutional culture, curators and researchers who work deeply with traumatic content, educators and public programs staff who facilitate visitor encounters with difficult material, visitor services teams who field immediate emotional responses, exhibition designers who make choices about how stories are told, and community engagement coordinators who build relationships with affected communities.
Museum are ecological systems. Trauma-informed practice works best when it permeates those systems—when staff who make strategic decisions and staff who greet visitors at the door are all working from shared principles and supporting one another.
The introductory page of the guide provides the context and rationale for trauma-informed museum practices and includes an overview of each page.
Understanding Trauma in Museum Contexts explores how trauma operates as a complex, ecological phenomenon affecting visitors, staff, and community partners. It examines the neuroscience of trauma responses, the patterns that emerge from person-environment interactions, and why museums need this foundational knowledge.
Considerations for Trauma-Informed Training addresses the personal dimension of this work—why trauma-informed training must be fundamentally different from typical professional development, how to build skills safely, and the importance of self-awareness and empathy as foundations for supporting others.
Core Principles of Trauma-Informed Practice outlines five interconnected principles—safety, trust, belonging, empowerment, and empathy—that guide all trauma-informed work. These are not implemented once but practiced continually, shaping how exhibitions are designed, how staff interact, and how partnerships are formed.
Supporting Colleagues examines what it means to care for one another in workplaces where exposure to traumatic content is routine. It explores the skills of presence, the importance of boundaries, and how to create a culture where supporting each other becomes ordinary rather than exceptional.
Trauma-Informed Exhibition Planning addresses the challenge of creating exhibitions that convey difficult truths with honesty while respecting visitor wellbeing. It offers practical strategies for content advisories, visitor choice, regulation spaces, and creative engagement that honors both truth-telling and care.
Working with Community Partners explores how to build genuine, reciprocal partnerships with communities whose traumatic histories museums represent. It emphasizes the importance of multiple sessions over time, incorporating creative work alongside discussion, and creating conditions where trust can develop.
Sustaining the Practice addresses how trauma-informed approaches become embedded in organizational culture rather than remaining isolated initiatives. It explores onboarding, documentation, leadership modeling, policy alignment, and the long-term work of creating environments where care is expected and practiced.